Writer and Historian

This is the first of three verses of Muhammad Yamin's legendary poem, Tanah Air (Homeland). The poem, written when Yamin was 17, expresses his idea of a homeland for which he would spill his blood. But it wasn't everyone's homeland. "The homeland in this poem still refers to Sumatra, not Indonesia," said Rachmat Djoko Pradopo, a professor of cultural studies at Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University.

Tanah Air was a milestone in Yamin's writing career. When it appeared in 1920 in Jong Sumatra, a Dutch-language magazine published by the Sumatran youth organization Jong Sumatranen Bond, it grabbed the attention of Indonesia's literary world. Yamin had introduced a new poetic form which did not follow the old norms of six or eight lines. "Tanah Air consisted of three verses," Rachmat explained. "One verse could be nine lines or an odd rather than even number. The rhyming of the lines was aa-bb-cc-dd and not ab-ab."