Max Lane, Jakarta – It was an amazing experience to translate the works of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, to have had to think deeply about what he wrote, to discuss with him the situation in Indonesia. I translated This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps and House of Glass in the 1980s. Recently I have just finished translating his The Chinese in Indonesia and Arok Dedes, both of which will be published this year. I am in the process of completing my own book, People Power, the Fall of Suharto and Indonesian History which is partly inspired by his analysis of Indonesian history.

Pramoedya's contribution to Indonesian literature, historical analysis and political thinking has been great indeed. In this respect, I very much disagree with the perspective put forward by Andre Vitchek in his article With Pram died Indonesian culture in The Jakarta Post. Vitchek's article underrates the struggle by many Indonesians to revive culture, science and democratic life in Indonesia and in so doing also negates the real impact of Pramoedya's own writing and ideas.

Of course, it is true that the coming to power of the New Order in 1965 did end an era. It represented the suppression and the failure of the first great wave of the Indonesian revolution, a wave that lasted from the beginning of the 20th century until 1965.

The movement to finish the national revolution failed. The New Order was a counter-revolutionary government, not simply because it suppressed those political forces calling for a social revolution – the Left, but also because it suppressed the national revolution itself. The cultural life that was painfully emerging out of the national revolution was suppressed.

It was represented in the ideas of Sukarno, which Pramoedya supported until the end of his life in all the literary works of the early national revolution and then those which came out of LEKRA and the LKN in the 1950s and 1960s.

But most significantly, the New Order bureaucracy, military and conglomerates, alongside the business power of the West and Japan, took over the country. Culture became a commodity in their market place.

This is all true and it makes Pramoedya the last great voice of the first wave of the Indonesian national revolution, and its accompanying social revolution as well. But it would be wrong to not see the beginnings of the second wave of the revolution beginning to sprout a long time ago.

Yes, its true this new wave is at its beginning. But we should have learned from reading This Earth of Mankind and its sequels that these great revolutionary processes also have their own grueling, and sometimes painfully slow, gestation periods.

The national awakening described by Pramoedya begins with Kartini in the 1890s. The rise and fall of Tirto Adhisuryo and Sarekat Islam plays out over another twenty years – the time period of the Buru Quartet books. The Youth Oath, which in Pramoedya's eyes was the beginning of the idea of Indonesia was not until 1928. Independence was in 1945; the escalation of the struggle to "finish the revolution", not until 1969.

The first wave of national revolution failed. This was a generational failure, so total was the suppression. New generations take up the struggle. There may be no new Pramoedyas yet, but there are plenty of new Minkes, not to mention Marcos and Haji Misbachs. Moreover, there also those whose writings and ideas have provided the bridge from one generation to the next. W.S. Rendra's plays and poems, such as The Poet's Pamphlets and The Struggle of the Naga Tribe are just one example of works that played that role.

All those that threw themselves into that first wave of national revolution, failed and saw the revolution blocked by oppression and the country stagnate, will be disappointed, frustrated, and even lonely. They are separated from the Indonesia they helped create, as a new process and new generation start again. Pramoedya also felt that deeply.

But the current and next generations do not start from scratch. Suharto may have destroyed much of the political and cultural heritage of 60 years of revolutionary struggle, but not everything. In fact, Pramoedya's works themselves are part of what is not destroyed.

To proclaim that Indonesian culture has died with Pram is to negate Pram while praising him. The whole generation of activists through the 1980s and 1990s built upon Pramoedya. The student activists and leaders; Wiji Thukul; a revival in pride among all generations – all this is not dead.

But yes, today they swim against the current. This is not the first half of the century which was marked by the struggles against colonialism around the world and then the civil rights and anti-war movements in the West. The ideals of social justice and radicalism are swimming against the current almost everywhere.

If Pramoedya is not widely read in Indonesia, neither is Howard Fast in the US He is virtually out-of-print, and is Steinbeck still a symbol of mainstream American culture? No, this is a problem we all face: Everywhere. Frankly, I think the effervescence among young people in Indonesia is more exciting than that in my own country, Australia.

So the need is not to proclaim the death of Indonesian culture, nor to issue general appeals for people in Indonesia to read Pram. The question now is how to push forward the processes that have re-started since the 1970s, accelerated again in the 1990s and now await the next stage forward.

In terms of people reading Pramoedya in Indonesia, this must be also treated concretely and not through abstract appeals. A wider reading of Pramoedya will flow as the next wave of the national revolution starts to build up. But there are some concrete things that could be raised.

What needs to be done to get Pramoedya's writings and other major works into the high schools and universities? What can be done to make libraries more resourced places? How can initiatives like the Bandung based Pramoedya Institute be supported and expanded? Reading This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps and House of Glass teaches us how grueling, how complex and how richly liberating the process was of preparing the way for the Indonesian national revolution to get underway.

With the failure of that first wave, its crushing, we should learn from Pramoedya's writing to expect no less a grueling, complex and richly liberating prelude to the next wave. One of Pramoedya's greatest contributions has been to help that process get under way.

[The writer is lecturer in Indonesian Studies, University of Sydney.]