Mahyuddin Datuk Sutan Maharadja

Mahyuddin Datuk Sutan Maharadja (c. 1860 – 1921, Van Ophuijsen Spelling System: Mahjoeddin Datoek Soetan Maharadja, Minangkabau: Mahyuddin Datuak Sutan Marajo) was a Minangkabau journalist, intellectual, activist and newspaper editor active in the Dutch East Indies.

Mahyuddin was born into an aristocratic Minangkabau family in Sulit Air, Solok Regency, West Sumatra, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in around 1860.

[1] Due to his family's closeness with the Dutch, he was one of the first Minangkabau to receive a Western education, and in 1873 was sent to study in a European school in Padang, West Sumatra.

[1] In its pages he became a vocal defender of Minangkabau Adat against modernizing Muslims who wanted to abolish it and follow Middle Eastern Islam more closely.

[1] He also fell afoul of the strict Dutch censorship laws; within the first year he was fined 100 Guilder and sentence to one month's imprisonment for printing content deemed defamatory of local officials.

[1] In 1899 his efforts at improving the quality of Warta Berita attracted a new round of investors; he was made editor-in-chief with a new team of assistant editors and the cost of the paper rose due to its longer format.

[1] He started to organize his followers, who believed in Adat as well as societal progress, as the kaoem moeda (young group), a term popularized by Abdoel Rivai.

He became bitter rivals of Abdul Muis and Abdoel Rivai and other such early Indonesian nationalist figures and accused them of ingratitude towards the Dutch.

[11] He spent his final years from 1918 to 1921 researching and writing about Minangkabau history in an attempt to steer the progressive movement towards embracing local tradition and rejecting European, Middle Eastern, or Javanese influence.