Bookworm, religious nationalists, and thinker: Bung Hatta’s personality from a graphological, geographical, and historical analysis

The younger generation needs “examples” that will be used as role models in developing their personality. There are many ways that can be done to understand a person’s character. Personality can be analyzed with a historical approach and spatial analysis where the character has undergone a process of socialization and internalization. Besides, personality can be explored with a graphological approach. Graphology is the art of interpreting a person’s personality characteristics by looking at the type of handwriting and signature. The main problem of this article is “how do Bung Hatta’s analysis results compare using the graphological, geographic, and historical approaches? This article takes a historical approach, geography, and handwriting analysis [graphology] approach to describe Bung Hatta’s personality. The influence of West Sumatra, with its Minang culture shaped Hatta as a nationalist and religious figure. In Padang, young Hatta began to be an independent person. He learned to take care of himself, divided his time between school and organization. While in Padang, in addition to public schools, Hatta also studied the Quran from local scholars such as Haji Abdullah Ahmad and also Abdul Karim Amirullah. Graphological and historical analysis shows Bung Hatta more as a thinker, a conceiver who conveyed his thoughts through writing since he was a student in the Netherlands. The figure of Hatta is inseparable from books because he is indeed a “bookworm”. Hatta’s thoughts on the Indonesian economy had a far-future vision. He initiated a people-based economy. Hatta has broad insight and is also visionary. His integrity is morally and politically recognized by his friends and foes.