'Hinduism' in Modern Indonesia: A Minority Religion Between Local, National and Global Interests (Curzon in Association With Iias, 8)

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HINDUISM IN MODERN INDONESIA

This volume provides new data and perspectives on the development of ‘world religion’ in postcolonial societies through an analysis of the development of Hinduism in various parts of Indonesia from the early twentieth century to the present. This development has been largely driven by the religious and cultural policy of the Indonesian central government, although the process began during the colonial period as an indigenous response to the introduction of modernity. The contributors carefully assess possible future religious developments in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto, but also review the historical development of Hinduism in the country. By addressing how Hinduism has had to adapt to a Judaeo-Christian-Muslim notion of ‘religion’, its ‘official’ association with Buddhism and its predominantly Indonesian-Chinese constituency, these chapters highlight how many of Indonesia’s ethnic religions have been labelled as ‘Hindu’ sects. As a result of this portrayal, Hinduism in Modern Indonesia suggests that Hinduism is largely seen as a religion at the fringe of ‘true religion’ leading to the uncertain status of Hinduism in Indonesian society especially in the context of increasing Islamization witnessed since the late 1980s. Although Human Rights violations in Indonesia have received a great deal of coverage since the fall of Suharto, the increasing pressure on the Hindu community from Muslim and Christian fundamentalists has been largely ignored. Written by specialists in the field, the chapters presented here provide much needed insight into the lesser-known facets of religious identification in Indonesia, furthering our understanding of how religious identities are negotiated. Those with research interests in religious development as well as students of Asian studies will find this book both interesting and thought-provoking. Martin Ramstedt is a Researcher on contemporary religion at the Meertens Instituut, Amsterdam.

ROUTLEDGECURZON-IIAS ASIAN STUDIES SERIES Series Co-ordinator: Dick van der Meij Institute Director: Wim A.L. Stokhof The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) is a postdoctoral research centre based in Leiden and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Its main objective is to encourage Asian Studies in the Humanities and the Social Sciences and to promote national and international co-operation in these fields. The Institute was established in 1993 on the initiative of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Leiden University, Universiteit van Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. It is mainly financed by The Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sciences. IIAS has played an active role in co-ordinating and disseminating information on Asian Studies throughout the world. The Institute acts as an international mediator, bringing together various entities for the enhancement of Asian Studies both within and outside The Netherlands. The RoutledgeCurzonIIAS Asian Studies series reflects the scope of the Institute. The Editorial Board consists of Erik Zurcher, Wang Gungwu, Om Prakash, Dru Gladney, Amiya K. Bagchi, James C. Scott, Jean-Luc Domenach and Frits Staal. IMAGES OF THE ‘MODERN WOMAN’ IN ASIA Edited by Shoma Munshi NOMADS IN THE SEDENTARY WORLD Edited by Anatoly M. Khazanov and Andre Wink READING ASIA Edited by Frans Husken and Dick van der Meij TOURISM, HERITAGE AND NATIONAL CULTURE IN JAVA Heidi Dahles ASIAN-EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES Edited by Wim Stokhof and Paul ven der Velde LAW AND DEVELOPMENT IN EAST AND SOUTHEAST ASIA Edited by Christoph Antons THE INDIAN OCEAN RIM Edited by Gwyn Campbell RETHINKING CHINESE TRANSNATIONAL ENTERPRISES Edited by Leo Douw, Cen Huang and David Ip INDONESIAN SEA NOMADS Cynthia Chou DIASPORAS AND INTERCULTURALISM IN ASIAN PERFORMING ARTS Edited by Hae-Kyung Um READING EAST ASIAN WRITING Edited by Michel Hockx and Ivo Smits SEXUAL CULTURES IN EAST ASIA Edited by Evelyn Micollier HINDUISM IN MODERN INDONESIA Edited by Martin Ramstedt

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HINDUISM IN MODERN INDONESIA A minority religion between local, national, and global interests

Edited by Martin Ramstedt

First published 2004 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2004 Selection and editorial matter, Martin Ramstedt; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for an errors or omissions that may be made. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hinduism in modern Indonesia : between local, national, and global interests / Edited by Martin Ramstedt. p. cm. – (RoutledgeCurzon – IIAS Asian studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Hinduism – Indonesia – History – 20th century. 2. Indonesia – Religion – 20th century. 3. Indonesia – Civilization – Indic influences. 4. Hinduism and culture – Indonesia. I. Ramstedt, Martin. II. Series. BL1163.5.H56 2003 294.5′09598 – dc21 2003008757 ISBN 0-203-98727-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0–7007–1533–9 (Print Edition)

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CONTENTS

vii ix xiii

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: negotiating identities – Indonesian ‘Hindus’ between local, national, and global interests

1

M A RT I N R A M S T E D T

2 The Theosophical Society in the Dutch East Indies, 1880–1942

35

H E R M A N D E TO L L E NA E R E

3 The revival of Buddhism in modern Indonesia

45

I E M B ROW N

4 What’s in a name? Agama Hindu Bali in the making

56

M I C H E L P I CA R D

5 The development of Hindu education in Bali

76

N G U R A H NA L A

6 The Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia in a society in transformation: the emergence of conflicts amidst differences and demands

84

I G U S T I N G U R A H BAG U S

7 Hindu reform in an Islamizing Java: pluralism and peril RO B E RT W. H E F N E R

v

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CONTENTS

8 Ethnic, national, and international loyalties of Indonesian Christians

109

KAREL STEENBRINK

9 Peacemaker for religious conflicts? The value of pela relationships in Ambon

126

TA N JA H O H E A N D B E RT R E M I J S E N

10 Religion and ethnic identity of the Mentawaians on Siberut (West Sumatra)

144

GERARD A. PERSOON

11 From ‘Grooter Toradja’ to ‘Toraja Raya’: emergent ethnic identity, expansionism, and political struggle in Tana Toraja and Luwu, South Sulawesi

160

D I K RO T H

12 The Hinduization of local traditions in South Sulawesi

184

M A RT I N R A M S T E D T

13 The position of Hinduism in Karo society (North Sumatra)

226

J UA R A R . G I N T I N G

14 Old gods for the new world: the ritual struggle of the Tamil and the Karo within Hinduism in North Sumatra

242

S I LV I A V I G NATO

15 Cultural and religious interaction between modern India and Indonesia

255

YADAV S O M V I R

16 Hinduism, identity, and social conflict: the Sai Baba movement in Bali

264

L E O H OW E

281

Index

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 10.1 12.1 12.2 12.3 13.1 15.1 16.1

A church painting of Jesus Christ celebrating the Eucharist with disciples, who are represented as fully decorated Mentawaians The Perrinyameng at Amparita Preparations for the sipuling in January 1999 Pura Tambunalitaq Consecration of a padamasana in a Karo village A workshop on yoga at the Sekolah Tinggi Agama Hindu Negeri, STAHN, in Denpasar in July 2000 A poster of Satya Sai Baba in the home of a Balinese devotee

154 190 191 211 237 256 265

Maps 9.1 11.1 13.1

Ambon and Lease Islands Greater Toraja Karo land

127 161 227

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CONTRIBUTORS

I Gusti Ngurah Bagus is Professor emeritus of Social Anthropology at Universitas Udayana in Denpasar, Bali/Indonesia, and one of Bali’s foremost intellectuals. During the presidency of B.J. Habibie (May 1998 to October 1999), he served as Member of Parliament in Jakarta. He has published extensively on a wide range of topics concerning Balinese culture. Iem Brown is a lecturer at the Department of Asian Studies and Languages, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. For several years, she has been studying both the situation of Chinese Indonesians and Indonesian Buddhism in the twentieth century, topics on which she has published several articles. Juara Rimantha Ginting is a junior lecturer at the Department of Anthropology, Universitas Utara in Medan, Sumatra/Indonesia. He has continuously carried out field research among the Karo since 1982, working on Shamanism, modern Hinduism, architecture and settlement, ritual and medicinal plants as well as the Christian influence in Karo rituals. Several articles on myth, ritual, and Shamanism have been published. At the moment, he is writing a PhD thesis at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Robert W. Hefner is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Programme on Civil Society and Civic Culture at the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, Boston University, USA. He is currently directing a comparative research project on Islam and democratization. His recent books include Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia, Princeton University Press, 2000, and the edited volume The Politics of Multiculturalism: Pluralism and Citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. Tanja Hohe holds an MA degree in cultural anthropology and is currently Visiting Fellow for the Global Security Program at the Thomas J. Watson Jr Institute, Brown University, USA, writing a book on the paradigmatic conflict between international intervention and local political concepts in East Timor. Apart from her fieldwork in Seram, Central Moluccas, where she investigated the influence of the national Indonesian culture on local value systems, she worked in East Timor for 30 months, both as Political Affairs Officer for the United Nations and for the Community Empowerment and Local Governance Project of the World Bank.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Leo Howe is a lecturer in social anthropology at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Darwin College. He has carried out research in Northern Ireland and Bali. Among his publications are Being Unemployed in Northern Ireland: an Ethnographic Study, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, and Hinduism and Hierarchy in Bali, Oxford: James Currey, 2001. Ngurah Nala was Rector of Universitas Hindu Indonesia in Denpasar, Bali, from 1993 to 2000. Moreover, he has been working both as a general practitioner in his own practice and as a medical doctor and lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Udayana. His publications include the books Murddha Agama Hindu, published together with I.G.K. Adia Wiratmadja, Denpasar: Upada Sastra, 1993, and Usada Bali, Denpasar: Upada Sastra 1993. Gerard A. Persoon is Director of the Programme of Environment and Development at the Centre of Environmental Science at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Over the past 20 years, he has done extensive fieldwork in Indonesia and the Philippines, focusing on forest dwelling peoples and environmental management in Southeast Asia. At present, he is involved in the international debates concerning indigenous peoples, which arose in relation to the Convention of Biological Diversity and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Michel Picard is Director of the Southeast Asia and Austronesia Department (Laboratoire Asie du Sud-Est et Monde Austronésien, LASEMA) at the National Centre for Scientific Research (Centre Nationale des Recherches Scientifiques, CNRS) in Paris, France. He has been involved in Balinese studies since the 1970s and is currently working on the dialogic construction of Balinese identity. He has published, among others, Bali: Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture, Singapore: Archipelago Press, 1996, and Tourism, Ethnicity, and the State in Asian Pacific Societies, co-edited with Robert E. Wood, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997. Martin Ramstedt is currently a researcher at the Meertens Instituut in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, studying modern witchcraft in Dutch society and alternative spirituality in the Dutch corporate world. This research is informed by a broader interest in transcultural and transnational religious networks, an interest which evolved in the context of his previous research project on Hinduism in Modern Indonesia at the IIAS, where he was a fellow from December 1997 to March 2000. His publications include the book Weltbild, Heilspragmatik und Herrschaftslegitimation im vorkolonialen Bali – Eine Analyse des höfischen Diskurses, Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 1997. Bert Remijsen is a lecturer in phonetics and historical linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, with a main research interest in word prosody. For his doctoral thesis on Ma’ya, a language used in the Raja Ampat archipelago (Papua Barat Province), he did fieldwork both in Papua Barat and in the Moluccas, where he witnessed the events that he and Tanja Hohe related in their joint chapter.

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Dik Roth teaches anthropology, especially legal anthropology and natural resource management, at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. His long-term research in Luwu, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, includes the study of regional migration and the long-term effects of land reform and land ownership as well as local irrigation management among Balinese transmigrant settlers. Yadav Somvir holds a doctoral degree from Delhi University, India, where he carried out research on ‘The Sanskrit sources of the story of Rama in Indonesia’. The fieldwork, which he did in connection with his doctoral research, was strongly supported both by I.G.A. Gde Pudja and I Ketut Pasek, the latter succeeding the former as Director General for the Guidance of the Hindu and Buddhist Community in Indonesia. After acquiring his PhD in 1995, Somvir returned to Indonesia as lecturer of Sanskrit and Indian culture first at Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta and subsequently at Universitas Udayana in Denpasar, Bali. Since 1999, he has also been the official representative of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in Bali. Karel Steenbrink was a lecturer at the State Academies of Islamic Studies (Institut Agama Islam Negeri, IAIN) in Jakarta and Yogyakarta from 1981 to 1988. Since 1989, he has been senior researcher at the Inter-University Institute for Ecumenical and Missiological Studies (IIMO) in Utrecht. His publications on Indonesian Islam as well as on Christianity in Indonesia include the volume Adam Redivivus. Muslim Elaborations of the Adam Saga with Special Reference to the Indonesian Literary Tradition, Zoetermeer: Meinema, 1998. Herman de Tollenaere first studied economic and social history at Leiden University, the Netherlands. His subsequent doctoral research at Nijmegen University resulted in the book The Politics of Divine Wisdom. Theosophy and Labour, National, and Women’s movements in Indonesia and South Asia 1875–1947, Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, 1996. At present, he is an independent scholar working on the impact of occult movements on society. Silvia Vignato is a lecturer at the Faculty of History, Universitá Degli Studi di Padova (Padua), Italy. Previously, she was a researcher at the École française d’Extrême-Orient in Paris, France. She has done extensive research on Hindu Tamils in Southeast Asia as well as on religious movements and conversion in Indonesia and Malaysia. Among her publications is the book Au nom de l’hindouisme. Reconfigurations ethniques chez les Tamouls et les Karo en Indonésie, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume has mainly grown out of the initial paper presentations and discussions at the International IIAS-Seminar on ‘Hinduism’ in Modern Indonesia, which I convened on 16–17 September 1999 in Leiden, the Netherlands. At that time, I was a European Science Foundation (ESF) research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS). Due to the generous arrangements made by the IIAS and thanks to additional funding from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, NWO), all the paper presenters and discussants were especially invited. We enjoyed two tightly scheduled days full of intense discussions both inside and outside the place of convention. These discussions, from which most of the contributions in this book have profited, would not have been so intense without the participation of the five discussants. I would, therefore, like to extend my thanks to Dr Nico Kaptein (IndonesianNetherlands Cooperation in Islamic Studies, INIS, Leiden, the Netherlands), Drs (Doctorandus) Sirjo Koolhof (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, KITLV/ Royal Institute for Anthropology and Linguistics, Leiden, the Netherlands), Prof. Dr Peter Pink (Malaiischer Apparat, Orientalisches Seminar, Universität zu Köln/Malay Studies, Department for Oriental Studies, Cologne University, Cologne, Germany), Prof. Dr Henk Schulte Nordholt (Faculteit der historische en kunstwetenschappen, Erasmus Universiteit/Faculty of Historical Sciences and the Arts, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands), and Prof. Dr Peter van der Veer (Onderzoekschool Godsdienst en Maatschappij, Universiteit van Amsterdam/Research School Religion and Society, Amsterdam University, the Netherlands). After the conference, I was able to gain Iem Brown and Herman de Tollenaere as additional contributors who had not taken part in the IIAS Seminar. I am grateful to all the contributors for their participation. Each one of them is an acknowledged specialist in her or his respective field. Of equal importance to me is the fact that their contributions are based on recent research and fieldwork. Consequently, all the photographs in the book were provided by the contributors. My editorship of this volume was supported by an additional four-month senior visiting fellowship at the IIAS. I want to thank RoutledgeCurzon and the IIAS for providing the professional back-up to turn the manuscript into a real book. I am

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especially grateful for the expertise of Gabrielle Constant-Landry, who transformed many a quaint phrase into lucid English. I am confident that the present volume contributes salient insights into the complex religious fabric of contemporary Indonesia. Martin Ramstedt

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1 INTRODUCTION Negotiating identities – Indonesian ‘Hindus’ between local, national, and global interests Martin Ramstedt

Rwa¯ neka dha¯ tu winuwus wara Buddha Wis´wa, bhı¯ beki rakwa ring apan kena parwanosen, mangka¯ ng Jinatwa kalawan S´iwatatwa tunggal, bhı¯ neka tunggal ika tan hana dharmma mangrwa. It is often said that the eminent Buddha and S´iwa are two different essences, indeed different from each other at a quick glance. But the essence of the Jina and the reality of S´iwa are identical, diverse, yet identical, as there are no two Truths. (Kakawin Sutasoma, Canto CXXXIX, 5)1

I would like to start the introduction to this volume by invoking the well-known motto of the Indonesian Republic ‘Bhı¯neka Tunggal Ika’, usually translated as ‘unity in diversity’. Just like the national heraldic beast, the garuda, vehicle of Lord Wis.n.u, it was taken from the Hindu-Javanese heritage by Indonesia’s founding fathers to inspire national unity. More precisely, it was taken from the Kakawin Sutasoma, a fourteenth-century Buddhist epic, which was created by one of the foremost Hindu-Javanese poets, Mpu Tantular, in the heyday of the East Javanese kingdom of Majapahit.2 I found the motto a befitting opening for a volume on Hinduism in modern Indonesia, not because I wanted to argue for the continuity of the Hindu-Javanese court culture of Majapahit up to present-day Hindu Dharma Indonesia. Notwithstanding the fact that the Javanese nationalist imagination of Majapahit as the precursor of the modern Indonesian nation-state did indeed have an impact on the development of modern Indonesian Hinduism, my intention was rather to point to the still unresolved issue of ‘unity in diversity’, namely an ongoing situation in which cultural and religious pluralism (emphasizing ‘diversity’) is pitted against cultural and religious homogenization (emphasizing ‘unity’),3 as the most important determinant for the past and future development of Hindu Dharma in the modern Indonesian nation-state. In this respect, it is important to note that ‘unity in diversity’ has not only been a difficult issue for the Indonesian nationalization process. It has also remained an unresolved problem in the ongoing

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M A RT I N R A M S T E D T

universalization of Indian Hindu Dharma as ‘world religion’, a process which started in the nineteenth century, and of which the emergence and development of Hindu Dharma Indonesia has been an inseparable part. Both processes have consequently formed important reference points for the chapters presented in this volume. Therefore let me first elaborate on the intricacies of these processes and then place the individual contributions within the overall conceptual framework. Before immersing myself in the details that are relevant to the development of universal Hinduism and its impact on the development of Hindu Dharma Indonesia, I will first turn to the difficult and often painful Indonesianization process (in Indonesian rendered as persatuan dan kesatuan, which translates as ‘union and unity’, implying a continuous proactive striving for union and ongoing commitment to unity), because it was this process that spurred the development of modern Indonesian Hinduism in the first place. Right from the outset of the Indonesian nationalist movement in the early twentieth century, the heterogeneity of languages, local cosmologies, belief systems, ideologies, cultures, and lifestyles in the archipelago posed major obstacles to a unified struggle for independence. Pluralism was thus an apparent factor to take into account by leaders of supra-regional movements, and when zealous pioneers of an archipelago-wide nationalist movement, representing an array of different ethnic and ideological groups,4 met at the second Indonesian Youth Congress (Kongres Pemuda Indonesia) from 27 to 28 October 1928, to swear the ‘Oath of the Indonesian Youth’ (Sumpah Permuda Indonesia), they envisaged the basis of the Indonesian national identity accordingly. Hence, instead of invoking, imagining, or projecting a primordial ethnic link on to the future unification of the peoples of the archipelago, it was agreed (Keputusan Kongres Pemuda) that the common historical experience (from the time of Majapahit up to the current age of Dutch colonization), common adoption of the Malay vernacular (Bahasa Indonesia), a common notion of law and justice based on Indonesia’s various local traditions (hukum adat), common education, and a common spirit of and conscious striving for national unification and independence were to unite the native inhabitants of the archipelago into one Indonesian nation.5 When independence seemed to be finally within reach at the very end of the Japanese occupation, from 29 April 1945 onwards, the members of the Investigative Committee for the Preparation of Indonesian Independence (Badan Penyelidik Usaha-Usaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia, BPUPKI) set out to reinvestigate and thereby specify the basis of national unity in the constitution of the soon to be independent Indonesia. The committee was selected by Sukarno and ratified by the Japanese. It consisted of 62 members, representing all the major political and ideological factions of the independence movement, and was presided over by Dr Radjiman Wedyodiningrat, one of the leaders of Budi Utomo and a longstanding member of the Theosophical Society.6 Budi Utomo has been called the first nationalist organization in the Dutch East Indies, both by Indonesian politicians and Western scholars. The European-style, nationalist Javanese organization had been established in 1908 by Dr Wahidin Soedirohoesodo, Soetomo, and M. Soeradji. Its (Javanese) name, ‘Noble Endeavour’, points to the aspirations of its members, all of them Javanese intellectuals

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INTRODUCTION

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from an aristocratic or priyayi (native officials within the Dutch colonial bureaucracy) background. Trying to blend valuable aspects of the literary Javanese court culture with Dutch scientific learning, they endeavoured to further the traditional Javanese arts and spiritual values, such as harmony with the social and natural cosmos (rukun) and a contemplative way of life as professed by the various kebatinan groups, while doing away with out-dated ‘feudal’ customs. In order to realize their aspirations, they set out to strive for ‘a proper education for the broader layer of Javanese society and a heightening of the national consciousness of the Javanese’.7 Rather than furthering an all-Indonesian nationalism, Budi Utomo was thus, in fact, a forum for ‘Javanist’ aspirations. The term ‘Javanist’ was coined by Robert W. Hefner, designating those strands of the Javanese population who believe ‘that even while embracing Islam one should qualify or neglect many of its formal strictures in favour of High-Javanese traditions’.8 And ‘High-Javanese tradition’ has, according to Hefner, been grounded on Javanese court etiquette, court ritual, court language, and court aesthetics, which again are rooted in a kind of mysticism (kebatinan) that displays Hindu-Buddhist, Sufi-Islamic influences and what have often been called ‘animist’ traits.9 That Budi Utomo endeavoured to realize Javanist aspirations rather than panIndonesian ones was, for instance, borne out by Wahidin’s inaugural speech in which he emphasized the pre-Islamic tradition of Java, discussing at length the continuous Hindu-Buddhist influence of ancient Java. It is in this context that the link between Budi Utomo and the Theosophical Society acquires its meaning. European members of the Dutch East Indies’ branch of the Theosophical Society – and many a high-standing member of Dutch colonial society in the Indies among them – had openly professed allegiance to certain Hindu Mahatmas, on whose behalf Helena Petrovna Blavatsky had – according to her own words – started the Theosophical movement. These Mahatmas, believed to reside in remote spots somewhere in the Himalayas, were inspiring both the ideal of the universal Brotherhood of Men to be built by the Theosophical Society and the Society’s teaching of ‘Divine Wisdom’ embracing all religions of the world as manifestations of the ultimate, one and only source of all religion, albeit with a certain preference for ‘Reform-’ or ‘Neo-Hinduism’ (see below) and Buddhism. The appreciation of Indian philosophy by European Theosophists subsequently inspired not only Indian Hindus or Singhalese and Burmese Buddhists to (re)turn to their own religious traditions; it also stimulated a new interest of the Javanese learned elite to revitalize and reconstruct their Hindu-Javanese past in what has become known as the Javanese nationalist movement. With Radjiman being the head of the Investigative Committee for the Preparation of Indonesian Independence, the tone was set, one would think, for the common acknowledgement of pluralism, especially religious pluralism, since Theosophy preaches the ultimate oneness of all the religions of the world. Yet, Budi Utomo – and Javanese nationalism in general – was strongly biased against political Islam, partly due – one has to admit – to the contrivance of the Dutch. Taking Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje’s warning against political Islam seriously, the Dutch colonial government had helped to increase the rift between Javanists and orthodox Muslims (santri ) by strengthening the position of the priyayi and by boosting the study and

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M A RT I N R A M S T E D T

reconstruction of the traditional Javanese court culture as a buffer against panIslamic – and Communist, for that matter – ideas.10 The first meetings of the Radjiman Committee took place from 28 May to 1 June 1945. On the last day of these meetings, Sukarno introduced ‘five principles’ (Pancasila) to the assembly, which he claimed to have excavated from the depth of Indonesia’s traditions, and which were to become the philosophical foundation of the future Indonesian state: nationalism (kebangsaan), humanity or internationalism (peri-kemanusiaan/internasionalisme), political decision-making based on discussion and unanimity as practised in the traditional ‘village republics’ (permusyawaratan/ perwakilan [mufakat/demokrasi]), social welfare (kesejahteraan sosial), and belief in God (ketuhanan). He then merged the five principles into three (Trisila): socio-nationalism (sosio nasionalisme), socio-democracy (sosio demokrasi), and belief in God (ketuhanan). In a further process of distillation, he reduced the three to one (Ekasila), i.e. cooperation in the spirit of the traditional Indonesian villages as the core of national unity (negara gotong-royong). His proposition – later called ‘Birth of the Pancasila’ (Lahirnya Pancasila) – was accepted by the majority of delegates through acclamation. It was, however, greeted with sharp protest on the part of the representatives of political Islam, who would not condone what they believed to be a glaring and uncalled-for neglect of the role of Islam in the future constitution. Consequently, as unanimity had not yet been reached, a smaller committee, presided by Sukarno himself and consisting of 38 members of the Radjiman Committee was to draw up a final conclusion of the matter. Of the 38 people, nine were eventually chosen to spearhead this working committee. Among them was, of course, Sukarno, co-ordinating and guiding the proceedings. The deliberations of the Sukarno Committee resulted in the so-called ‘Jakarta Charter’ (Piagam Jakarta), which proposed a reformulation of the Pancasila, starting with the Koranic formula ‘[b]y the blessing of the mercy of Allah, the Almighty’ (‘[a]tas berkat rahmat Allah Yang Maha Kuasa’) and demanding that every Indonesian Muslim live in accordance with Islamic law (syariat). Meetings of the Radjiman Committee were resumed from 10 to 17 July 1945. On 11 July, another sub-committee was appointed, consisting of 19 members of the Radjiman Committee. It, too, was chaired by Sukarno. From the 19 members of this committee, seven were then drawn to work out the details of the statutes of the Indonesian Constitution under the guidance of the eminent, Dutch-educated lawyer Dr Supomo. Like Radjiman, Supomo was one of the leaders of Budi Utomo and a member of the Theosophical Society.11 He was a fervent advocate of the diverse adat law or local customary law traditions12 in the archipelago, which – according to him – should inform the constitutional foundation of what he called the ‘integral [Indonesian] state’. He thus pleaded for the cultural highlights of the various local traditions to be ‘organically integrated’ into the new nationstate. Supomo proposed this as a synthesis of his study of the Dutch adat law school (in the sense of a school of thought) as well as of the political ideals of German and Japanese fascism, wedding such diverse concepts as the Nazi ideal of the ‘organic unity of blood and soil’, the Japanese ideal of organizing society on the model of familial relations (kekeluargaan), and the Dutch distinction between 19 different adat law areas.13 On 13 July 1945, the working committee under

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Supomo had accomplished its task. Article 29 of the drafted constitutional statutes stated that the state would guarantee religious freedom for every citizen in the sense that everybody would be free to choose his or her religion or religious conviction and to worship God accordingly, or in Indonesian words: ‘Negara menjamin kemerdekaan tiap-tiap penduduk untuk memeluk agamanya masing-masing dan untuk beribadat menurut agamanya dan kepercayaannya itu’.14 The addition of kepercayaan, which I would like to translate here as ‘inner conviction’ or ‘faith’, was put forward by Wongsonegoro, a renowned kebatinan leader15 (batin is an Arabic loanword, which has come to denote ‘inner feeling, mystic connection with one’s inner self’, while kebatinan has come to be a generic term for the different strands of Javanese, syncretistic mysticism).16 The whole paragraph, and especially Wongsonegoro’s addition, which put syncretistic mysticism (kebatinan, kepercayaan) on a par with ‘true religion’ (Arabic dı¯ n, Indonesian agama), i.e. the religion of the books – Torah, Bible, and Koran17 – again aroused fierce protest from the delegates of the different Muslim organizations within the Radjiman Committee as it is strictly forbidden for Muslims to forsake Islam in order to embrace another belief. Article 29 was therefore ‘amended’. According to its new rendering, the state would guarantee that the adherents of each religious community would be free to practise their religion in accordance with its respective rules. On top of that, the Radjiman Committee ratified the Jakarta Charter. It even stipulated that the future president was to be a Muslim, because the representatives of political Islam had reasoned that only a Muslim would be trustworthy and in the position to safeguard the ‘religious freedom’ of the Muslim community. However, in the final version of the Indonesian Constitution, which was read out by Mohammad Hatta on 18 August 1945, i.e. one day after Sukarno had formally and unilaterally proclaimed Indonesia’s independence, the previously ratified demands of the Muslim delegates had mysteriously been omitted. The Pancasila, as put down in the Preamble (Mukaddimah) of the Constitution (UndangUndang Dasar), did not contain the clause that every Indonesian Muslim was to live in accordance with the syariat, nor was there any mention made that the president of Indonesia would have to be a Muslim. Instead, the preamble began with a supplication to God Almighty, who was addressed not in Arabic but in Indonesian, i.e. not as Allah but as Tuhan Yang Maha Kuasa (Indonesian for ‘God Almighty’). And ‘belief in the great unity of God’ (‘ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa’) was now to be the first and foremost of the five principles.18 Due to the lack of documents that could illuminate us on how the change in the final version of the Preamble of the Constitution as well as its Article 29 had actually come about, we have to rely on Mohammad Hatta’s own account, describing the events that had prompted the alterations as follows. In the afternoon of 17 August 1945, Hatta had received a telephone call from Mr Nisyijima, the adjutant of Admiral Mayeda, asking whether Hatta would be willing to receive an officer of the Kaigun (i.e. the Japanese navy). With Hatta’s consent, the Kaigun officer had then come to inform him that the Protestant and Catholic representatives of the regions still controlled by the Japanese navy had felt discriminated against by the now omitted sentences of the Jakarta Charter, and had threatened not to join the Indonesian Republic.19

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H. Endang Saifuddin Anshari, the son of K.H.M. Isa Anshari, a member of the Konstituante – i.e. the constituent assembly that in 1956 would be appointed to draft what was then believed to be the final constitution of the unitary Indonesian nation-state20 – has given a cogent explanation why the Muslim delegates had eventually accepted the omission of the crucial parts of the Jakarta Charter in the Constitution of 1945. First of all, the Tauhid (the belief in the oneness of God, or in other words monotheism), the core of the Muslim faith, had indeed become the foundation of the Indonesian state. Second, everyone wanted to avert the impending separation of the Christian Eastern Islands, i.e. major parts of the Moluccas, North and Central Sulawesi as well as the Christian Lesser Sunda Islands, from the Indonesian Republic. And third, the Constitution of 1945 had as yet a rather preliminary status, given the haste under which it was drafted so that the proclamation of independence would be valid. Qualms about the present draft were eventually assuaged owing to the prospect of a future constitution, which would be drafted in all likelihood once Indonesia’s independence would be internationally recognized.21 Furthermore, there was to be a kind of recompense as the Ministry of Religion (Departemen Agama, DepAg) was founded on 3 January 1946, which was placed in the hands of the Cairo-educated, modernist Muslim H.M. Rasjidi, whereas the Ministry of Education and Culture (Departemen Pendidikan, Pengajaran dan Kebudayaan) was to remain under the influence of Javanese secular nationalists, who were strongly influenced by the moral and ethical ideas of Budi Utomo,22 the universalism of the Theosophical Society, and the pedagogic concepts of the Taman Siswa movement. The latter had been founded by the Javanese aristocrat Raden Mas Suwardi Surjaningrat, alias Ki Hadjar Dewantoro, in 1922. In his formative years Dewantoro had been influenced by Theosophy, just like Supomo and Radjiman. While Theosophy itself did not have a lasting effect on Dewantoro, his Taman Siswa movement was strongly influenced by Rabindranath Tagore’s pedagogic ideas, realized in Tagore’s Shantiniketan Vishva Bharaty University. The famous Bengali poet retained a close relationship with the Theosophical Society throughout his life. Dewantoro, on his part, had been appointed by Sukarno as Indonesia’s first Minister of Education in 1945. In this capacity, he promoted Javanese cultural values as part of the moral education of youth in the national school system. And it seemed to be the influence of Javanese ethics – which are intrinsically linked to Javanese syncretistic mysticism (kebatinan) – on Muslim children that was particularly worrying orthodox Muslims. The new Minister of Religious Affairs, H.M. Rasjidi, at any rate came from a reformed, modernist Muslim background (Muhammadiyah) and was a fierce adversary of kebatinan, which he regarded as ‘not Islamic’. At a conference that took place from 17 to 18 March 1945 in Surakarta, and which was to prepare the ground for the opening of branch offices of the Ministry of Religion throughout Java and Madura, Rasjidi expounded that his ministry would concern itself with everything that is in the widest sense related to religion (agama) in order to make sure that every member of a religious community would be able to carry out his or her religious duties. In accordance with a governmental decree (Penetapan Permerintah No. 5/SD) from 25 March 1946, the Ministry of Religion was put in charge of the religious aspects of weddings,

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INTRODUCTION

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the execution of religious law (syariat) through a body called the Islamic High Court of Justice (Mahkamah Islam Tinggi), the construction of houses of prayer (tempat ibadah), the organization of the pilgrimages to Mecca (haj), and the facilitation of religious education in the national school system. It had, by the way, been Ki Hadjar Dewantoro who had successfully pleaded for religious education to be provided at government schools in order to take the monopoly of religious education out of the hands of the private Muslim schools (the pesantren and madrasah) and under the surveillance of the state. At the same time, he had demanded that the quality of teaching at the private Muslim schools be improved. It was thanks to Rasjidi’s successor K.H. Fathurrahman Kafrawi – who was originally from a traditionalist, orthodox Muslim background (Nahdlatul Ulama, NU) and, like Rasjidi, had studied in Cairo, but also in Leiden, France, and England – that religious education was started to be reorganized along these lines.23 However, due to the fact that the Dutch were reclaiming their former colony, disregarding Sukarno’s proclamation of Indonesia’s independence, things were going slow for the new Indonesian government. Although it succeeded in retaining control over large parts of Java and Sumatra, it had to fight off the encroaching Dutch, who had quickly reinstalled themselves in Kalimantan, the Moluccas, Sulawesi, and the Lesser Sunda Islands. With regard to the development of Hinduism in independent Indonesia, it is not unimportant to know that in Bali (as elsewhere) the traditional elite had actually welcomed and supported the Dutch as protectors against what it saw as hegemonic moves on the part of ‘Muslim Java’. Since centuries, the Muslim sultanates of Java had been the enemies of the Balinese kings, who regarded themselves as ‘descendants and heirs of Majapahit’. Nevertheless, the Indonesian nationalists’ struggle for full independence and international recognition was eventually successful. After four years, the Dutch finally recognized Indonesia’s independence, even if only under international pressure. They did, however, ensure that federalism would form the overall framework of the political organization of fully independent Indonesia rather than the format of a unitary nation-state as the Indonesian nationalists had aimed for. Seemingly protective of their former strongholds, the Eastern Indonesian and Lesser Sunda Islands, including Sulawesi, and their non-Muslim population, the Dutch had also made sure that the Jakarta Charter was not included in the new Constitution of 1949. Moreover, Article 18 of the new Constitution granted every citizen freedom of thought, conscience, and belief, including the right to change one’s religion: ‘Setiap orang berhak atas kebebasan pikiran, keinsjafan batin, dan agama; hak ini meliputi pula kebebasan bertukar agama atau kejakinan (Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religious belief; this right also covers the freedom to change ones religion and conviction)’.24, 25 After Sukarno had been chosen by 16 Indonesian delegates in Yogyakarta on 16 December 1949 to take on again the office of president, sovereignty was formally transferred to the Federal Republic of Indonesia on 27 December 1949. It took the newly formed government almost another year to fulfil all the necessary political and juridical conditions to finally bring about the unitary nation-state, leaving the concept of federalism tainted until the present day as something which furthers foreign imperialist interests to the detriment of the Indonesian People (Bangsa

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Indonesia). Another side-effect of the conditions, under which sovereignty had been officially transferred, was that the resentment of Islamist politicians against the new state had been fuelled by the fact that the Dutch had been instrumental in preventing the Jakarta Charter from being included in the Constitution of 1949. They felt that they had not yet achieved full independence. Moreover, the government was determined to deprive the local traditional elites, who had co-operated with the Dutch, of power. ‘Tradition’ itself or adat, and adat law in particular, had now acquired a definitely negative meaning for many. The fact that the Dutch had tried to ‘safeguard adat’ against everything which was in essence threatening to Dutch rule had – in the eyes not only of Muslims but also of secular nationalists, not to speak of Communists, or even more generally of modernists of all colours – infused the term with feudal, imperialist, and anti-republican connotations.26 Yet another constitution was drafted in 1950 to legitimate the unitary nationstate that was finally being proclaimed on 17 August 1950, and of which Sukarno again was president. This new constitution, however, still had a preliminary character as general elections had not yet been held. This accounts for the fact that the Preamble of the Constitution of 1949 had been taken over without any changes. Article 18 of this constitution was likewise included in the Constitution of 1950, albeit without the part which granted the right to change one’s religion, leaving the issue somewhat lingering in the air.27 The phrasing of the article was now as follows: ‘Setiap orang berhak atas kebebasan agama, keinsjafan batin dan pikiran (Everyone has the right to freedom of religion, conscience and thought)’.28, 29 The preliminary character of the Constitution of 1950 notwithstanding, one might still – and understandably so – wonder why it was not more accommodating to Muslim demands. Light is shed on this issue by the fact that on 7 August 1949, S.M. Kartosuwirjo had proclaimed ‘the Islamic State of Indonesia’ (Negara Islam Indonesia) in West Java, thereby starting off what was to become the Islamist Darul Islam movement, which had soon spread to parts of Central Java, South Kalimantan, Aceh, the Moluccas, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and South Sulawesi.30 As the movement was growing in force also outside Java (where it held its ground in inaccessible parts of the West Javanese countryside until 1962), especially in South Sulawesi and Aceh, the course of the loyal Muslim groups was considerably hampered by what was commonly perceived as the betrayal of the Darul Islam. Hence, the Ministry of Religion remained the only forum through which loyal Muslim politicians could legitimately advance their interests, while the Ministry of Education and Culture continued to be dominated by Javanese secular nationalists. It was hence still to be strongly influenced by Budi Utomo and the Taman Siswa movement. Moreover, the powerful Indonesian Nationalist Party (Partai Nasional Indonesia, PNI), in which Javanists were prominent, was entertaining close links with certain kebatinan groups that practised a kind of mysticism based on a Javanist interpretation of the Pancasila.31 The Ministry of Religion was now headed by K.H. Wahid Hasyim. Hasyim was one of the leaders of the Nahdlatul Ulama and a member of the Muslim party Masyumi who had previously supported the Islamist demand that the syariat form the base of the Indonesian Constitution of 1945. Under his office, the distinction

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INTRODUCTION

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between ‘religion’ (agama) and a ‘current of belief ’ (aliran kepercayaan) was fully developed with all its practical consequences. According to the Regulation of the Ministry of Religion No. 9/1952/Article VI, a ‘current of belief’ was defined as follows: ‘Aliran kepercayaan . . . ialah suatu faham dogmatis, terjalin dengan adat istiadat hidup dari berbagai macam suku bangsa, lebih-lebih pada suku bangsa yang masih terbelakangan. Pokok kepercayaannya, apa saja adat hidup nenek moyangnya sepanjang masa. (A current of belief . . . is a dogmatic opinion, which is closely connected to the living tradition of several tribes, especially of those tribes that are still backward. The core of their belief is everything which has become the customary way of life of their ancestors over time.)’32, 33 In contrast to ‘currents of belief’, ‘religion’ (agama) was now explicitly defined along the lines of the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim concept of ‘religion’. Hence, for a community to be acknowledged as ‘having religion’ (beragama), it was required to profess an internationally recognized, monotheistic creed that had been put forward by a prophet in a holy scripture. As Jane Atkinson has pointed out, the Indonesian term agama is actually a loanword from Sanskrit. Its original meaning as a¯ gama is twofold: first, it denotes ‘a sacred traditional doctrine or precept, a collection of such doctrines, or a sacred work in general’; and secondly, a¯ gama is a generic name for certain scriptures associated with the worship of the Hindu deities Vis.n.u, S´akti and S´iva. Retaining its dual meaning, a¯ gama had found its way into the Old Javanese language at some point during the Indianization of ancient Java, which began in the first centuries CE.34 When Islam took root in the Javanese centres of power from the fourteenth century onwards, the term seems to have gradually lost its Hindu connotations and acquired a more Islamic reading, alongside other forms of expression from the Hindu-Javanese past, such as the classical Javanese theatre and shadow-puppet play tradition. Still, already in Sanskrit and Old Javanese, a¯ gama implies a textual source as the basis for ritual and worship. This must have formed the focus of the Islamic appropriation of the term. The definition of agama put forward by the Indonesian Ministry of Religion in 1952 can be seen as the latest phase of this process of appropriation, in which the former Sanskrit word a¯ gama has in fact acquired the full meaning of the Arabic word dı¯ n as used in the Koran. In accordance with its definition of agama, the Ministry of Religion initially recognized three ‘religions adhered to by the Indonesian People’: Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism.35 All the other sacred traditions in the archipelago, including Javanese kebatinan, were classified as ethnic ‘currents of belief’, or aliran kepercayaan. Professing monotheism, as the kebatinan groups did, was hence in itself not sufficient to acquire the status of ‘religion’. Only the internationally acknowledged, monotheistic ‘world religions’ and their universal message, i.e. the Judaeo-ChristianMuslim tradition, were officially recognized as such. Consequently, the Ministry of Religion regarded all citizens who adhered to an aliran kepercayaan and did not belong to the Muslim, Protestant, or Catholic community as ‘people still without religion’ (orang yang belum beragama). In order to bring religion to them, the ministry empowered its growing number of branch offices to encourage Muslim and Christian missionaries to convert all the ‘heathens’ throughout the archipelago. This political move, probably primarily designed to bring the adherents of kebatinan groups back into the Muslim fold, increased the already fierce competition between

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Muslim and Christian missionaries both inside and outside Java and further encouraged ethnic movements especially on the outer islands.36 The policy of the Ministry of Religion was, however, more or less condoned by the Sukarno government, seemingly because it was in line with contemporaneous, ‘politically correct’ thinking. The Ministry of Religion could successfully claim that adherence to an aliran kepercayaan was not sufficient to be a full Indonesian citizen on three accounts: first, since the Indonesian state is grounded on ‘belief in God’ (first principle of the Pancasila, contained in the Constitution of 1950), every citizen is required to ‘have religion’ (beragama); second, since aliran kepercayaan are in effect constituted by the customs and beliefs of an ethnic tradition, adherence to such an ethnic belief system smacks of backwardness and is thus likely to hamper the progress of Indonesian society; third, since ethnic customs had – in the form of adat law – been revitalized by Dutch colonial administrators as a bulwark against Indonesianization, identification with an ethnic tradition smacks of disloyalty to the unitary Indonesian nation-state. At any rate, this line of reasoning fully applied to Bali where, by 20 November 1946, the republican guerrilla movement under the leadership of I Gusti Ngurah Rai had been effectively suppressed by the Dutch and their anti-republican Balinese supporters in what has become known in Bali as the Puputan Margarana (‘fight until death in the forest of Marga’). At the same time, the Dutch had returned to their prewar policy of Baliseering, i.e. to reinvigorate Balinese culture, art, and religion, while strengthening the political authority of loyal Balinese aristocrats.37 In 1952, the Ministry of Religion set out to implement K.H. Wahid Hasyim’s policy of having ‘people still without religion’ converted to one of the recognized religions. On the basis of the assessment of emissaries of the ministry, who had been sent to Bali already from 1950, the ministry finally came to the conclusion that under a thin varnish of Hindu and Buddhist concepts, Balinese religious life predominantly consisted of heterogeneous local ‘animist’ and polytheistic practices. Furthermore, the Balinese could not even agree on a common name for their diverse religious tradition, let alone on an authoritative scripture or a prophet to legitimize it. Hence, Balinese were classified as adherents of aliran kepercayaan and therefore as ‘people still without religion’. At the same time, they were declared as targets for Muslim and Christian proselytizing. Deeply shocked and frightened by this prospect, the local government of Bali in 1953 responded by unilaterally proclaiming the island an ‘autonomous religious area’ (dinas agama otonom).38 Forced by circumstances and resolved to get their religious tradition recognized as Agama Hindu Bali, the leaders of the instantaneously proliferating Balinese religious reform organizations agreed to turn to India to eventually arrive at a common redefinition of their religious tenets and practices along the lines of the criteria put forward by the Indonesian Ministry of Religion. Taking advantage of stipends of the Indian government offered to Indonesian students in general,39 a few young Balinese intellectuals were subsequently sent to India to study at Shantiniketan Vishva Bharaty University, founded by Rabindranath Tagore, the Banaras Hindu University, the foundation of which in 1910 had been inspired by the then president of the Theosophical Society Annie Besant, and the International Academy of Indian Culture, established by the widely known Indian intellectual Raghu Vira.

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Balinese–Indian relations were, however, far from being a one-way affair. Apart from short-term visits of various Indian scholars, there was especially one Indian intellectual, Narendra Dev Pandit Shastri, who was staying on, finally taking a Balinese wife and settling permanently in Bali. There are certain indications that Pandit Shastri had actually been sent by the Arya Samaj, an allegation40 which he himself denied in a recent interview with Michel Picard.41 I tend to support this allegation, though, on the following grounds: apart from the fact that the Indian scholar Dr Yadav Somvir42 asserted that Pandit Shastri was in fact sent by the Arya Samaj, it is Pandit Shastri’s own writings that in part support this allegation. In his influential book Intisari Hindu Dharma,43 for which he received a reward of 5,000 Indian rupees from the Indian Birla Foundation,44 he concentrated on the teachings of the Indian Catur Veda and Upanis.ad as being constitutive for Hindu Dharma, relegating the Indian Pura¯ n.a and Itiha¯ s´a literature (and its Old Javanese adaptations) to a minor position, with the exception of the Bhagavad Gita. The latter admittedly does not support Pandit Shastri’s alleged association with the Arya Samaj. At the time, however, it could have been a concession to the continuous influence of Theosophy, which considers the Bhagavad Gita as one of the most important Hindu scriptures, and to the popularity of Rabindranath Tagore, who highly appreciated the Gita and had visited Java and Bali in 1927, and whose father, Mahar.s.i Devendranath Tagore, had been a comrade-in-spiritualarms of the Hindu reformer Raja Rammohun Roy, the founder of the Brahmo Samaj.45 In any case, Pandit Shastri referred to Hindu Dharma as the Arya Dharma and mentioned only the Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj as modern Hindu reform movements in India.46 Pandit Shastri’s book actually outlines the complete theological framework of Hindu Dharma, which in 1958 was agreed upon by the leaders of several religious reform organizations, among whom were also those Balinese intellectuals who had returned to Bali after their graduation from the above-mentioned Indian universities. On 14 June 1958, a joint petition was drafted that demanded the establishment of a Hindu-Balinese section within the Ministry of Religion on the grounds that Agama Hindu Bali was not in conflict with the first principle of the Pancasila, since its creed was essentially rooted in the Sanskrit mantra: ‘Om tat sat ekam eva advitiyam’ (‘Om, thus is the essence of the All-Pervading/Infinite, Undivided One’).47 The (Old Javanese) name for the ‘AllPervading/Infinite, Undivided One’, equivalent to the Indonesian ‘Tuhan’, was to be Ida Sanghyang Widhi Wasa, a term which in fact suggests two readings: first, ‘Divine Ruler of the Universe’, and second, ‘Divine, Absolute Cosmic Law’.48 Whereas the first reading complies with the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim notion of a personal god, rendered as Tuhan Yang Maha Esa (‘God Almighty’) in Indonesian, the second reading is in line with the Hindu-nationalist term for ‘Hinduism’: Sa¯ nanta Dharma or ‘Eternal Cosmic Law, Eternal Truth’. All the different deities of the Balinese were now said to be different aspects of Sanghyang Widhi Wasa, a claim reminiscent of the theological reasoning by Indian Brahmins and NeoHindu spiritual leaders with regard to the plethora of Hindu deities revered in India. The Indian Catur Veda, Upanis.ad and Bhagavad Gita as well as the Old Javanese Sarasamuccaya and Sanghyang Kamahayanikan were to form the Holy Canon of Agama Hindu Bali. Thereby, the Indian Vedic seers or .rs.i and the Old Javanese composers

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(mpu) of the above-mentioned Old Javanese scriptures were elevated to the rank of prophets (Arabic loanword/Indonesian nabi). A daily prayer, trisandhya, designed by Pandit Shastri, was designated as a hitherto unkown form of individual religious practice. It was to consist of certain ritual gestures that are accompanied by the recitation of the Gayatri-mantra, taken from the R. g-Veda and hitherto unknown in Bali. The Old Javanese name of the prayer signifies ‘three divisions of the day’ and points to the precept that the trisandhya should be performed three times a day, which in fact corresponds to the five daily prayers of the Muslims (salat). Furthermore, five categories of practices would also form part of the religious duties of the Hindu Balinese: dewa yadnya (literally ‘worship to God’, translated as daily prayer accompanied by Vedic mantra), pitra yadnya (literally ‘devotion to the ancestors’, translated as reverence to one’s forebears), manusia yadnya (literally ‘devotion to mankind’, translated as caring for people around oneself), bhuta yadnya (literally ‘reverence of lower beings ruled by their sense perceptions’, translated as caring for animals, plants, birds, etc.), and resi yadnya (literally ‘devotion to the spiritual teachers and seers’, translated as studying the sacred scriptures and serving the spiritual leaders). The various Balinese rituals, it was now claimed, would be local manifestations of these five categories of religious duty rather than ethnic practices based on animist and polytheist beliefs. Supported by Sukarno, the reforms of the ‘Hindu-Balinese’ tradition put forward in the petition were received favourably in Jakarta, and on 1 January 1959, Agama Hindu Bali gained some official recognition from the Indonesian government in the form of the establishment of a Section of Hindu-Balinese Affairs (Bagian Urusan Hindu Bali) within the Ministry of Religion. In the same year, all major Balinese religious organizations merged into a formal body, which was to represent the Hindu-Balinese community in its entirety, the so-called Parisada Dharma Hindu Bali, modelled on the Indian paris.ad.49 Let us now consider in more detail the possible reasons why some recognition of Hindu Dharma Bali was finally granted, even though the issue of whether it was really ‘religion’ was still evaded by the Ministry of Religion as its respective section was called ‘Section of Hindu-Balinese Affairs’ rather than ‘Section of the Hindu-Balinese Religion’. First of all, the timing of the Balinese petition had been good. A few days before it was drafted, one of the Balinese religious leaders supporting it, Sri Resi Anandakusuma, the head of Satya Hindu Dharma Indonesia, had attended the third All-Indonesian Congress of Mystical Movements (Kongres Kebatinan Seluruh Indonesia). President Sukarno had also participated in the meeting. On this occasion, he had warned the attendants to be careful about the danger of black magic (klenik), which was viewed as a negative ramification of Javanese mysticism. Conversely, he had made an appreciative remark concerning the Bhagavad Gita, calling it a ‘gospel of action’, which would not induce people to a life-abnegating, other-worldly lifestyle, a reproach brought upon Hinduism by European Orientalists in the wake of Max Weber as well as Christian missionaries.50 It had allegedly been this favourable assessment of the Gita that had encouraged the Balinese leaders to approach Sukarno with their petition. Yet, why would Sukarno have made such a remark in the first place? It is true that his mother was a Balinese of Hindu-Balinese origins. In my opinion, however,

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INTRODUCTION

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the decisive factor was that Sukarno himself had been very much influenced by Javanese wayang, Theosophy, and Mahatma Gandhi. This was partly due to the influence of his father, a priyayi and member of the Theosophical Society – just like Dr Radjiman, president of Budi Utomo; Supomo; and the young Suwardi Suryaningrat (later called Ki Hadjar Dewantoro, the leader of the Taman Siswa movement inspired by Rabindranath Tagore). The same profile, by the way, also applied to Dr Tjipto Mangukusumo, who together with Suwardi Suryaningrat and E.F.E. Douwes Decker had founded the Indonesian nationalist Indische Partij and had played an important part in Sukarno’s life. When attending the Dutch Elementary School (Hollandsche Basis School, H.B.S.) in Surabaya from 1916 to 1921, Sukarno had spent many hours in the local Theosophical Library. He had for some time also been a member of Jong Java, the youth organization of Budi Utomo. Although he had soon severed his ties with Theosophy, Tjipto Mangunkusumo had been one of his most important political teachers during his student years in Bandung. Mahatma Gandhi, whose political philosophy was rooted in the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, had likewise inspired him by being the foremost leader of the Indian independence movement. Notwithstanding the fact that Sukarno had also been a member of the Sarekat Islam, enjoying the tutelage of the famous Tjokroaminoto, whose daughter had become his first wife, he had never become an Islamist. Instead, he had always essentially combined various ideologies (such as Javanese ethics as embodied in the wayang tradition; belief in the messianic myth of the ‘Just King’ (Ratu Adil), whom, in the eyes of some, he embodied; Javanese Islam; and communism in the guise of Marhaenism, or secular nationalism) in a typically Javanese manner. The institutionalization of the Pancasila had borne that out as well.51 And he had appointed Radjiman as chair of the committee, which had been given the task of drafting the Constitution of 1945. Likewise, he had made Supomo head of the working committee, which drew up the statutes of this very constitution. He had furthermore appointed Ki Hadjar Dewantoro as Minister of Education and Culture. Hence, he had ensured that the values of these men were to some extent informing the ideological foundation of the state as well as the education of its people.52 Against this backdrop, Sukarno’s appreciation of the Bhagavad Gita and his recognition of Agama Hindu Bali is after all not so surprising. Far more surprising is, I think, his prior hesitation to do so. Yet, he had apparently not considered it wise to further alienate the loyal representatives of political Islam. This cautious treatment of the Islamist faction, however, was now being abolished. Let us briefly recall crucial events that had helped to bring about this change in Sukarno’s attitude towards political Islam. In the general elections of 15 December 1955, the Muslim parties Masjumi and Nahdlatul Ulama together had won 101 of the 260 seats in the parliament. They were among the four most successful parties: Masjumi alone had won 57 seats, as did the PNI; the NU had won 45 seats, and the PKI 39 seats. After the new parliament had been installed on 26 March 1956, a constituent assembly (Konstituante), consisting of some 500 delegates of this newly elected parliament, was appointed on 10 November 1956 to draw up the final constitution of the unitary Indonesian nation-state. The issue of the Jakarta Charter was again dividing the delegates.

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At the same time, separatist tendencies were increasing in Sumatra (PRRI) and North Sulawesi (Permesta), while the Darul Islam (DI) still held its ground in West Java, Aceh, and South Sulawesi, accusing Sukarno’s government of being essentially Communist and kafir (heathen). The Masjumi agreed with the DI in principle, although it did not support its political actions. The first assassination attempt on Sukarno’s life, carried out by members of the DI, took place on 30 November 1957, although they missed their target and caused the deaths of 11 people. Relatively shortly afterwards, on 15 February 1958, senior members of the Masjumi established an alternative government, the ‘Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia’ (Pemerintah Revolutioner Republik Indonesia, PRRI) in Padang, West Sumatra. While the rebellions in Padang and Manado (North Sulawesi) could be quelled by the Indonesian army in mid-1958, the leader of the Masjumi, Mohammad Natsir, who was also a member of the Konstituante, continued to argue for the installation of the syariat as the foundation of the Indonesian state. Controversies were drastically resolved in January 1959 – the very month in which the Section of Hindu-Balinese Affairs was established within the Ministry of Religion – when the ministerial cabinet put forward a declaration in which it supported Sukarno’s proposition to return to the Constitution of 1945. This paved the way for ‘Guided Democracy’ (Demokrasi Terpimpin), the details of which were subsequently outlined by Sukarno in a new political manifesto (Manipol-USDEK), entailing a considerable enhancement of Sukarno’s presidential authority. The shift in the political landscape of Indonesia became fully apparent on 5 July 1959, when Sukarno dissolved the Konstituante by a presidential decree, which announced the return to the Constitution of 1945. The pending issue of the Jakarta Charter was resolved by recognizing it as a ‘historical document’ without any immediate consequences. Moreover, Sukarno used his new presidential power by banning the rebellious Masjumi and Partai Sosialis Indonesia (PSI), the latter allegedly being responsible for the Permesta rebellion.53 The weakening impact of political Islam in the following years had facilitated the full recognition of Agama Hindu Bali by 1963, when the Section of HinduBalinese Affairs was renamed as the Office of the Affairs of the Hindu-Balinese Religion (Biro Urusan Agama Hindu Bali).54 However, further measures of aligning ‘Balinese Hinduism’ with universal Hindu Dharma were in order. At its 1964 annual meeting, the Parisada Dharma Hindu Bali changed its name to Parisada Hindu Dharma and proclaimed ‘five beliefs’ (panca s´raddha) to be the theological foundation of Hindu Dharma: (1) belief in Sanghyang Widhi Wasa; (2) belief in atman, the eternal soul of all beings; (3) belief in karmaphala, the law of cause and . effect of all action; (4) belief in samsa¯ ra or reincarnation; and (5) belief in moks.a or release from the cycle of rebirth. If we exchange Sanghyang Widhi Wasa in the first doctrine with Brahman – which indeed in later years occurred – then all five beliefs are in fact the tenets of Indian Neo-Hinduism.55 Neither dropping the reference to Bali in the name of the Parisada nor the further universalization of Dharma Hindu Bali was caused solely by the continuous pressure from the Ministry of Religion however. They were also caused by the increasingly multi-ethnic composition of the Hindu community in Indonesia. Apart from the Balinese, there were the Hindu Tamils, whose parents or grand-

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parents had emigrated in the late nineteenth century as indentured labourers for the newly opened plantations in North Sumatra. There were also the ethnic Sindhis, who were emigrating to Indonesia since the 1950s, having lost their homeland during the partition of India. Furthermore, there were some Javanese nationalists who enthusiastically embraced what they believed to be the religion of their ancestors.56 With General Suharto’s ascent to power after the abortive coup d’état of 30 September/1 October 1965 (GESTAPU), the Hindu community became even more heterogeneous as religious affiliation became a matter of life and death, for the abortive putsch was attributed to the PKI and the secret intervention of the People’s Republic of China. On the basis of this assertion, Suharto, commander of the army’s strategic reserve (KOSTRAD), who had been able to assume supreme command over the whole Indonesian army, set out to purge Communism. Although the military had emerged as the pre-eminent political force in the socio-political turmoil following the putsch, it was not alone in its endeavour to eliminate all Communists. It was greatly assisted in its purge by individuals and groups among the civilian population, who also harboured strong anti-Communist feelings. Next to the violence against members of the PKI, which broke out in Bali, it was particularly Nahdlatul Ulama’s youth organization Ansor that gained notoriety for its participation in the massive killings of Communists. Yet, not only alleged Communists were persecuted; adherents of aliran kepercayaan and especially members of the Javanese kebatinan groups soon became targets as well. The official reasoning for this was as follows: since Communists were atheists, atheists – in an inversion of the argument – were Communists. As adherents of aliran kepercayaan were ‘people still without religion’, just like atheists, they were in all likelihood Communists as well. This reasoning was not just a rhetorical strategy inspired by Islamists who wanted to take revenge on their Javanist arch-opponents. In fact, the reasoning bore some justification since many Javanese peasants (abangan) had indeed supported the PKI, while being members of different kebatinan groups. Affiliation with an officially recognized agama, at any rate, became crucial both for members of Javanese mystic sects and adherents of unrecognized ethnic religions as Suharto’s continual ascent to power cemented the position of the military and its inexorable stance on Communism and ‘atheism’. In March 1967, the Consultative Congress appointed Suharto as acting president. A year later, on 27 March 1968, he was finally assigned full presidency of Indonesia, and in 1971 he was confirmed as president in the country’s second general elections. Under his regime, the New Order (Orde Baru) was established, which was to bring about ‘de-ideologization’ of society, social harmony safeguarded by the ‘dual function’ (dwifungsi) of the military, and economic development (pembangunan) of the country. ‘De-ideologization’ of society above all consisted of curbing the influence of the still-existing political parties by merging them into two token opposition parties in 1973: (1) the Unity Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, PPP), which formed the container of the four hitherto legal Muslim parties, namely Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesian Muslim Party (Partai Muslimin Indonesia, Parmusi), Islam Party (Partai Islam, PERTI) and Islamic Association Party (Partai Sarekat Islam); and (2) the Indonesian Democratic Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia, PDI),

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into which the Indonesian National Party (Partai Nasional Indonesia, PNI), the two Christian parties (Partai Katolik and Partai Kristen Indonesia (Parkindo)), the Proletarian Party (Partai Musyawarah Rakyat Banyak, Murba), and the armybacked Association Supporting Indonesia’s Independence Party (Partai Ikatan Pendukung Kemerdekaan Indonesia, IPKI) were incorporated. Whereas the PDI had a nationalist and secular agenda, the PPP had a strong Islamic profile. Yet, the inefficacy of both the PPP and PDI as opposition was almost guaranteed merely because of the deep internal divides, which governed the highly heterogeneous membership of these parties. When these internal divides occasionally proved to be insufficient to prevent unanimity, repressive moves on the part of militarybacked Golkar, the electoral vehicle of Suharto’s government, ensured that every opposition was stifled otherwise. Golkar – an acronym of golongan karya signifying ‘functional groups’ – had already been established in 1964 as an umbrella of antiCommunist civilian associations and trade unions in order to balance the increasing influence of the PKI. Right from the beginning, it had been sponsored by the Indonesian army. After the putsch, it claimed to be a non-political, nonideological guarantor for the establishment of Suharto’s true ‘Pancasila Democracy’ (Demokrasi Pancasila). The military were to be its vigilantes both in arms and as executives in the civilian bureaucracy (dwifungsi ). On the ideological platform, social harmony was to be achieved by the return to the guidelines of the Constitution of 1945 and the rectification of the betrayal of the first state principle, belief in God, on the part of Sukarno, who had encouraged anti-religious tendencies by endorsing the rise of Communism. Consequently, promotion of religion and revitalizing useful traditional values were to provide a bulwark against destructive ‘foreign ideas’. Yet, separatist inclinations based on ethnicity, religious fundamentalism, race, or any other kind of factionalism – henceforth referred to as SARA, an acronym of suku (ethnic group), agama (religion), ras (race), and antargolongan (intergroup relation) – were not permitted to take root again. Hence, despite widespread Muslim support of Suharto’s purging of Communism, the position of political Islam was rather precarious due to the fresh memory of the Darul Islam movement, which only recently had been crushed in its last place of refuge, South Sulawesi, with the killing of Kahar Muzakkar in February 1965. And it had been Suharto who had commanded the so-called ‘Mataram expedition’ against the Darul Islam rebels in South Sulawesi. Suharto himself was steeped in Javanese mysticism and was known to meditate at different historical sites, such as a small cave near the Hindu-Javanese temples (candi) on the Dieng Plateau, and to collect ‘powerful’ (sakti) magical heirlooms (pusaka) like kris (Javanese daggers) in order to accrue ‘power’ (kesaktian).57 He did not support the Javanese kebatinan movement in gaining recognition as ‘religion’ though, precisely because he distrusted the loyalty of its adherents. One might suspect that this was not due only to the fact that many a kebatinan adherent had actually supported the PKI. Suharto was probably also afraid of the millenary Joyoboyo prophecy still secretly circulating in various forms within the movement. This prophecy, contained in the Javanese text Babad Kadhiri, speaks of the coming of a ‘Just King’ (Ratu Adil), who will bring prosperity and justice to the little people (wong cilik) after a long period of oppression.58 Suharto knew that people did not identify him as Ratu Adil as they had

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done frequently in the case of Sukarno. Hence, it is perfectly conceivable that he sought to undermine the legitimacy of any potential opposition to his rule inherent in the Joyoboyo prophecy by denying kebatinan the status of ‘religion’. Furthermore, Suharto was determined to bring about economic development by modernizing the infrastructure of the country and to create the necessary manpower in the form of the ‘new Indonesian’, the so-called ‘Pancasila person’ (manusia Pancasila). Modern education was, therefore, to balance the promotion of religion and the revitalization of useful traditional values. The latter, on their part, were not any longer identified with adat, but with local ‘culture’ (budaya), comprising local art, architecture, dance, music, cuisine, handicraft, and clothing – domains towards which official sponsorship was now directed in various ways.59 The ensuing folklorization of Indonesia’s ethnic traditions in turn provided the capital for ‘cultural tourism’ and thereby contributed to the economic development of the whole country. Religion, too, was to reform and modernize by abnegating both fundamentalism and ‘primitive superstition’. Guided more competently by the present government than by the Sukarno administration in observing the harmonious co-existence of all recognized religious communities (kerukunan hidup umat beragama), religion would thus play an important part in creating a prosperous, stable and modern Indonesian society.60 The official promotion of religion on the basis of reinforced religious tolerance and the threat of being identified as Communist in the case of non-compliance with the guidelines from the Ministry of Religion spurred Javanists as well as adherents of other ethnic religions on to seek affiliation with a proper agama. As a result, all acknowledged religious communities in Indonesia increased in size, including the Hindu community. Between 1966 and 1980, large numbers of Javanese in Central and East Java, among them the majority of the Tenggerese (Orang Tengger) in the Mt Bromo region, the non-Islamic Bugis To Wani To Lotang and nonChristian Mamasa- and Sa’dan-Toraja in South Sulawesi, a considerable part of the Karo in North Sumatra as well as many non-Christian Ngaju and Luangan in Central and South Kalimantan proclaimed themselves Hindu. In 1980, the Ministry of Religion counted altogether 2,988,461 Indonesian Hindus, who made up 2 per cent of the total population that then comprised 146 million people.61 Acknowledging the all-Indonesian membership of the Hindu community, the Parisada Hindu Dharma again changed its name to Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia in 1986.62 The claim on Hinduism on the part of the non-Balinese adherents of ethnic religions did not remain uncontested however. Since adherents of Javanese kebatinan groups had been traditionally nominal Muslims, their ‘conversion’ to Hindu Dharma – a religion never recognized as ‘true religion’ on the part of Islamists – was frequently seen as a capital crime in predominantly Muslim areas. Consequently, ‘converts’ were often denied the entry of ‘Hindu’ on their identity cards (kartu tanda penduduk) by Muslim officials in the local bureaucracy, not to speak of other forms of harassment such as higher fees charged by local registration offices for Hindu wedding ceremonies or continuous exposure to intensified attempts at re-conversion to Islam (dakwah), and so forth. In predominantly Christian regions such as Tana Toraja in South Sulawesi, people professing themselves Hindus were

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to suffer increasingly serious disadvantages in the public area (for example, nonor under-representation in local parliaments, denial of scholarships, and the like). This was because fervent Christians – Protestants in particular – were harbouring a disregard for Hinduism similar to that of orthodox Muslims. As a consequence, there has been an unfathomable number of Indonesians strongly inclined to Hinduism, sometimes indeed participating in its various practices, who have never been registered as Hindus, either because the officials in charge did not comply with their wishes, or because they themselves feared retribution from the official bureaucracy, Muslim or Christian organizations, their non-Hindu neighbours, superiors, colleagues, or even family members. Nevertheless, Hindu Dharma as an institution was fully protected by the central government as well as the military with its strong anti-Islamist bend, not the least because the Parisada Hindu Dharma already in 1968 had expressed its loyalty to Suharto by unanimously entering Golkar.63 Thus, Hinduism became the secure umbrella for various minority religions. It is important to note here that it not only offered shelter for the ethnic religions (Agama Budha, i.e. the traditional religion of the Tenggerese and not to be confused with Buddhism or Agama Buddha in Indonesian, Aluk To Dolo, Ada’ Mappurondo, Toani, Pemena, and Kaharingan) of the above-mentioned ethnic groups (Tengger, Sa’dan-Toraja, Mamasa-Toraja, To Wani To Lotang, Karo, Ngaju, Luangan), which were officially acknowledged as variants or ‘sects (sekta-sekta) of Hindu Dharma’.64 Hindu Dharma’s representative organ within the Ministry of Religion also ended up accommodating Buddhism and Confucianism. In the case of Buddhism, this is not as surprising as it might seem at first. It was not only the various ancient Indian S´aiva and Vais.n.ava sects that had left their imprint on ancient Hindu-Javanese culture; Vajraya¯ na Buddhism had done so as well. As Theosophy had inspired some Balinese – and Javanese as well as Chinese – to associate themselves with this line of Hindu-Javanese – or Chinese – tradition since the beginning of the twentieth century, we find the Association of Indonesian Buddhists (Perhimpunan Buddhis Indonesia, Perbudi) among those religious organizations in Bali that had supported the jointly filed petition demanding the official recognition of Agama Hindu Bali in 1958.65 From 1968 onwards, at any rate, the newly established Directorate General for the Guidance of the Hindu and Buddhist Community (Direktorat Jenderal Bimbingan Masyarakat Hindu dan Budha, Dirjen Bimas Hindu dan Budha), ever since headed by a Hindu Balinese, represented both the Hindu and the Buddhist communities. And from 1977 onwards, it also supervised the small and predominantly ethnic Chinese group adhering to Confucianism, or rather Agama Khonghucu, which lacked official representatives of its own due to the fact that its professed ‘religion’ was not officially recognized as agama until relatively long after the fall of Suharto.66 Shared similarities in both theology and religious practice on the part of Hindu Dharma, Buddhism, and Agama Khonghucu must have contributed to this arrangement as well.67 Having accommodated so many religious systems on the fringe of ‘true religion’, it is not so astonishing that Hindu Dharma retained its image among staunch orthodox Muslims and Christians alike as an agama ardi, a ‘religion of the earth’, which is not on a par with agama wahyu, ‘revealed religion’, like Islam and

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Christianity. This was even more so since Suharto’s rigid Indonesianization policy lessened the urgency of further alignment with Indian Neo-Hinduism, which was more congenial to both Islam and Christianity.68 In 1978, at a time when there were warranted fears that the Khomeini revolution in Iran might boost Islamic fundamentalism in Indonesia, the Ministry of Education and Culture introduced the Regulation for the Revitalization and Application of the Pancasila (Pedoman Penghayatan dan Pengamalan Pancasila, P4) in all public institutions. At the same time, religious groupings from outside the country were prohibited to sponsor religious organizations within Indonesia in any way. In 1983, a further step was taken to prevent Indonesian citizens from developing strong bonds of loyalty with transnational religious organizations by requiring all social, cultural, political, and religious institutions to recognize the Pancasila as their ‘sole ideological foundation’ (asas tunggal). This, at last, drove even moderate representatives of political Islam into fierce opposition and drove orthodox Muslims in general to concentrate on religious education (dakwah) in furthering the cultural Islamization of Indonesian society instead. The key positions within all branches of the Ministry of Religion, however, were now transferred to ‘pro-Pancasila-ists’, who often held military ranks, and legitimate Islam was sincerely prodding its adherents along the ‘middle path of religious tolerance’.69 At the end of the 1980s, a paradigm shift occurred in Suharto’s relation to Islam. It was most probably triggered by a friction between the president and powerful factions within the military, which obliged him to seek a new mass basis for his regime among the Muslim majority by courting representatives of orthodox Islam. The first clear sign of the shift was emitted in 1988, when Suharto, known to practise kebatinan himself, admonished fellow mystics, who attributed more importance to their membership in their respective kebatinan group than to their affiliation with a formal religious community, to spiritually return to their various ‘mother religions’ (agama induk), from which mysticism had evolved in the first place. He followed this up by performing his much-publicized first pilgrimage to Mecca (haj) in 1990.70 A year earlier, he had already reaffirmed the independence and judicial equity of the Islamic courts dealing with family matters, divorce, and inheritance. In the same year, he had also repeated his commitment to continuous religious education at all educational institutions in Indonesia, from elementary schools up to universities, abating the fears of increasing secularism on the part of pious Muslims. Moreover, in 1990 Suharto assented to the establishment of the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals (Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia, ICMI), the membership of which was to consist of both government officials and government critics. ICMI was placed, however, under the leadership of B.J. Habibie, at the time Suharto’s Minister of Technology and close confidant, in order to contain critique of government policies. Representing Indonesia’s affluent Muslim middle class, ICMI – alongside other modernist Muslim organizations such as Amien Rais’s Muhammadiyah and Nurcholish Madjid’s Yayasan Paramadina – envisioned an ‘Islamic Indonesian society’ rather than an ‘Islamic Indonesian state’. Some Muslim intellectuals within and outside ICMI also started to call for the demilitarization of the Indonesian bureaucracy and the democratization of Indonesian politics, as a result of which the ‘Muslim majority’ (i.e. 88 per cent

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registered Muslims among the entire Indonesian population) would finally be represented in the government and benefit from the development programmes of the state in accordance with its proportion.71 These positions gained tremendous impetus in the wake of the Asia Crisis, when the final crash of the New Order regime in May 1998 was openly attributed to Suharto’s ‘crony capitalism’. Its legitimatory trilogy of economic and technological development (pembangunan), stability (stabilitas), and economic and socio-political equity (pemerataan) was exposed as the rhetorical decorum of a form of governance rooted in ‘corruption, collusion, and nepotism’ (korupsi, kolusi dan nepotisme). Some Islamists claimed that Suharto’s cronies would comprise to a large extent secular technocrats, Christians and Chinese, thereby unleashing a wave of hatred, which not only hit Chinese-Indonesians and Christians, but also – albeit to a much lesser degree – Hindus, Javanists, and Buddhists.72 Open discrimination against Hindus, however, had not begun with the fall of Suharto. It had only intensified, partly due to the ensuing delegitimization of the military that had hitherto contained open hostility against religious minorities. A notable change for the worse had already taken place in the beginning of the 1990s, when Suharto had launched his pro-Islamic political campaign to court what he perceived as the majority of the Indonesian masses. Large parts of the population had by then indeed acquired modernist Muslim cultural identities. These identities had replaced former attachment to local adat, which had already become much weakened as a result of the modernizing influence of the various government agencies. The common tendency of personal cultural identification with modern Islam was enhanced by Suharto’s political shift, and even more so by the rhetoric of Muslim intellectuals after the demise of his regime. It was this common orientation that has at times been drawn upon by extremists to spur people into action against minority groups. Back in the 1990s, Suharto had already permitted the Indonesian Council for Islamic Predication (Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia, DDII) to operate among Javanese Christians and Hindus in the countryside of Central and East Java.73 Official references to the glorious Hindu-Javanese pasts and the long-standing habit of endowing official buildings with Old Javanese names subsided. Instead, more and more Arabic loanwords entered official Indonesian language. According to Balinese informants, immigration of Muslims to Bali was fostered by bringing Javanese labourers over for the construction of luxurious tourist resorts owned by Suharto’s family and its cronies. Once the construction work was completed, the Javanese labourers stayed on in Bali. As a result, mosques have become conspicuous parts of Bali’s capital, towns, and tourist resorts. When Habibie succeeded Suharto as president, he even planned the construction of what he envisioned to be the largest mosque of Indonesia to be situated in Sanur, on one of Bali’s famous beaches. This plan, however, was eventually halted by public protest. After Abdurrahman Wahid’s ascent to the presidency in October 1999, the Indonesian government expressed its renewed commitment to a policy of religious tolerance, or rather non-interference with personal religious conviction. Yet, it was ineffective in abating inter-religious strife in Maluku, Kalimantan, Irian Jaya, Lombok, and South Sulawesi. It is true that the regulations for regional autonomy

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(otonomi daerah),74 issued by Wahid and endorsed by his successor Megawati Sukarnoputri, have at least reassured the Balinese that ‘Bali remains Hindu’. Yet, things look rather bleak for Hindus outside of Bali should Megawati not succeed in upholding a pluralist reading of the philosophical principles of the Indonesian Constitution of 1945 against a kind of reading that is likely to spark off further inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflict. Parallel to the Islamization of Indonesian society boosted by the Indonesian government, various factions within the Indonesian Hindu community began to radicalize as well. Today, we can distinguish two major camps: one striving for closer association with Indian Hinduism and the other arguing for an emphasis on local customs and practices. While Suharto had pursued a strict policy of cultural Indonesianization until the late 1980s, which was geared to undermine emerging bonds of transnational Muslim solidarity in particular, Indonesia’s Hindus had entertained comparatively few contacts with Indian cultural or religious institutions.75 This began to change noticeably at the beginning of the 1990s, when both Indonesian and Indian Hindus began to show renewed interest in one another. While Indonesian Hindus again turned to India for philosophical and religious orientation as well as financial support, interest of the Indian side was sparked by both economic and political considerations. When India lost her main trade partner with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Asia-Pacific market was recognized as an attractive alternative for economic expansion. The simultaneous rise of Hindu nationalism with its anti-West dimensions made this economic reorientation also politically attractive as Indian Hindu nationalists perceive the cultures of Southeast Asia (and to a certain extent those of East Asia) as an extension of India’s own civilization. In 1996, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) issued an electoral manifesto in which ‘the promotion of Asian solidarity’ was explicitly formulated as the major objective of its foreign policy.76 The present BJP government of India has continuously acted upon this in various ways ever since.77 One of the results is that Indonesian Hindus have increasingly taken over Indian concepts and practices, such as vegetarianism or the performance of a revived Vedic fire ritual called agnihotra, simultaneously discarding local customs as aberrations from ‘true Hindu Dharma’. Similarly, pilgrimages to holy places in India, for an increasing number of Balinese and Javanese Hindus at least, have become more important or are valued higher than pilgrimages to traditional sites in Bali and/or Java. This tendency, echoing similar globalizing tendencies within Indonesian Islam, has alarmed traditionalists among the Hindu community, who have been hoping for a revitalization of local practices, and who have felt much encouraged by the fact that commitment to a policy of non-interference with private religious matters was professed by the Wahid administration. These developments leave Indonesia’s 5,987,134 Hindus (making up 3 per cent of a total population of over 200 million people)78 at a crossroads, where they have to weigh the benefits of increasing religious pluralism within their own community, or even separation from the Hindu community altogether, against the necessity of strong communal solidarity in the face of both fundamentalist and pluralist forms of Muslim – and Christian – hegemony.

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This finally leads us to the more general issue of the universalization of Hindu Dharma since the nineteenth century. Most Western scholars79 have hitherto neglected this aspect of the emergence of Hindu Dharma Indonesia. Instead, they attributed the development of Hinduism in post-independence Indonesia solely to the immediate socio-political circumstances. The only exception is perhaps Frederik Bakker, whose valuable book The Struggle of the Balinese Intellectuals describes the concrete influence of modern Indian Hinduism on contemporary Balinese Hindus, albeit without placing his account in any broader theoretical framework. Sudipta Kaviraj has recently defined ‘the historical peculiarity of the Hindu system’ as lying ‘precisely in the historically shifting, unstable combination of . . . intellectual diversity with orthopraxy. Hinduism is very particular about the orthodoxy of practice, rather than the orthodoxy of beliefs’.80 Characterizing the Hindu belief system as a kind of alphabet of elements, out of which doctrines of different kinds – both egalitarian and inclusive as well as hierarchical and exclusive – have been formed, Kaviraj provides us with a clue on how to more adequately conceptualize a process that has been called ‘Hinduization’ or ‘Sanskritization’. Both terms actually refer us back to a long-standing discussion concerned with the spread of the ‘great (Brahmanical) tradition’ throughout South and Southeast Asia from the second millennium BCE until modern times.81 Let me briefly summarize the contributions of four protagonists of this discussion, which have highlighted important aspects of the process, before I proceed with taking their insights further on the basis of Kaviraj’s conceptualization of Hinduism. This will simultaneously lead us to frame the emergence of Hindu Dharma Indonesia as a most recent incident of Hinduization – or even NeoHinduization – thereby supporting the viewpoint of so many Indonesian Hindus that they are indeed Hindus, not second-rate Hindus as some Indian chauvinists would have it, or just fake Hindus as certain Christian and Muslim missionaries would like to see it. My stance thus clearly allows for pluralist notions of Hindu Dharma as well as Hindu Dharma Indonesia. I have declined to endorse hidden agendas of Indian Hindu nationalists who might relish welcoming pro-Indian Indonesian Hindus back to the Hindu fold, because they see it as an opportunity to chide Muslim Indonesia. Consequently, I took great care to invite representatives of both traditionalist and modernist Indonesian Hindus alongside scholars with a perspective informed by their respective study of Indonesian Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and various ethnic traditions to contribute to this volume. I think it is justified to start our summary of the important aspects of the Hinduization process with Max Weber, who was one of the first scholars to suggest that the Hindu belief system and social organization have disseminated from a relatively small area in North India to the whole Indian subcontinent since the second millennium BCE until today. Weber, in fact, discriminated between two modes of ‘Hinduization’: (1) the extensive dissemination of Hindu beliefs and customs among the indigenous, non-Aryan peoples of India, and (2) the intensive propagation of Hindu doctrines in areas that have already been under the domination of Hindus. The process of ‘extensive Hinduization’ would usually involve the adoption of Hindu customs on the part of the indigenous elite and the integration of local deities into the Hindu pantheon by giving them Sanskrit names.

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After some time, the Hinduized indigenous nobility would turn away from traditional priests and invite Brahmins willing to instruct them in religion and ritual. Those Brahmins would also provide the indigenous aristocracy with a legitimacy based on the doctrines of the new Hindu creed. In some cases, the indigenous priesthood would take over the lifestyle of the Brahmins and convince their community of their Brahmin origin. Eventually, the indigenous elite would succeed in obtaining entry into the ‘Hindu caste system’, securing for themselves a certain rank within the hierarchy of ja¯ tı¯. This ideal-type process would have to be understood as an abstraction from numerous idiosyncratic versions that would account for the different stages of transition from an indigenous tribal society to a modern ‘Hindu caste’.82 In contrast to Weber, whose concept of ‘Hinduization’ implies a rather monodimensional, top-down take-over of India’s ‘great tradition’ with a strong tendency to eradicate the indigenous ‘little tradition’,83 McKim Marriot differentiated between ‘universalization’, i.e. the absorption of a local cult into the Sanskritic Hindu tradition, on the one hand, and ‘parochialization’, i.e. the localization of an element or elements of the Sanskritic Hindu tradition, on the other.84 As third protagonist I want to mention the late M.N. Srinivas, who introduced the concept of ‘Sanskritization’ in place of ‘Hinduization’. ‘Sanskritization’ refers to a process in which a tribal community or a low-ranking ‘caste’ ( ja¯ tı¯ ) adopts an elite lifestyle, ideology, and ritual system based on the Sanskrit literary tradition of ancient India. It involves the adoption of vegetarianism, teetotalitarianism, the construction of temples, the worship of Brahmanical deities, the observance of fasts, and the performance of rites and rituals in the Brahmanical fashion. This elite lifestyle with its ideology and ritual system has, according to Srinivas, certain characteristics that facilitate its dissemination among tribal or so-called ‘animist’ groups through the process of Sanskitization. The most important characteristics in this respect are a rich and expandable mythology, the worship of rivers, trees, mountains and animals, and the association of deities with local geographies. In its revised form, the concept of Sanskritization implies three different modes: (1) the Brahmanical mode, referring to the adoption of a Brahmin lifestyle, etc.; (2) the ks.atriya mode, referring to the adoption of the lifestyle of the Aryan warriors and royal princes; and (3) the vais´ya mode, referring to the adoption of the lifestyle of free land-owners and merchants. All three modes characterize attempts at upward mobility on the part of the low-ranking group. It is important to note that Srinivas allowed for the occurrence of Sanskritization alongside modernization or Westernization.85 From the 1950s until the mid 1960s, Milton Singer, the last protagonist I want to mention here, participated in Robert Redfield’s project on the ‘Comparative Study of Civilizations’ at Chicago University. Singer applied to the Indian case Redfield’s conception of ‘civilization’ as being at once a set of cultural products, a set of cultural processes, and a set of communities. The cultural products, according to Redfield, fall into two categories: (1) the ‘great tradition’ of intellectual and aesthetic achievements, which have provided the moral, legal, and aesthetic norms for those who identify them as the core of their common civilization, and (2) the ‘little tradition’ of folk and popular culture. Redfield considered the former

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to be more reflective and believed it to be more systematically presented in oral, written, inscribed, carved, painted, sung, and acted ‘texts’. Singer started out by defining India’s ‘great tradition’ as consisting of the following: a body of sacred Sanskrit scriptures and derivative ‘texts’; a class of literati; leading personalities who convey their vision of the ‘great tradition’ to the masses; a sacred geography of holy places defining a set of sacred centres that provide the forum, media, and vehicle for expressing the ‘great tradition’; and a sacred calendar marking important rites and ceremonies. In his fieldwork in modern Madras (nowadays renamed Chennai), however, he ended up encountering what he called ‘de-Sanskritization’, i.e. a process in which fewer and fewer Brahmins are well versed in the classical sacred scriptures, ‘texts’, and ritual performance, and consequently shift to more popular, devotional (bhakti) and revivalistic forms of religion.86 Yet, according to Singer, de-Sanskritization is no new phenomenon: The processes of Sanskritization and de-Sanskritization involve . . . an essential reference to a particular set of cultural norms or values, which takes us beyond the temporal dimension, linear or cyclical. Since these norms will vary for different groups and change over time for the same group, it is necessary in analysing such processes to specify both the group and the time during which the norms in question prevail. . . . The transformation may be either cyclical or linear. Whether or not the changes in cultural norms will change the total structure of the tradition will depend on many things – the balance between traditionalizing and modernizing changes, the speed of the change, the degree of looseness or flexibility built into the tradition, and, ultimately, the judgment and actions of those considered the ‘authorities’ among the literati. They regard many changes as continuous with their Great Tradition and are incorporating them within a redefined orthodoxy. They regard a few changes as fundamental threats to the tradition and have actively organized resistance and defence against them.87 Singer identified three strategies by which local Brahmins in urbanized Madras have accommodated change within their ‘great tradition’: (1) compartementalization of, on one hand, the domestic and social sphere as ‘traditional and religious’ and, on the other hand, the industrial sphere as ‘modern and secular’; (2) ritual neutralization of the work sphere; and (3) vicarious ritualization, such as sponsorship of theatre, dance, and music performances, contributions to temples, hiring religious functionaries to perform religious rites in one’s home, or having one’s female family members participate in religious and cultural performances of all kinds. Given the well-established data on the so-called ‘Indianized’ states of ancient Southeast Asia, it is safe to argue that through processes of extensive as well as intensive Hinduization, which probably involved both universalization and parochialization, various local traditions in the Southeast Asian archipelago became part of the Greater Indian civilization in varying degrees between c.200 to 1500 CE. In spite of ongoing trade relations with Indian merchants, however, ensuing

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Islamization and colonization led to a de-Sanskritization or cultural and religious emancipation of the formerly Hinduized dependencies from India. Yet, due to the socio-political circumstances outlined above, we have to state a modern wave of intensive and extensive Hinduization in the archipelago. In the case of the Balinese, it is appropriate to speak of intensive Hinduization (by means of both universalization and parochialization), whereas in the cases of the Toraja, the To Wani To Lotang, the Karo, the Ngaju, and the Luangan it is definitively more accurate to speak of extensive Hinduization (with a much lesser degree of universalization and a much larger degree of parochialization than in the Balinese case). Recent instances of re-traditionalization among all Indonesian Hindus, on the other hand, can again be conceptualized as a kind of de-Sanskritization. Besides, compartmentalization, ritual neutralization and vicarious ritualization have definitely characterized the various strategies of a large number of Indonesian Hindus to adapt to modernity, too. I am, of course, well aware that the version or notion of Indian Hinduism, which has been disseminated in modern Indonesia, is a colonial construct that evolved out of the co-operation between European Orientalists and their Brahmin informants in nineteenth-century India. This elite construct linked up very well with the nationalist Indian as well as Indonesian quest for a new cultural, religious, and national identity, which would be on a par with Christianity, Islam, and Western civilization. Implying the acceptance of a whole set of Brahmanical doctrines . (brahman, atman, karma, samsa¯ ra, moks.a), based on the four Indian Vedas (Catur Veda) as well as the Veda¯ nta, this construct, also called ‘Neo-Hinduism’ (Heinrich v. Stietencron), ‘syndicated Hinduism’ (Romila Tapar), or ‘semitificated Hinduism’ (Veena Das), has been discriminating against divergent forms of religious expressions in India as well as Indonesia, boosting the centralization, rationalization, bureaucratization, and Brahmanization of local non-Christian and non-Muslim religious traditions.88 Yet, the ‘syndicated’ and ‘semitificated’ Indian doctrines, adopted by the Indonesian Hindus, were nevertheless flexible enough to accommodate the various ethnic orthopraxies, the core of local identities, which then experienced modification through compartmentalization, ritual neutralization, and vicarious ritualization, thereby adapting to the Indonesian version of modernity. This will also be borne out by some of the following chapters. The different chapters of this volume elaborate on, complement, or criticize various points made in this introduction. The different contributors represent not only different scholarly viewpoints, but also, as I said, to some extent different religious positions and ethnic traditions in Indonesia. The following five chapters are concerned with the contingencies of the development of Hinduism in modern Indonesia, starting with Herman de Tollenaere’s contribution, which describes the development and influence of the Theosophical Society in the Dutch East Indies from 1880 until 1942. It specifically focuses on the question of the extent to which the Theosophical Society disseminated Hindu concepts and ideas on Hinduism in the Dutch East Indies. Iem Brown’s elucidation of the revival of Buddhism in modern Indonesia first concentrates on the circumstances of the beginnings of the Buddhist revival as well as the diversity of the ethnic background of the Indonesian

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Buddhists. Brown then briefly outlines the position of Buddhism in contemporary Indonesia. Her contribution is followed by Michel Picard’s investigation of the debates among the Balinese intelligentsia about their religion during the colonial period. These debates focused upon two sets of interdependent questions: (1) How is ‘religion’ (agama) connected to ‘tradition’ (adat), and how can one differentiate between their respective domains? and (2) How is Agama Bali linked to Agama Hindu; in other words, how is Balinese Hinduism related to Indian Hinduism? Ngurah Nala’s subsequent description of the development of both formal and nonformal Hindu education in post-independence Bali provides some valuable insights into how these issues have influenced the strategies of contemporary Hindu-Balinese educators. In the following chapter, I Gusti Ngurah Bagus addresses the various conflicts and differences that exist with regard to the role, the position, the organization, the style, and the activities of the foremost Hindu organ, the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia, as it has developed in a society in transition. Chapters 7–13 focus on how the tension between state-supported religion (agama) and local tradition (adat) has played out in concrete local settings outside Bali. Most of these contributions address the special circumstances under which members of non-Balinese ethnic communities chose to embrace Hinduism. They also highlight the ensuing conflict between official Hindu Dharma and local orthopraxy as it has caused a profound disillusionment with Hinduism in many locations. Accounts of relevant developments in areas where adoption of Hindu Dharma was not an option for various reasons are also included in this part of the book as they help to place the cases of the various Hindu communities in a larger, all-Indonesian context. In Chapter 7, Robert Hefner reassesses what he has called the ‘Hindu Reform in an Islamizing Java’ on the basis of a long stint of recent fieldwork. As many Javanists had actually chosen Christianity after the abortive coup in 1965, Karel Steenbrink’s investigation of the ethnic, national, and international loyalties of Javanese and other Indonesian Christians complements Hefner’s account, which is more concerned with Hinduism and Islam in Java. Steenbrink’s discussion provides us with useful comparative data for an analysis of the impact of a globalized version of Hinduism on Indonesian Hindus. Introducing us to the position of Indonesian Christians and expatriate missionaries with respect to Hindu elements within Javanese culture, he is also able to show us why Christianity, especially Catholicism, was relatively successful among the Javanist community. Tanja Hohe’s and Bert Remijsen’s study of the recent re-emergence of pela, a traditional institution of forging bonds between villages that transcend religious affiliation, in the Central Moluccas, on the other hand, takes us to a region where adoption of Hinduism had formerly not been an option. Nowadays, however, some members of the local ethnic groups do use the concept of ‘Hindu’ in referring to their traditional belief systems (adat), which are classified as ‘animist’ by Indonesian religious officials and Moluccans alike, and which form the cultural context of the pela institution. By applying the term ‘Hindu’ to their indigenous traditions, these Moluccans apparently draw on the Balinese case in trying to legitimate and defend their adat as it is challenged by state-supported religion (agama), namely Christianity and Islam. That Bali is indeed emulated here can be supported by my interview with Boinina Tabalubun, which took place on 4 November 1998 at the State Academy

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for the Education of Teachers of the Hindu Religion (Akademi Pendidikan Guru Agama Hindu Negeri, APGAHN) in Denpasar, Bali. At the time, Boinina Tabalubun, a girl from Desa Tanimbarke in Ambon-Maluku, was studying at APGAHN. She had been sent there by her village community in order to study Hindu Dharma thoroughly so as to become a teacher of Hinduism in her home village. Leaving aside the difficult issue of how Hinduism has become synonymous with local adat in the area of their studies, Hohe and Remijsen instead concentrate on a phenomenon of topical interest, namely on how pela relationships have managed, at least to a certain extent, to counter the influence of the powerful agama and their increasingly lethal impact on Central Moluccan village life. More pessimistic is Gerard Persoon’s subsequent account of how the policy of the Indonesian government has been geared to eradicate the traditional beliefs of the Mentawaians on Siberut in West Sumatra, because they are not considered as having a ‘religion’ (agama). The Mentawaians, classified among the so-called ‘isolated, primitive tribes’ (suku terasing) of Indonesia, have particularly suffered from state policies concerning religion. Their case offers illuminating comparative data especially for the study of the Hindu Toraja, the Hindu Karo, and the Hindu Ngaju and Luangan. Dik Roth’s contribution provides the historical context for the case of the Sa’dan-Toraja. He describes the socio-political circumstances that led to the emergence of a common Toraja identity among the tribes that populate the highlands of South Sulawesi, and to the notion of a ‘Greater Toraja’, which was then pitted against the hegemonic interests of the Muslim lowlands, especially Luwu. Roth’s exposition prepares the ground for my subsequent analysis of the degree of Hinduization of the traditions of the Mamasa- and Sa’dan-Toraja as well as the To Wani To Lotang in post-independence South Sulawesi. This is followed by Juara Ginting’s account of the development and the position of Hinduism in contemporary Karo society (North Sumatra). I was, alas, not successful in soliciting a contribution on the adherents of Hindu Kaharingan among the Ngaju and Luangan in Central and South Kalimantan. The last three chapters deal with the relation between Indian and Indonesian Hindus. In Chapter 14, Silvia Vignato relates the struggle of the Hindu Tamil and the Hindu Karo in North Sumatra to safeguard their particular orthopraxies visà-vis the impact of official Hindu Dharma Indonesia. Her contribution is followed by Yadav Somvir’s description of the range of cultural and religious interaction between modern India and Indonesia. In the final chapter, Leo Howe zooms in on the development of the Satya Sai Baba movement in Bali.

Notes 1 My translation; the Old Javanese text was taken from Soewito Santoso, Sutasoma: A Study in Javanese Wajrayana, New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1975, p. 579. 2 cf. P.J. Zoetmulder, Kalangwan: Sastra Jawa Kuno Selayang Pandang, Jakarta: Penerbit Djambatan, [1974] 1985, pp. 429–30. 3 Eka Darmaputera’s reflections on this topic are still salient; see Darmaputera 1992:13–101. 4 They comprised the Jong Java, Jong Soematra, Pemoeda Indonesia, Sekar Roekoen, Jong Islamieten Bond, Jong Celebes, Pemoeda Kaum Betawi, and Perhimpunan Pelajar-pelajar Indonesia. In courtesy to the reader less acquainted with the history of the Indonesian

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5 6 7 8

9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22

23

nationalist movement, I shall briefly elucidate the less obvious ideological background of these groups: Jong Java (Javanese Youth) was the youth organization of Theosophy-and kejawen-inspired Budi Utomo (Noble Endeavour), see below (and also e.g. Muskens 1969:106); the Jong Islamietenbond (Association of Islamic Youth) was the youth organization of the reform Islamic Sarekat Islam (Islamic Alliance) (cf. Muskens 1969:117–18); the Pemoeda Indonesia (Indonesian Youth) was the youth group of the ‘Indonesian National Party’ (Partai Nasional Indonesia, PNI) (cf. Muskens 1969:127); Jong Soematra, Jong Celebes and the Pemoeda Kaum Betawi were regional nationalist youth organizations from Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Batavia (cf. Dahm 1969:41, 60, 194); the Perhimpunan Pelajar-pelajar Indonesia (Indonesian Students’ Association) focused on educating its members for the tasks involved in the struggle of national freedom; cf. R.C. Kwantes, De Ontwikkelingen van de Nationalistische Beweging in Nederlandsch-Indië. Bronnenpublikatie, Deerde Stuk 1928–Aug. 1933, Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff/Bouma’s Boekhuis, 1981, pp. 489–91. The Sekar Roekoen (Association for Co-operation and Friendship) was a less known, Javabased youth organization (cf. Kwantes 1981:491). cf. Mohamad Koesnoe, Enam Puluh Tahun Sumpah Pemuda, Malang: Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Hukum ‘Sunan Giri’, 1988, pp. 20–1, 29–31. cf. Tollenaere 1996:116, 168, 285. Akira Nagazumi, The Origin and the Earlier Years of the Budi Utomo 1908–1918, Ithaca: PhD diss., Cornell University, 1967, p. 53. Robert W. Hefner, ‘Reimagined Community. A Social History of Muslim Education in Pasuruan, East Java’, in: Charles A. Keyes, Laurel Kendall, and Helen Hardacre (eds) Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994, p. 77. See ibid. For more background information, refer to Akira Nagazumi 1967 (see Note 7): 1, 2–3, 19–27, 33–44, 50–8, 59–65, 72, 79, 80–2; Sears 1996:26, 27, 78, 123, 125–9, 135, 138, 141–2; Tollenaere 1996:6, 116–19; Wijaya 1996; and also Sylvia Cranston, HBP: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky, Founder of the Modern Theosophical Movement, New York: A Jeremy P. Tarcher-Putnam Book published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1993, as well as Harry J. Benda, The Crescent and the Rising Sun: Indonesian Islam under the Japanese Occupation 1942–1945, Dordrecht, Cinnaminson: Foris Publications Holland–USA, [1958] 1983, pp. 20–4. cf. Tollenaere 1996:354. Adat is a loanword from Arabic, signifying ‘custom’. The term ‘adat law’ was coined by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and refers to local, often unwritten, customary law. See also M.B. Hooker, Adat Law in Modern Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur, etc.: Oxford University Press, 1978, pp. 1, 20–3. Quoted in Darmaputera 1992:109. See also Stange 1986:87. See further below. See e.g., The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV, 1973:171, 174. cf. Anshari 1997:xiii–iv, 15–17, 23, 25–6, 27–30, 31–42; Dahm 1969:294–315; Darmaputera 1992:104–11; Muskens 1969:150–62; Pringgodigdo 1966:11–12, 15, 24, 86; Wandelt 1988:15–19. cf. Hatta Mohammad, Sekitar Proklamasi 17 Agustus 1945, Jakarta: Tintamas, 1969, pp. 66–8. See also Anshari 1997:xiv–viii, 45–8. cf. Anshari 1997:xxiii. Ibid.:xvii–ix. Please refer to e.g. Pusoko Budi Utomo, Jakarta: Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, Direktorat Pembinaan Penghayat Kepercayaan Terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa, Proyek Inventarisasi Kepercayaan Terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa, 1980. cf. Anshari 1997:58–60; Azra and Umam 1998:4–5, 8–9, 13–15, 38, 39, 46–8; Darmaputera 1992:135; Ruth McVey, ‘Taman Siswa and the Indonesian National Awakening’, Indonesia,

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24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37

38

39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47

1967, vol. 4, 128–49; C.H. Meijers, De Taman Siswa en het Regeringsonderwijs. Ontwikkelingen in het Indonesische onderwijs vanaf 1945, Amsterdam: Doctoraalscriptie, Vrije Universiteit, 1973, pp. 6, 8, 9–13; Muskens 1969:172; Sears 1996:125–6; Abdurrachman Surjomihardjo, Ki Hajar Dewantara Dan Taman Siswa Dalam Sejarah Indonesia Modern, Jakarta: Penerbit Sinar Harapan, 1986, pp. 166–7; Tollenaere 1996. My translation. Pringgodigdo 1966:87. cf. Cribb and Brown 1995:32, 33–41; Muskens 1969:179; Pringgodigdo 1966:16, 87. cf. Cribb and Brown 1996:49–50; Muskens 1969:180–1; Pringgodigdo 1966:17–18, 87. My translation. Pringgodigdo 1966:87. For more background information, please refer to Cees van Dijk, Rebellion Under the Banner of Islam: The Darul Islam in Indonesia, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981. cf. Cribb and Brown 1995:29, 38–41; Van Dijk 1981(see note above): 1–7; Muskens 1969:177–8, 185–6; Sears 1996:218–32. My translation. K. Permadi, ‘Persepsi tentang Tuhan dan Kehidupan’, in: Wayan Supartha (ed.) Memahami Aliran Kepercayaan, Denpasar: Penerbit BP, 1994, p. 76. See also P.J. Zoetmulder, Old Javanese–English Dictionary, ‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982, p. 23. Protestantism and Catholicism are seen as two distinct religions in Indonesia even today. This is a legacy from the colonial period, more specifically from the ‘pillarization’ (verzuiling) of Dutch society at the end of the nineteenth century. Pillarization was actually an expression of the emancipation of the Catholic minority in the Netherlands. It ensured that Catholics received equal political rights and representation in public life as well as within the Dutch bureaucracy, which had hitherto been staffed only by Protestants. The entire process also entailed that from 1900 onwards Catholic missionaries would obtain the right to have proselytes in the Dutch colonies. In previous centuries, Catholic missionaries had not had access to the colonies which had been dominated by Dutch Protestants. Yet, even when Catholic missionaries were eventually allowed to spread their creed in the Indies, the centuryold rivalry between Dutch Protestants and Catholics brought about the perception on the part of the ‘natives’ that Calvinism and Catholicism were indeed two different religions. cf. Atkinson 1987:174–8; Azra and Umam 1998:83–113; Lowenhaupt Tsing 1987:197–8; Patty 1986:3, 69; Smith Kipp and Rodgers 1987:14, 20–1. cf. Geoffrey Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali, Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1998, pp. 129–50. See also Nyoman S. Pendit, Bali Berjuang, Jakarta: Gunung Agung, 1979, pp. 130–238; I Gusti Bagus Meraku Tirtayasa, Bergerilya Bersama Ngurah Rai, Denpasar: Penerbit PT BP, 1994. See e.g. I Gusti Ngurah Bagus, ‘Bali in the 1950s: The Role of the Pemuda Pejuang in Balinese Political Processes’, in: Hildred Geertz (ed.) State and Society in Bali, Leiden: KITLV Press, 1991, p. 207. See Chapter 15 of this volume. cf. Bakker 1993:57, 227. Verbal information put forward by Michel Picard at the time of our workshop. Yadav Somvir has been an honoured resident in Bali for several years and himself a member of the Arya Samaj. He introduced me to prominent leaders (Swami Agnivesh, Mr Br.ja¯ nand, and Mr Jagvir Singh) of this organization in Delhi in 1999. The book was first published in Denpasar in the 1950s. Unfortunately, the precise date was not printed in the copy I obtained. It was, however, apparently reprinted a few times. Interview with Pandit Shastri in January 1999. See also Chapter 2 of this volume. See e.g. Pandit Shastri, Intisari Hindu Dharma, Denpasar: Bhuvana Saraswati Publication Bali, n.d., pp. 1, 5–6, 175–6. My translation.

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48 Ibid. 49 cf. e.g. Sri Reshi Anandakusuma, Manifes Satya Hindu Dharma, Klungkung: Satya Hindu Dharma Indonesia, 1985, pp. 6–8; Bakker 1993:226–30; Forge 1980:225–6, 229; Max Lane, Wedastera Suyasa in Balinese Politics 1962–1972, Sydney: BA thesis, Sydney University, 1972, pp. 55–8; Pandit Shastri op. cit.:12; Rudyansjah 1986:50–72, 78–82, 84–90; Subagiasta 1999:68–9, 80–2, 89–90, 103–8, 126–51, 161, 169–95. 50 See also Bakker 1993:58; Patty 1986:3; Rudyansjah 1986:69. 51 See also Dahm 1969:vii, 24, 27–8, 32–43, 56, 67–8, 70, 86, 102, 104, 112–13, 118, 167, 217, 248, 339; Muskens 1969:120–5; Sears 1996:125–6, 131–2, 152–3, 218–25; Tollenaere 1996:343, 352–6, 396, 403. 52 See also Stange 1993. 53 cf. Anshari 1997:49, 65–115; Bocquet-Siek and Cribb 1991:i–iv, 5–27; Cribb and Brown 1995:59–87; Darmaputera 1992:111–13; Muskens 1969:193–247; Wandelt 1988:20–1. 54 cf. Subagiasta 1999:161. 55 See also Bakker 1993:237–8, 265. I Gst. Ngurah Nala and I G.K. Adia Wiratmadja, Murddha Agama Hindu, Denpasar: Upada Sastra, 1993, p. 69; Upadec¸a tentang Ajaran-Ajaran Agama Hindu, Denpasar: Parisada Hindu Dharma 1978, p. 14. 56 cf. Ramstedt 2002:155. See also Chapter 14 of this volume. 57 See also e.g. Hefner 2000:83. With regard to Javanese notions of ‘power’, refer to Benedict Anderson’s famous article ‘The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture’, in: Benedict R. O’G. Anderson Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia, Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1990, pp. 17–77. 58 See e.g. Sartono Kartodirdjo, Ratu Adil, Jakarta: Penerbit Sinar Harapan, 1984. 59 See e.g. Tjahyadi Nugroho (ed.), Mengenal Budaya Bangsa (Tarian Adat – Pakaian Adat and Rumah Adat Daerah). Sumber data: Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, Semarang, Jakarta: Penerbit Yayasan Telapak bekerjasama dengan Penerbit WALCO, 1990. 60 See e.g. Kompilasi Peraturan Perundangan-Undangan Kerukunan Hidup Umat Beragama, Jakarta: Departemen Agama RI, Badan Penelitian Dan Pengembangan Agama, Proyek Peningkatan Kerukunan Hidup Umat Beragama, 1997/1998. 61 See Statistik Indonesia 1982, Jakarta: Pusat Statistik. 62 See e.g. Bakker 1993:238; Beatty 1999:200, 211–21; Cribb and Brown 1995:95–6, 97–128, 136–41; Darmaputera 1992:58–9; Hefner 1989:247–58; Hefner 2000:58–9; Lyon 1977:i, 1–3, 7–8, 16, 27–9, 34–40, 58, 61, 65, 84, 88–103, 116, 123, 145, 149–58, 197, 200–1, 205; McVey 1995:22–3, 25; Michell 1968:28–9, 30, 32; Rex Mortimer, ‘The Downfall of Indonesian Communism’, in: Ralph Miliband and John Saville (eds) The Socialist Register 1969, London: Merlin Press, 1969, pp. 200, 212–14; Muskens 1969:177–8, 250–68; Sebastian Pompe, De Indonesische Algemene Verkiezingen 1999, Leiden: KITLV Press, 1999, pp. 22–3, 85–6, 143, 146; Ramage 1997:17, 23–4; Stange 1986:80, 90; Raharjo Suwandi 2000:32, 37–8, 47, 67, 109–16, 147, 148, 169, 206. 63 See e.g. Bakker 1993:242. 64 Apart from the contributions to this volume, see also Baier 1998; Beatty 1999:211–38; Hefner 1989:239–65; Howell 1977; Howell 1990; Lyon 1977; Lyon 1980; Schiller 1997a:109–31 Schiller 1997b:183, 188, 190–1, 192–5; Smith Kipp 1996:239–52; Vignato 2000; Weinstock 1984:193–5; Widyaprakosa 1994:42–76, 88–90, 91, 102. 65 See e.g. Sri Reshi Anandakusuma, Manifes Satya Hindu Dharma, Klungkung: Satya Hindu Dharma Indonesia, 1985, p. 8. 66 In 2000, former President Abdurrahman Wahid finally officially acknowledged Agama Khonghucu as ‘religion’. His successor, Megawati Sukarnoputri, has not altered its status so far. 67 cf. Lasiyo, Agama Khonghucu: An Emerging Form of Religious Life Among the Indonesian Chinese, London: PhD diss., University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Centre of Religion and Philosophy, 1992, pp. 54–5; Subagiasta 1999:161–2; see also Chapter 3 of this volume. 68 See further below. 69 cf. Darmaputera 1993:115–17; Taher 1998:11, 48–51, 61–3; Wandelt 1988.

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70 See Ashaari Abuya Syeikh Imam Muhammad, Presiden Soeharto Ikut Jadual Allah, London, Kuala Lumpur: Asoib International Limited, 1993. 71 cf. Hefner 2000:xiii–iv, 6, 18–19, 85; Ramage 1997:xvi, 5, 7. 61–7, 75–87, 93, 101–4, 153, 184; Taher 1998:21, 52–3, 71–2, 100–1, 127–8, 177–8. 72 cf. Ramstedt 1999b; Hefner 2000:142. 73 cf. e.g. Hefner 2000:109, 122, 161, 175–80, 189. 74 See e.g. Undang-Undang Otonomi Daerah 1999: UU. No. 22 Th. 1999, UU. No. 25 Th. 1999, UU. No. 28 Th. 1999 Dilengkapi Peraturan Pemerintah RI No. 25 Th. 2000 (Tentang Kewenangan Pemerintah dan Kewenangan Propinsi Sebagai Daerah Otonom), Bandung: Penerbit Citra Umbara, 2000. 75 Two notable exceptions were perhaps the Balinese Mrs Gedong Bagoes Oka and Dr I Gusti Putu Phalgunadi. The former established the well-known Ashram Gandhi Santi Dasa in the village of Candidasa, situated at Bali’s north-eastern coast, in 1976, maintaining close contacts with the Gandhi Peace Foundation in New Delhi throughout the years; cf. e.g. Bakker 1993:195–224; Ramstedt 2000b:12. I Gusti Putu Phalgunadi won a scholarship to carry out research as a fellow of the International Academy of Indian Culture in 1978. He travelled extensively in India in order to do fieldwork, receiving consecutive scholarships by the Government of India (General Culture Scholarship Scheme) and the Indian Council of Historical Research. Phalgunadi finished his studies in 1988 with a PhD dissertation entitled Evolution of Hindu Culture in Bali, which was published in 1991 by Sundeep Prakashan in Delhi. He has been lecturing on Balinese Hinduism at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, and has published several editions with English translations of Old Javanese texts such as the five surviving books of the Old Javanese Maha¯ bha¯ rata (co-published by the Indian Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan in New Delhi between 1990 and 1997). Well versed in both the Balinese and the Indian literary heritage, he has functioned as an important mediator of Balinese Hinduism in India. 76 cf. Bhattacharyya and De 2002:199, 201, 203; Naidu 2002; Singh 2002:23, 29, 33; and also Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘India and Asianism: The Instrumentalisation of an Ideology’, paper presented at a conference in Dakar, 2000, pp. 2, 3, 4, 16–17, 18–24, 39, 41. 77 See also Chapter 15 of this volume as well as Ramstedt 2000a. 78 See the unpublished Data Statistik Tahun 1997, Jakarta: Departemen Agama RI, Direktorat Bimbingan Masyarakat Hindu dan Buddha, p. 3. 79 See e.g. Geertz 1993:175–89; Howell 1977:1–15; Lyon 1977:1–7; Schiller 1997a:109–16; Smith Kipp and Rodgers 1987:12–13, 22; Smith Kipp 1996:243–51; Vignato 2000:29–43. 80 cf. Kaviraj 2000:53. 81 For a more detailed exposition of the discussion, refer to Martin Ramstedt, Weltbild, Heilspragmatik und Herrschaftslegitimation im vorkolonialen Bali – Eine Analyse des höfischen Diskurses, Frankfurt etc.: Peter Lang, 1998, pp. 50–63, 140–55. 82 cf. Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie II, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), [1921] 1988, pp. 8–21. 83 The terms ‘great tradition’ and ‘little tradition’ were coined by Robert Redfield. See e.g. his two works: Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955; and The Primitive World and Its Transformations, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956. 84 cf. McKim Marriot, ‘Little Communities in an Indigenous Civilization’, in: McKim Marriot (ed.) Village India, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955. 85 cf. M.N. Srinivas, ‘The Cohesive Role of Sanskritization’, in: M.N. Srinivas The Cohesive Role of Sanskritization and Other Essays, Delhi et al.: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 56–72. See also K.K. Gangadharan, Sociology of Revivalism: A Study of Indianization, Sanskritization and Golwakarism, New Dehli: Kalamkar Prakashan, 1970, pp. 58–71; and Milton Singer, When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization, New York, Washington, London: Praeger Publishers, 1972, pp. 44, 47. 86 Singer 1972 (see note above): vii-x, xii, 4, 46–50, 55–196, 260–70, 272–335, 348–50, 359. 87 Ibid.:194. 88 cf. e.g. Frykenberg 1989; King 1999; Stietencron 1989; Stietencron 1997.

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Bibliography Anshari, H. Endang Saifuddin (1997) Piagam Jakarta 22 Juni 1945: Sebuah Konsensus Nasional Tentang Dasar Negara Republik Indonesia (1945–1949), Jakarta: Gema Insani. Atkinson, Jane M. (1987) ‘Religions in Dialogue: The Construction of an Indonesian Minority Religion’, in: Rita Smith Kipp and Susan Rodgers (eds) Indonesian Religions in Transition, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, pp. 171–86. Azra, Azyumardi and Umam, Saiful (eds) (1998) Menteri-Menteri Agama RI: Biografi Sosial-Politik, Jakarta: Indonesian–Netherlands Cooperation in Islamic Studies (INIS) & Pusat Pengkajian Islam dan Masyarakat (PPIM) & Badan Litbang Agama Departemen Agama RI. Bagus, I Gusti Ngurah (1969) Pertentangan Kasta dalam Bentuk Baru pada Masyarakat Baru, Denpasar: Universitas Udayana. –––– (1999) Renungan Empat Puluh Tahun PHDI untuk Menyejarah, Denpasar: Forum Penyadaran Dharma. Baier, Martin (1998) ‘Die Hindu Kaharingan-Religion als beispielloser Fall eines nachchristlichen Nativismus’, in: Tribus, Jahrbuch des Linden-Museums, Nr. 47, Stuttgart: Linden-Museum, Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, pp. 49–54. Bakker, F.L. (1993) The Struggle of the Hindu Balinese Intellectuals: Developments in Modern Hindu Thinking in Independent Indonesia, Amsterdam: VU University Press. Beatty, Andrew (1999) Varieties of Javanese Religion: An Anthropological Account, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Bhattacharyya, B. and De, Prithwis K. (2002) ‘Indonesia’s Foreign Trade’, in: Satish Chandra and Baladas Ghoshal (eds) Indonesia: A New Beginning? New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, pp. 195–217. Bocquet-Siek, Margaret, and Cribb, Robert B. (1991) Islam and the Panca Sila, South East Asian Monograph Series No. 28. University of North Queensland, Centre for Southeast Asian Studies. Cribb, Robert and Brown, Colin (1995) Modern Indonesia: A History Since 1945, London and New York: Longman. Dahm, Bernhard (1969) Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Darmaputera, Eka (1992) Pancasila: Identitas dan Modernitas. Tinjauan Etis dan Budaya, Jakarta: Gunung Mulia. Drewes, G.W.J. (1966) ‘The Struggle between Javanism and Islam as Illustrated by the Serat Dermagand.ul’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 122, ‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 309–65. Forge, Anthony (1980) ‘Balinese Religion and Indonesian Identity’, in: James Fox, Ross Garnaut, Peter McCawley, and J.A.C. Mackie (eds) Indonesia: Australian Perspectives, Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, pp. 221–33. Frykenberg, Robert Eric (1989) ‘The Emergence of Modern “Hinduism” as a Concept and as an Institution: A Reappraisal with Special Reference to South India’, in: Günther D. Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered, Delhi: Manohar, pp. 29–49. Geertz, Clifford [1973] (1993) ‘ “Internal Conversion” in Contemporary ali’, in: Clifford Geertz The Interpretation of Cultures, London: Fontana Press, pp. 170–89. Hefner, Robert W. (1989) Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam, Princeton: Princeton University Press. –––– (2000) Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Howell, Julia (1977) Vehicles for the Kalki Avatar: The Experience of a Javanese Guru in Rationalizing Ecstatic Religion, Ann Arbor: UMI. –––– (1990) ‘Origin of the Hindu Renaissance in Java: Monism in the Early Writings of W. Hardjanto Pradjapangarsa’, Religious Traditions, A Journal in the Study of Religion, Sydney: The Department of Religious Studies, The University of Sydney, pp. 107–33.

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Kaviraj, Sudipta (2000) ‘Hinduism and Tolerance’, in: Religions and Tolerance: Sixth Symposium of the Series ‘The East–The West’, vol. 20, Publications of the Japanese-German Center Berlin Series. Berlin: Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin, pp. 51–61. King, Richard (1999) Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and ‘The Mystic East’, London and New York: Routledge. Lasiyo (1992) Agama Khonghucu: An Emerging Form of Religious Life Among the Indonesian Chinese, London: PhD diss., University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Centre of Religion and Philosophy. Lowenhaupt Tsing, Anna (1987) ‘A Rhetoric of Centers in a Religion of the Periphery’, in: Rita Smith Kipp and Susan Rodgers (eds) Indonesian Religions in Transition, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, pp. 187–210. Lyon, Margaret L. (1977) Politics and Religious Identity: Genesis of a Javanese-Hindu Movement in Rural Central Java, Berkeley: PhD diss., University of California. –––– 1980) ‘Hindu Revival in Java: Politics and Religious Identity’, in: James Fox, Ross Garnaut, Peter McCawley, and J.A.C. Mackie (eds) Indonesia: Australian Perspectives, Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, pp. 205–20. McVey, Ruth (1995) Redesigning the Cosmos: Belief Systems and State Power in Indonesia, NIAS Reports No. 14, revised edn, Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Indonesian Studies. Michell, David (1968) ‘Communists, Mystics and Sukarnoism’, Dissent (autumn 1968), pp. 28–32. Muskens, Martinus P.M. (1969) Indonesië: Een strijd om nationale identiteit. Nationalisten/islamieten/katholieken, Bussum: Uitgeverij Paul Brand. Naidu, G.V.C. (2002) ‘India and Maritime Security in Southeast Asia’, in: Satish Chandra and Baladas Ghoshal (eds) Indonesia: A New Beginning? New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, pp. 271–99. Patty, Semuel Agustinus (1986) ‘Aliran Kepercayaan’: A Socio-Religious Movement in Indonesia, Ann Arbor: UMI. Pringgodigdo, A.K. (1966) Tiga Undang-Undang Dasar, Djakarta: P.T. Pembangunan. Rafi’udin and Maman Abdul Djaliel (1997) Prinsip dan Strategi Dakwah, Bandung: Pustaka Setia. Ramage, Douglas E. [1995] (1997) Politics in Indonesia: Democracy, Islam and the Ideology of Tolerance, London and New York: Routledge. Ramstedt, Martin (1996) ‘Hindu Dharma Indonesia – Das Verhältnis zwischen Religion und Staat bei der Entwicklung des Hinduismus im modernen Indonesien’, in: Martin Klein and Jens Krause (eds) Umbruch in Südostasien. Fachbeiträge der Tagung des Arbeitskreises Südostasien/Ozeanien Berlin 1995, Hamburg: Abera-Verlag, pp. 135–41. –––– (1998) ‘Negotiating Identities – “Hinduism” in Modern Indonesia’, IIAS Newsletter 17, p. 50. –––– (1999a) ‘Hinduismus und Naturkulte’, in: Bernhard Dahm and Roderik Ptak (eds) Südostasienhandbuch, München: C.H. Beck, pp. 403–14. –––– (1999b) ‘Muslim–Hindu Relations in Contemporary Indonesia’, ISIM Newsletter 4, p. 14. –––– (2000a) ‘Relations Between Hindus in Modern Indonesia and India’, IIAS Newsletter 23 (Oct. 2000), pp. 8–9. –––– (2000b) ‘Two Balinese Hindu Intellectuals – Ibu Gedong Bagoes Oka and Prof. I Gusti Ngurah Bagus’, IIAS Newsletter 23 (Oct. 2000), pp. 12–13. –––– (2002) ‘Hinduism in Modern Indonesia’, in: Satish Chandra and Baladas Ghoshal (eds) Indonesia: A New Beginning? New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, pp. 140–68. Rudyansyah, Tony (1986) Modernization and Religion on Bali: A Cultural-Sociological Study of the Parisada Hindu Dharma, Jakarta: MA thesis in cultural anthropology, Faculty of Postgraduate Studies, University of Indonesia. Schiller, Anne (1997a) Small Sacrifices: Religious Change and Cultural Identity among the Ngaju of Indonesia, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. –––– (1997b) ‘Religion and Identity in Central Kalimantan: The Case of the Ngaju Dayaks’, in: Robert L. Winzeler (ed.) Indigenous Peoples and the State: Politics, Land, and Ethnicity in the Malayan Peninsula and Borneo, New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, pp. 180–200.

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Sears, Laurie J. (1996) Shadows of Empire: Colonial Discourse and Javanese Tales, Durham, London: Duke University Press. Singh, S.K. (2002) ‘Indonesia and India – A Perspective’, in: Satish Chandra and Baladas Ghoshal (eds) Indonesia: A New Beginning? New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, pp. 23–34. Smith-Hefner, Nancy (1996) ‘The Litany of “The World’s Beginning”: A Hindu-Javanese Purification Text’, in: Stephen C. Headley (ed.) Vers une anthropologie de la prière: études ethnolinguistiques javanaises/Toward an anthropology of prayer: Javanese ethnolinguistic studies, Aix-enProvence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, pp. 259–306. Smith Kipp, Rita (1996) Dissociated Identities: Ethnicity, Religion and Class in an Indonesian Society, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. –––– and Rodgers, Susan (1987) ‘Introduction: Indonesian Religions in Society’, in: Rita Smith Kipp and Susan Rodgers (eds) Indonesian Religions in Transition, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, pp. 1–31. Stange, Paul (1986) ‘“Legitimate” Mysticism in Indonesia’, RIMA (Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs) 20/2, Sydney: The Department of Indonesian and Malayan Studies, The University of Sydney, pp. 76–117. –––– (1993) ‘Inner Dimensions of the Indonesian Revolution’, in: Laurie J. Sears (ed.) Autonomous Histories, Particular Truths: Essays in Honor of John R.W. Smail, Monograph No. 11, Madison: University of Wisconsin, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 219–43. Stietencron, Heinrich (1989) ‘Hinduism: On the Proper Use of a Deceptive Term’, in: Günther D. Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered, Delhi: Manohar, pp. 11–27. –––– (1997) Hindu Religious Traditions and the Concept of ‘Religion’, Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Subagiasta, I Ketut (1999) Reformasi Agama Hindu dalam Perubahan Sosial di Bali 1950–1959, Denpasar: Program Pascasarjana Universitas Udayana. Supartha, Wayan (ed.) (1994) Memahami Aliran Kepercayaan, Denpasar: Penerbit BP. Suwandi, Raharjo (2000) A Quest for Justice. The Millenary Aspirations of a Contemporary Javanese Wali, Leiden: KITLV Press. Taher, H. Tarmizi (1998) Menuju Ummatan Wasathan. Kerukunan Beragama di Indonesia, Jakarta: Pusat Pengkajian Islam dan Masyarakat (PPIM) – IAIN. Tollenaere, Herman A.O. de (1996) The Politics of Divine Wisdom: Theosophy and labour, national, and women’s movements in Indonesia and South Asia 1875–1947, Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. Vignato, Silvia (2000) Au nom de l’hindouisme: reconfigurations ethniques chez les Tamouls et les Karo en Indonésie, Paris: L’Harmattan. Wandelt, Ingo (1988) Der Weg zum Pancasila-Menschen. Die Pancasila-Lehre unter dem P4-Beschluß des Jahres 1978, Entwicklung und Struktur der indonesischen Staatslehre, Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York, Paris: Peter Lang. Weinstock, Joseph A. (1984) Kaharingan and the Luangan Dayaks: Religion and Identity in Central-East Borneo, Ann Arbor: UMI. –––– (1987) ‘Kaharingan: Life and Death in Southern Borneo’, in: Rita Smith Kipp and Susan Rodgers (eds) Indonesian Religions in Transition, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, pp. 71–97. Widyaprakosa, Simanhadi (1994) Masyarakat Tengger: Latar Belakang Daerah Taman Nasional Bromo, Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius. Wijaya, I Nyoman (1996) Orientasi Sejarah: Budaya Hindu dalam Pemikiran Politik Masa Lampau, Denpasar: Fakultas Sastra Universitas Udayana.

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2 THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN THE DUTCH EAST INDIES, 1880–1942 Herman de Tollenaere

This chapter will try to answer the question concerning the extent to which the Theosophical Society disseminated Hindu concepts as well as ideas on Hinduism in the Dutch East Indies. In order to clarify this issue, it is useful to consider first the more general role played by the Theosophical Society in the Indies in the period from 1880 (the year in which the first local lodge was founded) to 1942 (the beginning of the Japanese occupation).

The Theosophical Society Let us start with some preliminaries. The term ‘theosophy’, in a broad sense, refers to various ways within different religions to acquire knowledge of God or of ‘higher realms’. In a much more narrow sense, ‘Theosophy’1 is the ideology of the Theosophical Society and can also be applied to the teachings of individuals and groups that have adopted key ideas and concepts of the Theosophical Society, regardless of whether they have acknowledged the influence of the Theosophical Society. The leaders of the Theosophical Society (TS) defined Theosophy as ‘Divine Wisdom’, claiming that it – i.e. an amalgamation of ‘ancient Egyptian magic’, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christian mysticism, and Social Darwinism – was higher than any conventional religion.2 The TS was founded in 1875 in New York by the Russian Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the American Colonel Henry Olcott, and fourteen other Americans with the practical aim of learning how to evoke nature spirits by the supposed magical properties of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Thus, the TS started out as an ‘occult’ society rather than as an organization steeped in Oriental wisdom. The spiritual leader of the society was the charismatic Madame Blavatsky, whereas its president was the pragmatic Olcott. Four years later, Blavatsky and Olcott thought India to be a more congenial environment for the activities of their society. Having first arrived in India in 1879, they established the headquarters of the TS in Adyar (adjacent to Madras) in 1883. In 1907, the Englishwoman Annie Besant succeeded Olcott as president of the TS. She again was succeeded in 1934 by her compatriot George Arundale, who was married to the renowned Indian dancer, Rukmini Devi.

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The TS in the Dutch East Indies Shortly after Blavatsky and Olcott had gone to India, i.e. between 1880 and 1883, the German Baron von Tengnagell3 founded the first TS lodge in the Dutch East Indies, that is, in Pekalongan, a town on Java’s north coast.4 It has been said that Madame Blavastsky herself visited Java three times, but we do not have precise information on these supposed visits. The Pekalongan lodge had, in any case, declined by 1885. Von Tengnagell died in Bogor in 1893, and by that time enthusiasm for Theosophy seemed to have fizzled out. After the turn of the century, however, there was a renewed interest in Theosophy with the TS starting to influence very much the social and political life of the Dutch East Indies. The first issue of the monthly Theosofisch Maandblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië was published (in the Dutch language) in July 1901.5 Twelve years later, half of its subscribers were non-TS members.6 In 1903, there were already five lodges, all located in Java.7 All of their officials were Dutch, except for the president of the Yogyakarta lodge, Raden Mas Toemenggoeng Pandji Djajeng Irawan, who was a Javanese prince.8 By 1910, the establishment of five more lodges had followed.9 In September 1905, the first issue of Pewarta Théosofie boewat tanah Hindia Nederland (PT ) came out.10 This magazine was not only written in the Javanese language, but also in Low Malay (Bahasa Melayu Rendah), the lingua franca of the Dutch East Indies. It was aimed at a wider readership beyond the boundaries of East and Central Java, attracting 200 subscribers already after its second issue had appeared.11 In 1910, the lodge in Bandung published Chabar.12 From the 1920s, a magazine, written solely in the Javanese language, Koemandang Theosofie (Light of Theosophy), catered to the growing Javanese sympathizers of Theosophy. Besides, there was Rasa, a Theosophical magazine in both the Javanese language and in Low Malay.13 In 1924 and 1925, the Goenoeng Sari group of the Order of the Star in the East, an organization close to the TS that promoted Jiddu Krishnamurti as the human vehicle for the coming great ‘World Teacher’, published the Sterlicht magazine. On 6 April 1912, the TS headquarters in Adyar recognized the Dutch East Indies as an autonomous section,14 with Annie Besant announcing that ‘[i]t is pleasant to chronicle the formation of a National Society in Java, which now feels strong enough to stand on its own feet, without the support of its mother, the T.S. in the Netherlands’.15 The lodges in the Dutch East Indies still retained many links with the lodges in the Netherlands though. In 1913, Baroness Mellina van Asbeck, daughter of the Dutch ambassador to Paris, visited the Indies via Adyar to lecture on morality and evolution.16 Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, two TS general secretaries in the Netherlands, J. Kruisheer and J. van der Leeuw, had come from the colony, where they had owned printing presses and the big Van Nelle business corporation, respectively. Conversely, Dirk van Hinloopen Labberton, who was general secretary of the TS in the Dutch East Indies from 1900 to 1921, originally came from the eastern part of the Netherlands. After he had come to the Indies, he was at first the director of a sugar factory and later a high-ranking government official as well as a member of the Volksraad.

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Membership of the TS in the Dutch East Indies From what I have related above, it can already be inferred that the TS in the Dutch East Indies drew a significant part of its membership from the Dutch upper class and Javanese nobility. Let us now take a closer look at the numbers, social status, ethnic affiliation, gender, and age of the TS membership. In June 1906, the TS in the Dutch East Indies was said to have 200 members. By 1913, it had already doubled, the 533 members comprising 331 Europeans, 177 natives, and twenty-five Chinese.17 And in 1919, membership had again doubled, amounting to 1,300 people.18 With regard to gender, we know that in 1925, out of 1,735 fellows of the Theosophical Society, 448 (i.e. 25.82 per cent) were women, most of them of European origin. The numbers we have with regard to age show that 20.20 per cent of all the members were under twenty-one years of age; 55.89 per cent were between twenty-one and forty years of age; 36.87 per cent between forty-one and sixty; and 5.2 per cent over sixty years of age.19 Considering the under-representation of the latter age group, it has to be taken into account that Dutch pensioners often went back to the Netherlands and rather few ‘natives’ reached that age. Compared to the total number of female members, only a few women contributed to the Theosofisch Maandblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië as authors: between 1918 and 1920, 12.8 per cent of its articles were written by women – 7.7 per cent by Dutch women; 3.6 per cent by the international president of the TS, Annie Besant; and 1.5 per cent by other women from outside the Dutch East Indies.20 In 1937, the heads of the different TS lodges in the Indies consisted of one Dutch woman, nine Dutch men, one Chinese, and three Javanese.21 Eventually, the Theosophical Society was more successful among the Dutch in the East Indies than among the Dutch in the Netherlands. Both social and religious differences between the society of the motherland and the colonial society help to explain this fact. In the colony, the influence of the Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church was comparatively weaker than in the Netherlands. Furthermore, the Dutch in the Indies were comparatively better off than the majority of the people back home. Regarding themselves as the elite of their society, the colonial Dutch apparently tended to be more receptive to the teachings of the TS, such as the teaching that there exists a natural hierarchy of races – the white ‘Aryan’ race, of course, being the top of the crop – and that it is owing to the good karma from previous incarnations that they have acquired their present privileged position.22 In 1930, the membership of the TS in the Dutch East Indies had reached its peak: 2,090 members, 1,006 of whom were European. These made up nearly 0.5 per cent of all the Dutch living in the Indies. They formed the highest proportion of Theosophists with respect to the total local population anywhere in the world. There were 876 members classified as ‘natives’ (Indonesian) and 208 as ‘foreign Orientals’, i.e. Asians originating from outside the Dutch East Indies. About 190 of the latter were Chinese and about twenty were Indian.23 One should not try to link the question of Indian influence in the Dutch East Indies as mediated through the TS to the comparatively small number of its Indian members living in the archipelago. This would be as mistaken as trying to link it

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to the small number of TS supporters in the so-called ‘Hindu’ areas of Bali and Lombok. For us, the views of European and Javanese members of the TS are much more relevant, even though the Europeans were often nominally Christian (they were frequently members of the Liberal Catholic Church, which was closely associated with the TS) and the Javanese were mostly nominal Muslims. But it was predominantly through their agency that images of India, Hinduism, and Buddhism were disseminated among the wider population of the Indies. Geographically, the activities of the TS as well as their membership were concentrated on Java. Most ‘native’ members were Javanese priyayi, i.e. Javanese aristocrats. West Sumatran and Balinese noblemen were represented in the TS membership to a much lesser extent. One influential ‘native’ Theosophist was Raden Mas Soetatmo Soeriokoesoemo (1888–1924), a member of the Paku Alam ruling dynasty of Yogyakarta. Besides, he was a delegate to the Volksraad, the largely powerless colonial ‘parliament’, as well as a political theoretician. As a ‘Javanist’ (R. Hefner), he rejected equally allIndonesian nationalism, Marxism, Islam, and democracy, which had emerged as political programmes in the early twentieth century. Instead, he advocated an aristocratic and spiritual version of ‘Javanese nationalism’, which he based on Theosophical interpretations of Indian concepts such as the caste system, interpretations that had been advanced mainly by Europeans. Like Theosophists in other countries, who were defending social hierarchies perceived as being under threat by socio-cultural change, Soetatmo associated the new political ideas promoting egalitarianism with what the TS called the sudra, the lowest ‘caste’ of a given society, incapable of the wise esoteric insights of their social superiors. Soetatmo’s ideas concerning such ‘natural hierarchy’, by the way, resurfaced much later among General Suharto’s ideologists who designed what was to be called the ‘New Order’.

The Theosophical Society and the Indië Weerbaar controversy One of the central political issues in the Dutch East Indies from 1916 until 1918 was whether the plan of the Dutch colonial government to introduce conscription for natives would go ahead. To promote the plan, a non-governmental committee, consisting mainly of Dutch businessmen, officials, and military officers, was founded. Its name was Indië Weerbaar. Opponents of the conscription plan insinuated that Indië Weerbaar was in reality a pro-government organization. In any case, many of its leading supporters were Theosophists. And the government hoped to profit from the links that the Theosophical Society had established with members of both the Dutch and the native, i.e. for the most part Javanese, elite. The TS seemed a logical ally in this respect since it consistently tried to support native participation, albeit only that of the native elite, in the political affairs of British India as well as those of the Dutch East Indies. This was indeed one of the attractions the TS had for ‘native’ intellectuals who were proud of their ethnic identities. The Indië Weerbaar issue gave Theosophical leaders like Dirk van Hinloopen Labberton much publicity, but not necessarily of the kind they had hoped for. The

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idea that natives should be conscripted for the colonial armed forces turned out to be deeply unpopular with those to whom this issue was addressed, especially the poor. Mass demonstrations against the conscription plan made the natives’ position quite clear. By the end of First World War, the conscription plan was a lost cause. Consequently, the prominent role that was played by the leaders of the TS in the promotion of a ‘native militia’ significantly decreased the popularity of the TS among the indigenous population. The course of the TS suffered a further setback in the eyes of the emerging Indonesian nationalists when Annie Besant, who was president of the international TS from 1907 until 1934 and renowned for her support for Indian nationalism in general, opposed Gandhi’s policy of non-cooperation with the colonial government. Her position in turn determined the official stance of the TS in the Dutch East Indies from the 1920s onwards. Advocating the political participation of educated members of the native nobility, especially the Javanese nobility, the TS nevertheless expressed its disdain for any radical position that sought to liberate the Indies from Dutch colonial rule. The ‘reactionary’ attitude of the official representatives of the TS alienated Indonesian nationalist leaders like Sukarno and Hatta who had initially been quite close to the TS. The seed of Sukarno’s interest in Theosophy had most probably been planted by his father, a known Theosophist, but it had been further stimulated by some of his spiritual gurus, one of them being the renowned Dr Radjiman. Hatta, on his part, had received a student scholarship that had been funded by the TS. Given the TS’s support for the participation of educated members of the native nobility in the political affairs of the Indies, it is not so surprising to find that quite a considerable number of members of the Volksraad were Theosophists. The Volksraad was established in 1918 as a kind of parliament, which acted more like an advisory council for the colonial government, for it was not invested with real power. In 1921, five out of its thirty-nine members were Theosophists. Their number was proportionally much higher than the percentage of Theosophists among the total population. Theosophists continued to be well presented among Volksraad delegates. The Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945 initiated the eclipse of Theosophical influence in the archipelago. During the occupation, many Dutch members of the Theosophical Society were interned; others had fled their former colony. When in 1945, the independence movement under the leadership of Sukarno declared the independence of Indonesia and successfully defended it in Java and parts of Sumatra, those radical forces that had been fiercely opposed by the TS (which on its part was henceforth identified with Dutch colonial interests) had come to power. Thus, it is no wonder that when the Dutch returned to reappropriate their former colony, the Theosophical Society was banned in those parts of the archipelago that were controlled by the government of the Republic of Indonesia. After Indonesia had gained full independence as a unitary nation-state in 1950, this ban was rescinded, most probably due to the influence of Javanese nationalists still favourably inclined to Theosophy. However, the TS was never to regain its former influence, although it has survived as a tiny minority organization until today.

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The dissemination of Indian thought through the Theosophical Society In the early twentieth century, the TS functioned as an important intermediary between India and the West. Not only was its headquarters, since 1883, located in India (Adyar, adjacent to Madras), it also had a great following among the educated Indian elite, since it integrated and promoted both Brahmanic and Buddhist teachings as an integral part of Theosophy and regarded the ancient ‘Aryans’ as an enlightened ‘race’, to the descendants of which both the Indian Brahmins and the Europeans belonged. On the other hand, Theosophy had made a large inroad into those circles of Western society that had become disenchanted with the increasing industrialization, modernization, and ‘undiscriminating’ democratization of the Western societies. These circles consisted largely of members of the European nobility as well as of the European and American ‘bourgeoisie’. In India, Theosophists had close contacts with Indian philosophers and artists such as Rabindranath Tagore, who had been warmly received by Dutch and Javanese Theosophists as well as Balinese ‘Hindu’ intellectuals when visiting Java and Bali in 1927, and Indian political activists such as Gandhi. The political discussions between Gandhi and Annie Besant were followed, as I have already mentioned, by Theosophists in the Dutch East Indies as well. Apart from Gandhi, there were also other Indian and Hindu nationalists who opposed the views of the Theosophical Society in British India. The famous founder of the Ramakrishna Mission, Swami Vivekananda, for example, called Theosophy ‘this Indian grafting of American Spiritualism – with only a few Sanskrit words taking the place of spiritualistic jargon’, rejecting TS involvement in the Hindu revival in India: ‘Hindus . . . do not stand in need of dead ghosts of Russians and Americans!’ He also regretted to see Indian religion and culture represented abroad almost exclusively by Theosophists.24 In 1911, adherents of various Indian religions publicly stated the fact that Theosophy differed from their respective faiths, as reported by the Madras daily The Hindu: Representatives of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Islam wrote to the paper condemning Theosophy, and noting that while in theory members of any religion could join the TS and continue to practise their faiths, in fact they were obliged to adopt a collection of doctrines and ideas which was inconsistent with any of them.25 Even C.W. Leadbeater, a prominent spiritual leader within the TS, cautioned his flock: ‘you must not take it for granted when you meet with any of our Theosophical terms, in Hindu or Buddhist books, that they mean exactly the same thing. Very often they do not’.26 The German indologists Jörg Wichmann and Helmut von Glasenapp27 competently pointed out the differences between Theosophy, on the one hand, and Indian . thought, especially Advaita Veda¯ nta and Samkhya, to which Theosophists refer most, on the other hand. It is impossible to provide a full analysis of all the pertinent

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terms here, but let us take a brief look at the concept of akasha, the concept of karma, and the reincarnation doctrine. Whereas the original meaning of the Sanskrit word akas´a means space, denoting one of the five cosmic elements (space, fire, earth, water, air), Madame Blavatsky invested akasha with a vast memory that stores all events that occur throughout time, calling it the ‘akasha chronicle’, a record which the paranormally gifted can tap into in order to know past and future events. The Theosophical notion of karma is much more ‘idealist’ in a philosophical sense than Indian understandings of karma. Physical disease, for instance, is seen as the karma of a previous life in which spiritual activities were neglected. This stands in contrast to Indian notions according to which bad karma is the result of actual wrongdoing. After Blavatsky had moved to India together with Olcott in 1879, the doctrine of reincarnation became central to her teachings, having hardly mentioned it in her first book Isis Unveiled, published in 1877, or in other previous writings and private conversations.28 Yet, the idea of reincarnation within Theosophy is connected to a notion of time different from that in the original Hindu worldview. Whereas cyclical notions of time determine the latter, Theosophy supposes teleology in the cosmos. This becomes apparent, for example, in the Theosophical belief that human souls will always reincarnate in human form and not in animal or divine form. According to Hindu notions of reincarnation, human souls may reincarnate anywhere in the spectrum of life forms. In the Dutch East Indies, Theosophical interpretations of Indian thought were disseminated not only directly through the events and study groups organized by the TS, but also indirectly through Javanese schoolteachers associated with the Javanese nationalist Budi Utomo movement. The former assistant resident and Theosophist, C.A.H. von Wolzogen Kühr, opined that the ancient ‘Aryan colonialists’ in the archipelago were the predecessors of the modern ‘Aryan Hindu Dutch’.29 To Javanese priyayi, Theosophists explained that their relative privileges within the colonial society resulted from the fact that their culture originated from the civilization of the ancient Aryan invaders. Thus, Theosophy linked the ‘golden and glorious Hindu-Javanese past’ of the time of the empires of Mataram, Kadiri, Singasari, and Majapahit (which was then being reconstructed by the Dutch indologen) to Dutch colonial rule. Those members of the indigenous intelligentsia who felt attracted to this line of reasoning were mainly Javanese nationalists and Balinese ‘Hindus’. Javanese nationalists of noble background rediscovered Bali as the key to the ‘golden past’ of their Hindu-Javanese ancestors. The first Javanese Theosophist to actually go to Bali was Mas Djono, who had moved to Denpasar in 1915. Later, Prince Mangkoe Negoro VII, who was closely associated with the TS, visited Bali as well.30 Raden Mas Soetatmo Soeriokoesoemo even went for three years, from 1918 to 1921. He viewed Bali as being religiously purer than Java and supported ‘Balinese religion’ as a counterweight to orthodox Javanese Islam. He therefore earned the distrust of some Dutch colonial officials who tried to favour Roman Catholic missionaries in Bali.31 There was, however, at that time still no formal TS lodge in Bali. In 1934, TS General Secretary Van Leeuwen decided to spend his holiday in Bali. There,

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as well as in Lombok, he met Dutch members of the TS, for example, ‘Sister De Jong, who keeps Theosophy’s torch burning in Denpasar’ and ‘Brother Ooterdoom in Ampenan [Lombok]’.32 By 1937, the Javanese Theosophist Raden Mas Koesoemodihardjo, having returned from a trip to the neighbouring island, could mention the Adnjana Nirmala lodge recently founded in Bali. It had sixteen members, and the Balinese aristocrat I Goesti Ketoet Djelantik was its president.33 In Lombok, a TS lodge was established on the western, predominantly ‘Hindu’ part of the island.34

Conclusion Theosophical influence in the Dutch East Indies made itself felt among the Dutch as well as the Javanese, Balinese, and Chinese between 1900 and 1916, with common membership in the Theosophical Society constituting one of the relatively few social ties between them. The 1916–18 controversy on military conscription of natives propelled Theosophists to the zenith of publicity. However, the ensuing resistance to the conscription plan among the non-elite, indigenous population marked the limits of Theosophical influence. The socio-political forces uniting in that resistance continued to organize themselves in the labour and nationalist movements of the 1918–42 period, a time which marked the slow but certain decline of the influence of the Theosophical Society as a formal organization. However, its influence continued in the 1950s and 1960s through informal mediation in Javanist (kejawen, kebatinan) circles, Chinese and Buddhist circles, and in the Hindu movement in Bali and Java.

Notes 1 Subsequently, I will use ‘Theosophy’ to denote the teachings of the Theosophical Society. 2 cf. Blavatsky 1987:1. The founders of the TS had come across the word ‘theosophy’ in the Webster’s dictionary and had subsequently imbued it with their own meaning. cf. Theosophical History (July 1986), p. 177. 3 Spelling in The Theosophist (Madras: The Theosophical Society, October 1883), p. 25: ‘F. de Tengnegell’. 4 Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië, ’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1917–1939, Vol. VI, p. 763, says 1883; Theosofie in Nederlandsch-Indië, Bandung: Nederlandsch-Indische Theosofische Vereeniging, January 1936, p. 23, has 1880; and Nugraha 1989:2 has 1881. 5 cf. Nugraha 1989:24; Tsuchiya 1987:42. 6 cf. Hinloopen Labberton 1913:3. Theosofie in Nederlandsch-Indië was for members only, while the Theosofisch Maandblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië could also be subscribed to by outsiders. 7 They were, in the order of their founding, the lodges in Semarang, Surabaya, Bogor, Yogyakarta, and Surakarta. 8 In 1905, he was still the only non-Dutch official serving in the TS lodges of the Dutch East Indies. 9 cf. Theosofie in Nederlandsch-Indië (July 1937), p. 113. They were, in the order of their founding, the lodges in Bandung, Batavia, Klaten, Medan, and Malang. With the exception of Medan (Sumatra), all the other towns were located on the island of Java. 10 cf. Ahmat B. Adam, The Vernacular Press and the Emergence of Modern Indonesian Consciousness (1855–1913), London: PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1984, p. 350. 11 cf. The Theosophist (March 1906), p. 476; Tiemersma 1907:216. In 1918 and 1919, PT advertised the Sundanese translations of two theosophical books: a book by Annie Besant

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12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33

on Islam and the famous At the Feet of the Master by Krishnamurti. Four years earlier, TS leader D. van Hinloopen Labberton expressed the view that ‘the Sundanese [are] less civilized than the true Javanese of the centre and the Eastern part’; cf. Netherlands East India. Geographical and Ethnological. No. I. Essays, published by Netherlands East Indian San Francisco Committee. Department of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, Semarang: V. Dorp & Co., 1914, p. 19. More strongly Islamized, the Sundanese were regarded as more distant from Theosophy. cf. The Theosophist (October 1910), p. 155. cf. Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië, Vol. VI, ’s-Gravenhage, Nijhoff, 1917–1939, p. 764. cf. The Theosophist, suppl. (May 1912), p. vi; Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië, Vol. VI, ’s-Gravenhage, Nijhoff, 1917–1939, p. 763; De Theosofische Beweging, Amsterdam: Nederlandsche Afdeeling der Theosophische Vereeniging, April 1931, p. 173. cf. Annie Besant, ‘On the Watch-Tower’, The Theosophist (June 1912), p. 327. cf. Hinloopen Labberton 1913:6–8. cf. Tiemersma 1907:214; Hinloopen Labberton 1913:469. See Fournier’s article on ‘Occulte Werkzaamheid’ in the Theosofisch Maandblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Semarang: De Theosofische Vereeniging Semarang, Centraal-Indische Loge Semarang, 1919, p. 511. cf. Nugraha 1989:277. cf. Tollenaere 1996:292. The three Javanese were Raden Mas Koesoemodihardjo, Soemardjo, and Kadiroen Mangoenpoernomo; cf. Theosofie in Nederlandsch-Indië, (July 1937), p. 114; Theosofie in Nederlandsch-Indië (December 1934), p. 152. cf. Tollenaere 1996:192–3. cf. The Theosophist (April 1931), p. 24; Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië, Vol. VI, ’sGravenhage, Nijhoff, 1917–1939, p. 763. cf. Swami Vivekananda Complete Works, Vol. III, Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1964, p. 209, and Vol. IV, p. 318. cf. Tillett 1982:140n. See also E. Richmond, ‘Theosophy the Source of All Religions’, The Theosophist (October 1898), p. 9: ‘The claim made for Theosophy that it is the source of all religions is a very large one, and one that meets with much opposition from members of some of the religions of the world’. cf. C.W.L. Leadbeater, Talks on ‘At the feet of the Master’, Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1922, p. 498. cf. Wichmann 1983:25, 31–3; Glasenapp 1960:196–202. This is confirmed by H.S. Olcott, Old Diary Leaves. The True Story of the Theosophical Society, New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1895, p. 278. cf. Tollenaere 1996:302–3. cf. Nugraha 1989:243; see also C. Lekkerkerker, ‘Oud Hindoeisme en jong nationalisme’, De Gids (September 1918), p. 472; Overzicht der Inlandsche en Chinees-Maleische Pers (3/1919), p. 6. cf. Overzicht der Inlandsche en Chinees-Maleische Pers Javaansche Bladen, Vol. 16, Batavia: Landsdrukkerij, 1919, pp. 2–3; Soetatmo Soeriokoesoemo, ‘Het Heilige Schrift in beeld. De Wajang’, Wederopbouw, Weltevreden: Comite voor het Javaansch Nationalisme, August 1923, p. 33; see also R.C. Kwantes, De ontwikkeling van de nationalistische beweging in NederlandschIndië. Bronnenpublikatie, Vol. 1, Groningen: Wolters, 1975; Willink, Tjeenk and R.C. Kwantes, De ontwikkeling van de nationalistische beweging in Nederlandsch-Indië. Bronnenpublikatie, Vol. 2, Groningen: Wolters, 1978. cf. Theosofie in Nederlandsch-Indië, Bandung: Nederlandsch-Indische Theosofische Vereeniging, November 1934, pp. 129–30. cf. Raden Mas Koesoemodihardjo, ‘Verslag Propagandareis Bali’, Theosofie in NederlandschIndië, Bandung: Nederlandsch-Indische Theosofische Vereeniging, July 1937, p. 112. In the 1950s the lodge was still active; Djelantik published his ideas on Hinduism and Theosophy in mimeographed form, several of which are available at the KITLV library in Leiden.

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34 cf. Akira Nagazumi, The Dawn of Indonesian Nationalism. The Early Years of the Budi Utomo 1908–1918, Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 1972, p. 117; Theosofie in NederlandschIndië (November 1935), p. 198.

Bibliography Blavatsky, H.P. (1987) The Key to Theosophy, Los Angeles: The Theosophy Company. Glasenapp, Helmut von (1960) Das Indienbild deutscher Denker, Stuttgart: K.F. Koehler. Hinloopen Labberton, C. van (1913) ‘Verslag van het Zesde Congres der Nederlandsch-Indische Theosofische Vereeniging gehouden te Soerakarta op 21–23 Maart 1913’, Theosofisch Maandblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Semarang: De Theosofische Vereeniging Semarang, Centraal-Indische Loge Semarang, pp. 460–76. Hinloopen Labberton, D. van (1913) ‘Uit de Pen der Redactie’, Theosofisch Maandblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Semarang: De Theosofische Vereeniging Semarang, Centraal-Indische Loge Semarang, pp. 1–8. Nugraha, Iskandar P. (1989) Gerakan Theosofi di Indonesia dan pengaruhnya dalam pergerakan nasional (1901–1933), Depok: Universitas Indonesia. Tiemersma, L. (1907) ‘De huidige theosophie in betrekking tot de Zending’, in: Overzicht van de twaalfde Zending-conferentie gehouden te Mr.-Cornelis en te Depok van 18 tot 26 Augustus 1906, Weltevreden: Visser & Co., pp. 208–49. Tillett, G. (1982) The Elder Brother, London: Routledge. Tollenaere, Herman A.O. de (1996) The Politics of Divine Wisdom. Theosophy and Labour, National, and Women’s Movements in Indonesia and South Asia, 1975–1947, Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. Tsuchiya, Kenji (1987) Democracy and Leadership. The Rise of the Taman Siswa Movement in Indonesia, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press. Wichmann, Jörg (1983) ‘Das theosophische Menschenbild und seine indischen Wurzeln’, in: Zeitschrift für Religions – und Geistesgeschichte, Band XXXV, Heft 1, Köln: Brill.

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3 THE REVIVAL OF BUDDHISM IN MODERN INDONESIA Iem Brown Buddhism has a long history in Indonesia, its golden era being the times of the S´ailendra dynasty of Mataram (c. mid-eighth to mid-ninth century), S´rivijaya (seventh to thirteenth centuries) and Majapahit (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries). From the thirteenth century onwards Islam began to penetrate the archipelago unremittingly, and the Buddhists in Sumatra were unable to resist the proselytizing impact of the Muslim missionaries. In Java, Buddhism rapidly lost its hold over the aristocracy, too, and was at least formally supplanted in the rural areas. By the time the Dutch had fully established their authority in Java, Buddhism had almost entirely disappeared from view as a living religion. Certainly the Dutch did not classify it as one of the religions practised by the Javanese. The latter were considered to be either Muslims or Christians: no other alternatives such as the syncretistic Agama Jawi of the Javanese or the Agama Budha of the Tengger were recognized. However, by the middle of the twentieth century, Buddhism had once more established itself as a living religion. This was perhaps not very important in quantitative terms, but it was of significance in the sense that it was the religion that appealed to people of very different ethnic backgrounds: Chinese, Indians, Europeans and Javanese. Members of all these ethnic communities resident in the archipelago made significant contributions to the Buddhist revival. It is the objective of this chapter to make some remarks on the beginnings of this revival, and in particular to show the diversity of the ethnic backgrounds of the people involved in it. A very brief outline of the position of Buddhism in contemporary Indonesia will also be included. If in the nineteenth century Buddhism was virtually invisible in the archipelago, its condition in the traditional Buddhist regions of South and Southeast Asia was not much better. Though the Buddhist communities in these regions were numerically far stronger, Buddhism was even there in a state of stagnation. The second half of the nineteenth century, however, saw the beginnings of a resurgence of interest in Buddhism in its traditional strongholds in South and Southeast Asia, in part (and ironically) fuelled by Europeans – Europeans who had become involved in the scientific study of religions, and who were in search for what some saw as the ‘Wisdom of the East’. Many sacred Pali and Sanskrit texts were translated into European languages, including English, German, and Dutch, by scholars such as Rhys Davids, Max Müller, Samuel Beal and H. Kern.1 These languages were not only understood by the colonizers, but also by some of the indigenous inhabitants

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of the colonies who were mostly not able to read the respective texts in their original language. Of considerable significance, too, was the founding of the Pali Text Society in England in 1881 by Rhys Davids. Ten years later the Maha Bodhi Society was formed in Sri Lanka by Anagarika Dharmapala with the objective of restoring Buddhist places of pilgrimage in India and promoting the revival of Buddhism. Concurrent with the first stirring of interest in Buddhism amongst Europeans, the Theosophical Society (TS) was established in New York by Mme H. Blavatsky and Colonel H.S. Olcott in 1875. The TS was dedicated to the search for wisdom through the study, at least in part, of Asian philosophies. Seven years later, its headquarters was transferred to Adyar, near Madras, a site which the TS considered to be ideal for an association with such spiritual and philosophical leanings. The main objectives of the TS were the general recognition of the universal brotherhood of mankind without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or colour; the comparative study of religions, philosophies, and science; and the investigation of unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man.2 The leaders of the TS and quite a few of its members felt a great affinity towards Hinduism and Buddhism. Theosophy shared with both religious systems the promotion of religious and philosophical tolerance, rather than exclusiveness or orthodoxy. Indeed, a number of specifically Hindu and Buddhist ideas came to be adopted by the Theosophists, e.g. the laws of karma and reincarnation. Both Blavatsky and Olcott even formally converted to Buddhism: the former became an upasika, a designation referring to the first level of initiation for Buddhist laywomen, and the latter an upasaka, a term referring to the equivalent level of initiation for Buddhist laymen. Olcott is also credited with being the creator of the Buddhist banner, consisting of horizontal and vertical stripes in blue, yellow, red, white, and orange, the colours of the Buddha’s halo. Olcott was particularly active in promoting Buddhism in Sri Lanka. He formed the Buddhist Theosophical Society for the purpose of establishing English schools for Buddhist children and was especially interested in seeing a Buddhist educational system provided as an alternative to the Christian-run schools. The latter enjoyed a virtual monopoly in education on the island. In 1885, Olcott also succeeded in persuading the British colonial authorities to declare Waisak a public holiday.3 Parallel to the growing European interest in Buddhism, the religion experienced an upsurge amongst the indigenous communities in South and Southeast Asia. Part of the reason for this – and indeed part of the reason why other Asian religions were also undergoing a revival at the same time – was that it expressed the same kind of aspirations in the sphere of culture as the nascent nationalist movements did in the sphere of politics. Both entailed a search for national identity, for indigenous values and ethics with which to confront the colonial power. In the Dutch East Indies, Islam, the religion of the majority, played the major role in this religious renaissance.4 The revival of Buddhism in the Indies was, however, part of that broader movement, participating in it on a much smaller scale. It differed from the resurgence of Islam, though, in several ways. As far as the colonial authorities were concerned, Buddhism was very much a minority religion, unlike Islam, and thus seen as posing no threat to the continuation of

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colonial rule. Hence, the Dutch authorities ignored Buddhism and certainly put no significant obstacles in the way of its revival and growth. But the development with regard to Buddhism was also different from the Islamic movement in that the Buddhist revival was initially centred on the Chinese and Dutch immigrant communities, rather than on the indigenous population – something which also contributed to the benign Dutch attitude towards it. If the Buddhist revival had nationalist political connotations, these were linked to China, not to ‘Indonesia’. Dutch support for the revival came both from people directly attracted to the religion and, significantly, from members of the Theosophical Society. As in Sri Lanka and India, the revival of Buddhism in the archipelago was linked with the growth of the local Theosophical Society. A Dutch division of the Society was founded in Amsterdam in 1897. In the Indies, Theosophy took root early. The co-founder of the Society, Mme Blavatsky, herself visited Java three times – in 1853, 1858 and 18835 – and inaugurated the first lodge at Pekalongan in 1883. As Nagazumi has pointed out, the precise relationship between the Theosophical lodges in the Indies and those in the Netherlands is not clear.6 However, it does seem that at least some of the TS lodges in the Indies, e.g. the Pekalongan Lodge, were quite independent from the Netherlands’ lodges. It was not Pekalongan, however, but Surakarta which became the stronghold of Theosophy in the colony. The Surakarta Lodge was established on 2 November 1908, and it soon counted amongst its members such elevated members of the Javanese aristocratic and intellectual elite as Pangeran Kusumodiningrat (brother of Pakubuwono X, one of the two traditional rulers of Surakarta) and Dr Radjiman. The lodge in Semarang, which had been one of the first lodges founded after the link between the Indies’ and Netherlands’ lodges was established in 1901, also enjoyed a considerable degree of popularity and influence. By 1930, for instance, it had a substantial membership of which 50 per cent was European, 40 per cent Indonesian, and 10 per cent Chinese.7 And when Waisak was observed at the great temple of Borobudur for the first time in the modern era on 20 May 1932, the ceremonies were conducted by the Theosophical Society.8 It was not until 1934 that the ceremony was first performed by Buddhists. The most prominent and influential Buddhist leader of the period from the 1950s to the 1970s, Sthavira Jinarakkhita,9 was introduced to Buddhism through his membership in the TS lodge in Bogor. Other prominent Buddhist leaders who followed the same path include Sasanasurya (Khoe Soe Khiam), Parwati Supangat, Aris Munandar, the late Mangunkawatja, Soetardi Brotowatjono, and Sariputta Sadono. And it was largely through the initiative of the chairman of the ‘Giri Lojo’ Lodge in Bandung, Ong Soe Aan, that the first visit to the archipelago in modern times by a foreign Theravada monk – Narada Maha Thera of Sri Lanka – was undertaken. This visit will be discussed at some length further below. By the late 1920s, there was a clearly expressed desire among the Chinese living in the Indies, and in particular among members of the peranakan community,10 for materials to be used in teaching the younger generation about their cultural heritage, including their religious heritage. Leaders of the community were concerned about the inroads that Western culture and the Christian religion in particular were making into society.

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The need for such materials was, as I said, particularly great among the peranakan, since sources written in Chinese were virtually inaccessible to them, due to their loss of the Chinese language during assimilation. Of course some of them, i.e. members of the educated elite, read Dutch and perhaps English, and became reacquainted with their cultural background and the Buddhist religion through writings in the respective European languages. Several of the European translators of Pali and Sanskrit Buddhist texts, to whom I have referred earlier, came to be known in the peranakan community in this way. But for those peranakan without any knowledge of these languages, there were few alternative sources of information and teaching about what they perceived to be their culture and religious tradition. Some of them came into contact with Buddhism via the Theosophical Society. A few others made contact through the Java Buddhist Association, founded by a group of Dutch Buddhists around the turn of the century. This society, a branch of the International Buddhist Mission with its headquarters at Thaton, Burma, was for most of its early years under the leadership of Josias van Dienst and E.E. Powell.11 Its influence on the peranakan, however, was limited: it remained, at least until the early 1930s, very much a European association. Furthermore, it followed the Theravada school, whereas Chinese Buddhism belonged to the Mahayana tradition. In 1932 Kwee Tek Hoay (1886–1952),12 a prominent leader of the peranakan community, commenced the publication of a monthly magazine entitled Moestika Dharma. This journal, which aimed at providing a forum for the discussion of religion, kebatinan,13 and philosophy, was written in ‘Low Malay’ (or Bahasa Melayu Rendah, a term coined by contemporary Dutch orientalists to refer to the nonstandardized Malay vernacular, also called ‘Language of Batavia’ or Bahasa Betawi), the lingua franca of the peranakan. The journal lasted ten years, from 1932 to 1941. It remained under Kwee’s editorship during the whole period. Kwee was assisted by his daughter, Mrs Tjoa Hin Hoey, a prominent Buddhist in the Indies, whose Buddhist name was Vaisakha Gunadharma.14 Kwee himself was a man of broad interests and considerable intellect. He was fluent in Dutch and English as well as in Chinese; wrote novels, plays and poems; and translated the works of a variety of Asian philosophers – from Omar Khayam to Rabindranath Tagore as well as Chinese philosophers such as Confucius and Lao Tze. Kwee fervently promoted the revival of Chinese traditional culture among the Chinese community of the Indies. He scolded the laxity in religious practice on the part of many peranakan in an editorial he wrote in the September 1932 edition of Moestika Dharma.15 There he argued that the Chinese in the Indies paid too little attention to religious matters and were losing their Chinese identity. Many were converting to other religions, particularly Christianity but also Islam. This was not because those religions were in some sense qualitatively superior to their own religious traditions, but because they lacked detailed knowledge of their own religious tradition with which to counter the strong and effective propaganda of the Muslims and Christians. It was therefore important to revitalize the religious tradition of the Chinese community as part of reaffirming Chinese identity. And for Kwee, this clearly meant reviving Buddhism.

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In 1932, apart from starting the publication of Moestika Dharma, Kwee made another substantial contribution to this cause by publishing a massive ten-volume work, Penghidoepan dan Peladjarannja Buddha Gautama,16 probably the single most influential publication in the course of the Buddhist revival. For the first time, speakers of Low Malay had access to the life and teachings of the Buddha and the main precepts of the Buddhist religion. The next major step forward in the revivalist movement was taken against Kwee’s wishes. This was the organization of a visit by the Ceylonese monk Narada Thera. As noted earlier, the initiative for this visit was taken by Ong Soe Aan, chairman of the Bandung Lodge of the TS. In 1932, the government of the Dutch East Indies had sent Ong to Madras, India, to study the methods of controlling opium addiction.17 Ong also intended to visit Adyar, near Madras, to attend a congress of the TS. On his way to India, Ong stopped at Colombo. In a letter to Kwee, he described his experiences there, noting in particular how impressed he had been with his visit to a Buddhist temple, guided by a saffron-robed Buddhist monk.18 The temple, he noted, was neat and well ordered, with a meditation room and an altar adorned simply with flowers, water, and candles. This simplicity contrasted starkly with the practice in Java, where klenteng (Chinese joss-houses) were usually elaborately decorated and adorned. Ong suggested to Kwee that the time was right to undertake a purification of the observance of Buddhism in Java, to get back to the basic, simple teachings of the Buddha. He had suggested months earlier that some monks be invited from China to take the lead in such activities: he now suggested that a monk from Sri Lanka be invited to undertake this task. Kwee’s response was in the negative.19 He argued that Buddhism in Java was not yet ready to receive visits from foreign monks, whether from China or Sri Lanka. Buddhism would be still too much in its infancy. First priority should be given to teaching the people more about the religion, particularly through the publishing activities he himself was already pursuing. He also pointed out to Ong the problems that would be likely to arise from inviting a Theravada monk to Java, where virtually all the Buddhists were of the Mahayana school. This, he said, would be like inviting a Protestant minister to preach in a Catholic church. Perhaps the Theravada school should be given more consideration in Java, but Buddhists there would not yet be sufficiently advanced in their knowledge and sophistication to be able to make such judgement. Kwee did, however, agree with Ong on one point: the need to purify and clean out the klenteng. At that time, these temples were regularly used for such secular activities as gambling or opium smoking. The klenteng furthermore served as children’s playgrounds, as social centres, and as schools for martial arts. Despite Kwee’s objection, however, the next edition of Moestika Dharma announced that definite arrangements had been made for the sending of a Buddhist mission (dharmaduta) from Sri Lanka to Java in May 1933.20 The missionaries were to include Narada Thera; the Chinese monk Wong Mouw Lam (Huang Mao-lin), who was studying Pali and Sanskrit as well as the teachings of the Theravada school in Sri Lanka;21 and a European monk, whose name the writer had not yet been able to determine. Ong had been introduced to Narada Thera at Adyar by a prominent member of the (international) Theosophical Society, Jinarajadasa, who

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later became the president of the TS (1946–53).22 Narada himself was reportedly very enthusiastic about making the trip, the Borobudur temple being the main attraction for him. For a short while, the mission seems to have been endangered on financial grounds. However, it eventually arrived in Java in early 1934, owing to the financial support of the Singapore Buddhist Association.23 Narada himself was thirty-six at the time. He had been ordained a monk in 1918 and was regarded by many in Sri Lanka as the successor to Anagarika Dharmapala, the father of the Buddhist revivalist movement on the island.24 He was to make several missionary visits abroad – to India, China, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Singapore, the UK, the US, and Japan – in the time to come, but his visit to Java was the first. He later told U.P. Sasanasurya that already for some time he had felt the ‘pull’ of Borobudur and thus had not been surprised when the invitation to visit the Dutch East Indies was extended to him.25 The mission arrived in Tanjung Priok on 4 March 1934. By this time Wong and the European monk had dropped out of the team; Narada was joined, however, by a dayaka (a person who accompanies a travelling bhikkhu, in order to deal with money, tickets, etc.), Jinarajadasa, and a certain Mr Martin from the Singapore Buddhist Association. Narada thus made the first recorded visit by a Buddhist monk to the archipelago after at least 450 years. The mission spent twenty-one days in Java, visiting Jakarta, Bogor, Bandung, Yogyakarta, and Solo. Narada Thera met with the major leaders of the European Theravada community, such as Van Dienst and Power. He also met with Chinese Buddhists at a number of klenteng in Jakarta (Kwan Im Tong, Kim Tek Ie, and Toeng San Tong), at the Boen Tek Bio klenteng in Bogor, the Kwan Im Tong klenteng in Bandung, and the Tin Kok Sih klenteng in Solo.26 In Jakarta, he also visited the Central Museum, where he was received by F.D.K. Bosch and Poerbatjaraka. The latter was a member of the Jakarta branch of the Java Buddhist Association.27 He offered a monk’s robe and bowl as a present to the museum. But for Narada himself, the highlight of his visit was probably when he finally arrived at Borobudur on 10 March. There, in the presence not only of local Buddhists but also of Van Erp, the Dutch engineer in charge of the restoration of the monument, he planted the sapling of a bodhi tree (ficus religiosa), taken from a special tree in Sri Lanka which was believed to have grown from a cutting of the very tree in Buddhagaya, Benares, India, under which the Buddha himself had reached enlightenment. Narada seems to have felt no qualms, being a Theravada monk, in visiting Borobudur, a sacred monument of Mahayana Buddhism. There are certainly ample precedents in Indonesia of the two streams having coexisted, even having mixed, during the golden age of Buddhism despite what Kwee had earlier expressed to Ong. The tendency to clearly separate the two was essentially an importation from China, brought to Indonesia in relatively recent times. The most important effect of the mission’s visit to the Indies was that it brought together for the first time representatives from the three main groups of Buddhists or sympathizers of Buddhism: the Chinese Buddhists with the peranakan led by Kwee and the totok led by Hwesio Lin Feng Fei; the Europeans of the Java Buddhist Association under the leadership of Van Dienst and Power; and the European, Chinese, and indigenous Buddhists or sympathizers of Buddhism gathering in the

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Theosophical Society. All had been involved in organizing the local stay of Narada. After his departure the contacts between the three groups were continued and expanded. In May 1934, the Jakarta branch of the Java Buddhist Association changed its name to Batavia Buddhist Association, severing its link with the International Buddhist Mission in Burma.28 This gave the Association a much greater degree of flexibility to deal with the needs of the various Buddhist communities in the Dutch East Indies, and it was consequently able to attract a considerable number of Chinese and Indonesians. It became the central point of Buddhist activity in Java, reaching out to all major ethnic groups owing to an ambitious programme of lectures and discussions. It also established a scheme to translate Buddhist texts, commentaries, and analyses from the English, the Dutch, and the Chinese languages into Bahasa Melayu Rendah. This scheme provided a link to the revival in the 1950s, as these texts became the basic reference materials for the future Buddhist writers and preachers. Kwee, however, seems to have felt a growing conflict between his two objectives: the revival of interest in and purification of the Buddhist religion, on the one hand, and the preservation of a sense of Chinese-ness among the Chinese in the Dutch East Indies, on the other hand. He had seen the former primarily in terms of the latter. Now, each of the two was taking its own direction. The majority of practising Buddhists in Indonesia were still undoubtedly Chinese, but the ethnic balance was clearly changing. The leadership of the movement, in particular, was falling into the hands of non-Chinese, among whom Europeans seemed to be rather over-represented, probably due to their relatively better secular and religious education. Hence, in August 1934, Kwee was among those who participated in the formation of the Sam Kauw Hwee, the Society of the Three Religions (Confucianism,29 Taoism, and Buddhism) or Tridharma, in Batavia.30 Soon, branches of the Sam Kauw Hwee were established in Kediri, Surabaya, and Tulungagung. The membership of the Society was, of course, overwhelmingly Chinese, drawing from both the peranakan and totok communities. In fact, it played a very important role in bringing together these two communities. It would not be correct to see Kwee’s activities with regard to the Sam Kauw Hwee as an indication that he rejected the emergence of an inter-ethnic Buddhist congregation in the Indies. On the contrary, he himself joined and for many years remained a member of the Batavia Buddhist Association. Rather it should be seen as an indication of his unremitting commitment to the task of fostering the Chinese identity of the Chinese community by revitalizing Chinese traditions. Apart from highlighting the link between the Buddhist revival and the Theosophical Society, it is worth noting the importance of the kebatinan movements at this stage. Kebatinan movements and organizations, centring on highly individualistic ‘charismatic’ gurus, were arising and vanishing together with their leaders. For some Javanese and some peranakan Chinese, kebatinan was the channel through which they came to discover Buddhism, not the least because both kebatinan and Buddhism stress the importance of meditation. By the late 1930s, Buddhism had been re-established as a living creed in the archipelago. Its adherents were drawn from three major ethnic communities: Chinese,

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European, and indigenous Indonesian. This revival can be seen to a certain extent as part of the much wider revitalization of interest in indigenous religions among Asians evident at the time, an interest which was a reaction against European political and cultural imperialism. The revival was, however, also spurred by the activities of a small number of Europeans who had come to reject their traditional religious backgrounds and adopted Buddhism. Again, this was not a development unique to the Indies; it was also happening in India and Sri Lanka. The Theosophical Society, in particular, played a significant role in promoting knowledge of and interest in Buddhism amongst Europeans as well as Indonesians and Chinese. The dharmaduta led by Narada Thera had been of singular importance. The visit had provided a focal point for local Buddhists, inspiring an atmosphere of religious co-operation amongst the adherents of different Buddhist traditions. This proved to be vital in the immediate postwar years as Buddhists struggled to have their religion recognized as one of Indonesia’s major religions. The fate of Buddhism during the Japanese occupation remains unclear. The journal Moestika Dharma, which was published by Kwee Tek Hoay, and the Sam Kauw Gwat Po, the journal of the Sam Kauw Hwee, were definitely suspended. However, further research needs to be undertaken on this period before more definitive statements can be made. In the immediate post-1945 period, which was characterized by the birth of the Republic of Indonesia, Buddhism had to adapt itself to a new political and social order in which it sought to establish and to nurture the link between Buddhism and the ‘Indonesian identity’. The year 1954 saw the first Indonesian to be ordained a Theravada bhikkhu, Ashin Jinarakkhita (b. 1923 as The Boan An). The ceremony took place in Burma, performed by the well-known meditation teacher, Mahasi Sayadaw. Two years later, on the 2500th anniversary of Buddha Jayanti, the second Waisak celebration of the modern era was held at Borobudur, organized by the first Indonesian Buddhist organization, Persaudaraan Upasaka Upasika Indonesia (PUUI, Brotherhood/Sisterhood of Buddhist Laypeople). The first Indonesian Buddhist mass organization, Perhimpunan Buddhis Indonesia (Perbudhi, Indonesian Buddhist Organization), was formed in the following year in 1957. Branches of these two organizations had been established in most big cities in Indonesia by the end of the 1950s, including Jakarta, Bandung, Cirebon, Surabaya, Semarang, and Ujung Pandang (Makassar). In 1959, the first ordinations of Indonesian bhikkhu took place on Indonesian soil. Fourteen bhikkhu, mainly from South and Southeast Asian Buddhist countries, were invited to perform an ordination at various locations (sima) in Java and Bali. Those ordained were Bhikkhu Jinaputta, Bhikkhu Jinapiya, and Samanera Jinananda. As might have been expected, also during this time the ethnic composition of the Buddhist community in Indonesia began to change. The Dutch and Eurasians disappeared from the scene altogether, and indigenous Indonesians took on roles that were much more prominent than previously, alongside the ethnic Chinese. The Buddhist community was nonetheless still multi-ethnic, but rather less so

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than it had been before independence. Due to the changed political and social circumstances, it was increasingly important to demonstrate that Buddhism was indeed an autochthonous religion and not a foreign or alien import. The inauguration of the New Order government (1965–7), with its stress on the acceptance of the Pancasila and its emphasis on religious observance in counteracting Communism, gave added impetus to Indonesian Buddhists to demonstrate how Buddhism was rooted in Indonesian identity. For the first time Buddhism was formally represented in the Department of Religion under the Directorate General for the Guidance of Hinduism and Buddhism. The Ministry of Religion has always been dominated by the Middle Eastern religions of Islam and Christianity, and Buddhism – like Hinduism – had to comply with the ministry’s definition of ‘religion’ as opposed to ‘belief system’ (aliran kepercayaan).31 A Buddhist religious council (Perwalian Umat Buddha Indonesia) was formed in 1979, which has been acting in close co-operation with – and sometimes at the behest of – the Ministry of Religion. In 1983, the Buddhist organizations had to adopt the Asas Tunggal, the Sole Principle of the Pancasila,32 like all the other religious organizations in Indonesia. Buddhism was represented in the upper house of parliament, the MPR; Waisak became a national holiday; and permission was given to celebrate Waisak at Borobudur on an annual basis, with senior government officials in attendance. The advent of the New Order government provided the Buddhist community with the opportunity to reach out into different social and economic strata beyond its traditional urban setting. Buddhism has remained significant among urban, middle class Indonesians, especially those of ethnic Chinese descent, but there has also been an expansion of formal membership in Buddhist organizations in rural Java as well as among Javanese and Balinese transmigrants in the outer islands. A considerable number of Javanese rural peasants chose to embrace Buddhism in reaction to the government’s requirement that every Indonesian citizen officially register as an adherent of one of the five recognized religions. And to some of these new converts, Buddhism was attractive because it was ‘the religion of their ancestors’, associated with the glorious period of the Old Javanese Indianized kingdoms of Mataram, Kediri, Singhasari, and Majapahit. For all Buddhists, Borobudur functions as a central icon, a kiblat perhaps, to borrow a religious term from the Muslim community: a place towards which one’s spiritual energies are directed. Just how many Indonesians are Buddhists today is unclear. Officially, the figure is 1 per cent of the country’s 210 million people. My own estimate, based on formal and informal research in the Buddhist community, is between 2 and 3 million. Buddhist organizations have never been particularly concerned to expand their membership. Buddhism is, after all, a non-missionary religion, and thus does not encourage its members to attract a larger following. Nonetheless, it seems clear that Buddhism is alive and well in contemporary Indonesia, and that Buddhists have re-emerged as an apparently permanent, albeit numerically very small part of the Indonesian religious scene.

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Notes 1 See, inter alia, Samuel Beal, Buddhist Records of the Western World, London: Routledge, [1884] 2000; Samuel Beal, The Buddhist Tripitaka as It Is Known in China and Japan, London: India Office, 1876; and Max Müller, “Buddhist Mahâyâna Text,” Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XLIX, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1894. 2 Hugh Shearman, Modern Theosophy, Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1954. 3 Gunasekara/Olcott 1979. Waisak is the commemoration of the birth, the enlightenment and the parinibbana of the Buddha. 4 cf. Deliar Noer, Modernist Muslims Movements in Indonesia, 1900–1942, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 7. 5 Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch Indië 1930:763. 6 cf. Nagazumi 1972:192n. 7 cf. Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch Indië 1930:763. 8 See Ong Soe Aan’s letter to Kwee Tek Hoay in Moestika Dharma (June 1932), pp. 101–2. 9 On Ashin Jinarakkhta (b. 1923), see Juangari 1995. 10 Peranakan Chinese were those who had been largely acculturated, blending into the indigenous communities of the Indies. Those who still maintained a strong sense of their Chinese cultural identity were called totok. 11 Dienst 1935. For the aims of the association see pp. 249–50. 12 For further details about Kwee, see Sidharta 1989. 13 Mystical beliefs, particularly of the Javanese variants. 14 On Mrs Tjoa Hin Hoey (1907–90), see Chan 1991. 15 See Moestika Dharma (September 1932), pp. 190–1. 16 Published by Moestika in Batavia in 1932. The title may be translated as ‘The Life and Teachings of Buddha Gautama’. 17 Information in a letter to the author from Oman Sumedha, Ong’s grandson, dated 7 March 1979. 18 cf. Moestika Dharma (1932–41), p. 381. 19 cf. ibid. (March 1933), p. 418. 20 cf. ibid. (April 1933), p. 456. 21 On Wong Mouw Lam (or Huang Mao-lin in Mandarin), see Holmes Welch (1968) The Buddhist Revival in China, Boston: Harvard University Press, p. 180. 22 cf. Moestika Dharma (April 1933), p. 457. 23 cf. ibid. 24 cf. Gunasekara/Olcott 1979:5. 25 Interview with Sasanasurya, a leading Buddhist layperson, on 4 January 1979. 26 cf. Moestika Dharma (1932–41), pp. 920–2. 27 cf. ibid., p. 920. 28 cf. ibid. (June 1934), p. 1013. 29 On Confucianism, see C.A. Coppel (1977), ‘Contemporary Confucianism in Indonesia’, paper presented at the Seventh Meeting of the International Association of Historians (IAHA) in Bangkok. 30 On the prewar Sam Kauw Hwee, see Rees 1988. 31 On the framing of Buddhism as a monotheistic religion, see Brown 1987. 32 cf. Introduction to this volume by Martin Ramstedt.

Bibliography Brown, Iem (1987) ‘Contemporary Indonesian Buddhism and Monotheism’, Journal of South East Asian Studies XVII/1, March, pp. 108–17. Chan, Faye Yik-Wie (1991) ‘Mrs Tjoa Hin Hoey. Profile of an Enterprising Peranakan Chinese Woman Writer in Late Colonial Indonesia’, Archipel 42, pp. 23–7.

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Dienst, W. Josias van (1935) Het Boeddhisme der Soetta’s, Buitenzorg: International Buddhist Mission, Netherlands Indies Section. Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch Indië (1917–1939), ’s-Gravenhage, Leiden: Nijhoff, Brill. Gunasekara/Olcott, H.S. (1979) ‘The Spread of Buddhism throughout the Ages’, in: Piyadassi (ed.) A Felicitation Volume Presented to the Ven. Narada Mahathera, Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, pp. 166–71. Juangari, Edij (1995) Menabur benih dharma di Nusantara: Riwayat singkat Bhikkhu Ashin Jinarakkhita, Bandung: Yayasan Karaniya. Moestika Dharma, Maandblad tentang Agama, Kebatinan dan Philosofie, (1932–41), Batavia: Moestika. Nagazumi, Akira (1972) The Dawn of Indonesian Nationalism, The Early Years of the Budi Utomo 1908–1918, Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economics. Rees, Michonne van (1988) The Sam Kauw Hwee and Christian Conversion amongst the Peranakan Chinese in Late Colonial Java, Melbourne: unpublished MA thesis, University of Melbourne. Sidharta, Myra (ed.) (1989) 100 Tahun Kwee Tek Hoay, dari Penjaja Tekstil sampai ke Pendekar Pena, Jakarta: Pustaka Sinar Harpan.

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4 WHAT’S IN A NAME? AGAMA HINDU BALI IN THE MAKING Michel Picard

On 5 September 1958, a Hindu Bali section was established within the Indonesian Ministry of Religion, thereby conferring official recognition on the Balinese religion as Agama Hindu Bali.1 After Indonesia’s proclamation of independence in 1945, the question of the religious foundation of the new state had rapidly come to a head, opposing the Islamic leaders (Indonesian: golongan Islam) to the ‘secular’ nationalists (Indonesian: golongan kebangsaan). The Muslims, confident that they represented an overwhelming majority of the Indonesian people, wanted to establish an Islamic state, whereas their opponents, concerned that such a decision would alienate the Christians and other religious minorities, argued in favour of a state in which religious and secular affairs would be kept separate. This confrontation resulted in a compromise: the Indonesian state put ‘belief in the One Almighty God’ (‘Ke-Tuhanan Yang Maha Esa’) first among its founding principles (the Pantja Sila), without making Islam an official or even privileged religion. As a concession to the Islamic parties, however, a Ministry of Religion (Kementerian Agama) was set up in 1946, with three sections: one for the Muslims, one for the Protestants and one for the Catholics. But this was not enough to satisfy members of the more radical Muslim factions, who continued to fight for an Islamic state. Henceforth the religious question would remain a source of controversy. While the 1945 Constitution guaranteed the Indonesian citizens the freedom to profess and to practise their own religion, the Ministry of Religion, controlled by Muslims, was to severely restrict the official acceptance of religions in 1952 by stipulating the following conditions for a religion to be recognized: it must be monotheistic, have a codified system of law for its followers, possess a Holy Book and a prophet, enjoy international recognition and, finally, its congregation should not be limited to a single ethnic group. According to such drastic preconditions, the Balinese did not profess a proper ‘religion’ (agama) but possessed only ‘beliefs’ (kepertjajaan), which not only were limited to their island, but did not even form a coherent and unified ensemble valid for the whole island. As a result, like other ethnic minorities who still practised their traditional religion, the Balinese were classified in the residual category of ‘people

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who do not yet have a religion’ (orang jang belum beragama), a label associated with primitive backwardness and parochialism. Consequently, if the Balinese did not want to be made the target of Muslim or Christian proselytizing, they had no other recourse than to reform their religion in order to make it eligible for the status of agama. Thereafter, the Balinese would keep pressing the Ministry of Religion to recognize their religion, while a number of Balinese reformist religious organizations were making their appearance.2 Stressing the theological importance as well as the moral implications of religion, the Balinese reformers attempted to restrain the ritualistic propensity of their co-religionists, while reinterpreting their HinduJavanese heritage in reference to Islamic (and Christian) doctrines and institutions. They enjoined the Balinese to come back into the fold of Hinduism, which they presented as the source of their rites, by renewing their contacts with India, whose freshly acquired independence had increased its international prestige. This combination of political lobbying and religious reformism was to prove efficient, as the Balinese religion was indeed eventually recognized as a legitimate branch of Hinduism.3 Yet, one would be mistaken in thinking that the Balinese were determined to reform their religion only to comply with the requirements set by the Ministry of Religion. In fact, they had started debating about their religion much earlier – during the colonial occupation of their island – when they had first attempted to give it a name, while arguing about the way it should be reformed. The Balinese were not the only ones among the peoples of the Dutch East Indies to question their religious traditions. Indeed, the struggle of the Balinese intellectuals to reform their religion is in many respects similar to other modernizing reform movements in the archipelago, which had started in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet the Hinduization of the Balinese religion is a singular process, different both from the conversion of the followers of a traditional religion to a universal religion (such as Islam or Christianity) and from the reform that nominal adepts of a world religion (such as Javanese abangan) had to carry out in order to render their religious practices to conform to a more orthodox version of their faith. What Clifford Geertz called a process of ‘internal conversion’ (Geertz 1964) is a more ambiguous phenomenon in the sense that the Balinese had to reinvent themselves as the Hindus that they were already supposed to be. Hence there was a recurring tension between those Balinese reformers trying to appropriate Hinduism on their own terms and those wanting to universalize their religious traditions according to their conception of what Hinduism is really about. Geertz interpreted the transformation of Bali’s particularist and ritually embodied religion in terms of a Weberian process of rationalization, as a spontaneous response to existential problems of meaning that could no longer be adequately addressed by religious tradition. While the Balinese reformers were impelled by a quest for a more meaningful worldview, one should not forget that, following the incorporation of their island into a modern state, they became involved in power relations largely beyond their control. That is to say, the struggle of the Balinese to label their religion as Hinduism was political as much as conceptual. Thus, in order to elucidate the reasons for that struggle, one should take into account both meaning

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and power by investigating the interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic determinations. In this chapter, I shall investigate the debates among the Balinese intelligentsia about their religion during the colonial period. These debates focused upon two sets of interdependent questions. First, how is ‘religion’ (agama) connected to ‘tradition’ (adat), and how to differentiate between their respective domains? Second, how is Agama Bali linked to Agama Hindu – that is, how is Balinese Hinduism related to Indian Hinduism?

‘Hindu spectacles’ worn by European Orientalists The island of Bali was one of the last regions of the Indonesian Archipelago to be subjected by the Dutch. Launched in 1846, its conquest was only completed in 1908. Yet, long before colonial administrators started to deal with Balinese society, it had been imagined by European Orientalists acquainted with classical Hinduism, who regarded the island of Bali as a ‘living museum’ of Hindu-Javanese civilization, the one and only surviving heir to the Hindu heritage swept away from Java by the coming of Islam.4 In their view, Hindu religion had been brought to Bali in the fourteenth century by Javanese conquerors from the kingdom of Majapahit, who had also imposed a division of society into four ‘castes’ in accordance with the Indian model (brahmana, satria, wesia, and sudra). When Majapahit was conquered by Islam at the end of the fifteenth century, the Javanese nobility who objected to adopting the new faith fled to the courts of their cousins on Bali, where they nurtured the Hindu-Javanese civilization in splendid isolation (Raffles 1817, Crawfurd 1820, Van Hoëvell 1846, and Friederich 1849–50). Yet, if they were grateful to the Balinese for having preserved Hindu texts and rituals from the depredations of Islam, Orientalists in the nineteenth century held divergent opinions as to how far the religion as it was actually practised on the island adhered to its Indian prototype. More precisely, if they concurred that the brahmana priests were genuine Hindus, they differed in their views regarding the religion of the sudra. Thus, J. Crawfurd and T.S. Raffles considered that the worship of the people, as performed in the temples, was mere superstition that could not be called Hindu. This was disputed by R.H.Th. Friederich, who deemed the popular religion truly Hindu. In any case, whatever the Orientalists thought about the local religious practices, there could be no doubt in their minds that Hinduism constituted the core of Balinese society, the guardian of its cultural integrity and the inspiration of its artistic manifestations. Accordingly, it had to be protected through the enlightened paternalism of colonial tutelage from the intrusion of Islam, which had strengthened its grip on the better part of the archipelago. As it turned out, it was not only against Islam that Balinese Hinduism had to be protected, but against Christianity as well. Missionary work had started in North Bali in 1864 but was stopped by the government in 1881, following the murder of a missionary by its first and only convert. Bali remained closed to Christianity until 1924, when a Roman Catholic mission asked for permission to settle on the island. This demand was vigorously opposed by the Balinese ruling elite, backed by several colonial administrators. Their protest had been successful, but in 1932

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the declared intention of a Dutch Protestant mission to pursue evangelizing activities in Bali sparked a heated controversy. The debate was initiated by F.D.K. Bosch, head of the Archaeology Department in Batavia, and pursued by its specialist of the Old Javanese and Balinese languages, R. Goris, who was stationed on Bali. While admitting that Balinese society was being affected already by various Western influences such as government, education, and tourism, they opposed the Christian missions on the grounds that in Bali religion and social order form an inseparable whole. Therefore, by deliberately assaulting the religion of the Balinese, missionary work would bring about the collapse of their entire culture. According to both Bosch and Goris, the religion of Bali should be considered a legitimate part of the world religion of Hinduism, and it could find its regeneration through renewed contact with India (Bosch 1932, 1933; Goris 1933). These arguments were disputed by the missionary H. Kraemer, who rejected the identification of religion with culture. He asserted that Balinese religion demonstrated only a thin veneer of Hinduism and was permeated by magic and superstitions common to other ‘animist’ traditions in the archipelago.5 Furthermore, the island was being subjected to increasing foreign influence, so that Balinese religion – far from experiencing a revival from within, as the Orientalists were prone to claim – was doomed to disappear under the assaults of modern secularization. Why then, he asked, should Bali be closed to Christianity alone, while tourism, which reduced the Balinese religion to a mere spectacle, was being admitted (Kraemer 1932, 1933a, 1933b)? In the end, the Orientalists won the day and the governor general forbade missionary work in Bali. This, however, did not prevent the missions, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, from progressively setting foot on the island.

The emergence of a Balinese intelligentsia Despite the Dutch attempt to insulate Balinese society from disturbing foreign influences, Bali actually underwent rapid and profound changes as a result of increasing interference in native affairs by the colonial state.6 The introduction of a monetary economy, the imposition of taxes and forced labour, the enlistment of the former rulers in the colonial bureaucracy, and the access of a minority of the Balinese youth to European education undermined the relationships that had prevailed between the commoners and the nobility. In particular, the requirements of a modern administration were instrumental in the emergence of a Balinese intelligentsia, since the colonial state needed bilingual, educated natives to mediate between the local population and their European overlords. This intelligentsia strove to make sense of the situation brought about by the opening up of their world to the advent of ‘modern times’ (djaman modern). The emerging Balinese intelligentsia not only had to face the disruption of the familiar references that ordered and gave meaning to their lives, but were also confronted with alien discourses telling them who they were and how they should conduct themselves. So much so that, while the upheaval inflicted by the colonial occupation of their island was compelling the Balinese to question the foundations of their identity, the inquisitive gaze of foreigners in their midst impelled them to

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explicitly account for the definition of what it meant to be Balinese in terms comprehensible to non-Balinese. It was in Singaraja, a harbour town on the north coast of the island long open to the outside world and that had become the seat of the colonial government in 1882, that an intellectual elite composed mostly of schoolteachers and civil servants founded the first Balinese modern organizations. These organizations can be qualified as ‘modern’ in the sense that they were voluntary associations of like-minded people with wide-ranging purposes and highly formalized structures, complete with an elected board, statutes, written regulations, membership fees, and Dutch terminology. Besides opening schools and religious foundations, these organizations started publishing periodicals, a complete novelty for Bali although it was already occurring elsewhere in the Indies at that time (Adam 1995). Written in Malay – the lingua franca of the archipelago, adopted by the Dutch as the language of education and administration, soon to become that of Indonesian nationalism – these publications were devoted chiefly to issues pertaining to religion and social order. The use of Malay, rather than Balinese, to address thoroughly Balinese topics destined for an exclusively Balinese readership, indicates that the intelligentsia were conscious of being an integral part of a larger entity, due to the incorporation of their island into the colonial state. Thus, the same process which prompted the Balinese to question their identity was dispossessing them of their own words, by inducing them to think about themselves in a language that was not their own but that was used both by their ‘fellow countrymen’ throughout the archipelago and by their colonial masters. Such a linguistic substitution indicated a reflexive distance from the Balinese universe of reference, which was becoming de-contextualized, relativized, and homogenized in the process. The history of the founding (and disbanding) of successive as well as concurrent organizations in the 1920s is rather confused. The first of these modern organizations, Setiti Bali, had been founded in 1917 by I Goesti Bagoes Tjakra Tanaja, the district head (punggawa) of Sukasada, to counter the Javanese Islamic association Sarekat Islam, which had recently opened a branch in Singaraja. It lasted until 1920 and was succeeded in the following year by a short-lived organization called Soeita Gama Tirta, founded by I Ktoet Nasa, the principal of the primary school in Bubunan, and presided by I Goesti Poetoe Djlantik, member of the Judicial Council for Native Law (Raad van Kerta) in Singaraja and a descendant of the raja of Buleleng. In 1923 the Santi association was founded by Poetoe Djlantik, Tjakra Tanaja, and Ktoet Nasa. A few months later, the association started publishing its own journal, Santi Adnjana. All these organizations had been opened to the nobility (triwangsa) and commoners ( jaba) alike, but tension appears to have been rife between the two groups, for the jaba objected to various privileges claimed by the triwangsa. A conflict soon placed the leaders of each faction (who were also the joint editors of Santi Adnjana), i.e. Tjakra Tanaja and Ktoet Nasa, in opposition to each other, and sometime in 1924 the publication of the journal was taken over by Tjakra Tanaja, who changed its title to Bali Adnjana (1924–30). The conflict escalated until a schism between jaba and triwangsa became inevitable. This happened in May 1925 during a meeting of the members of Santi, when Ktoet Nasa refused to change the name of the reli-

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gion as written in the statutes of the organization, from Agama Hindoe (the ‘Hindu religion’) to Agama Hindoe Bali (the ‘Balinese Hindu religion’). In October 1925, Ktoet Nasa started publishing his own journal, Surya Kanta (1925–7), and the following month he established an eponymous organization whose membership was restricted to the jaba. The situation became even more complicated after May 1926 with the foundation of an organization in Klungkung named Tjatoer Wangsa Derja Gama Hindoe Bali. Professing to reconcile the interests of all ‘four castes’ (tjatoer wangsa) – and discreetly backed by the colonial government, anxious to defuse the rising tension – this new organization was in fact controlled by the triwangsa and used Bali Adnjana as its mouthpiece.

Agama Bali Hindu versus Agama Hindu Bali The few authors who have commented on these organizations have tended to stress the conflict that opposed the commoners to the nobility, while construing that conflict in terms of a contest between ‘modernist’ and ‘traditionalist’ factions, which could be explained by reference to the familiar struggle between the forces of progress and those of reaction.7 True, the polemic between Surya Kanta and Bali Adnjana concerned primarily ‘caste’ (kasta) privileges, which had been boosted by the colonial policy. The commoners were challenging the alliance between Dutch interests and the Balinese nobility, their aim being to overturn the archaic feudal order in the name of ‘progress’ (madjoe). Yet, one should be wary of focusing too much on this so-called ‘caste conflict’ (pertentangan kasta) at the risk of losing sight of what these organizations had in common. Even if they diverged in their respective ideological orientations, their leaders shared a similar preoccupation with their Balinese identity and were eager to preserve its foundations. To start with, one should notice that in both journals, for the first time, the Balinese viewed themselves as a singular entity, as a ‘people’ (kita bangsa Bali: ‘we, the Balinese people’). Of course one could assert that a sense of pan-Bali identity already existed through reference to Majapahit (Creese 1997), but it is doubtful that the Balinese could have apprehended their island as an integrated totality prior to its incorporation into the colonial state. In any case, in these journals jaba and triwangsa both described themselves as a religious minority, the stronghold of Hinduism threatened by the aggressive expansionism of Islam and Christianity, and as a particular ethnic group characterized by their own customs, which made them at once distinct and comparable to other ethnic groups in the Indies. More precisely, they construed their identity – which they called their ‘Balinese-ness’ (‘ke-Bali-an’) – as being based simultaneously on ‘religion’ (agama) and ‘tradition’ (adat). The very fact of the Balinese resorting to these foreign terms to define their identity testifies to the conceptual shift occurring on the island after its takeover by an alien power.8 Adat is a word of Arabic origin borrowed by Islamized populations in the Indonesian archipelago to refer to indigenous ‘customary law’ as opposed to imported ‘religious law’ (hukum, syariah). Introduced to Bali by the Dutch, the word adat replaced a varied terminology for variable local customs, which had ‘a field of meanings covering ritual obligation, social institution, legal regulation, and

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ancestral evocation’ (Warren 1993:4). These customs governed the relationships between social groups and instilled a sense of communal solidarity in the villages. The appropriation of the term adat by the Balinese had two consequences. First, it created a new conceptual domain: ‘tradition’,9 which initially was not so much contrasted with the domain of ‘religion’ (agama) but with ‘administration’ (dinas, from the Dutch dienst, ‘service’), referring to everything that came under the authority of the colonial state.10 Second, the incorporation of a miscellaneous assortment of local customs into this generic term altered their meaning for the Balinese: what had been, until then, an interplay of significant differences deliberately fostered between villages was becoming the locus of Balinese ethnic identity, in the sense of a customary body of inherited regulations and institutions that governed the lives of the Balinese.11 As such, in Bali ‘tradition’ was not clearly distinguished from ‘religion’.12 Indeed, adat partakes of the religious worldview of the Balinese, in the sense that it refers both to an immutable divine cosmic order and to the social order instituted accordingly by their ancestors, at once describing the ideal order and prescribing the behaviour required to achieve that order. Unlike world religions, which have a core of abstract basic tenets and symbols likely to be meaningful to people of diverse cultural backgrounds, Balinese religion is highly local, as it consists of rites relating specific groups of people to one another, to their ancestors, and to their territory. Moreover, it is a customary obligation, in the sense that participation in its rites is a consequence of membership of a local community as well as of a kin group. For the Balinese, religion is immanent: it is a pervasive experience, intimately involved in every significant event of their daily life, inseparable from the totality of their cultural universe. The relevant concern, for them, is not right belief (orthodoxy) but appropriate behaviour (orthopraxy). Rather than something to be believed in, Balinese religion is something to be carried out (nyungsung). Such evidence led Frits Staal to conclude that ‘Balinese ritual is a classic case of ritual without religion’ (Staal 1995:31). Whether or not one is willing to subscribe to such a sweeping statement, the definition of ‘religion’ in terms of agama, which the Balinese intelligentsia resorted to in their publications, opened a significantly different semantic field. Agama is a Sanskrit word, which originally had a double meaning: first, ‘a traditional precept, doctrine, body of precepts, collection of such doctrines’, in short ‘anything handed down as fixed by tradition’ (Gonda 1973:499) – which brings its meaning fairly close to that of adat;13 and, second, a specific religious doctrine associated with the Tantric worship of S´iva and S´akti. Over the centuries, it seems that in the Indonesian archipelago this term came to be related to an Indic model of divine kingship, Sanskrit literature, and Hindu-Buddhist theology, in other words, to literacy and power attributed to a prestigious foreign civilization (Atkinson 1987:175). By the eighteenth century, through its association with Islam, the term agama had taken on the meaning of ‘religion’ (Hoadley and Hooker 1981:61). And it is in that sense that it appeared in the reports of Crawfurd (1820:129) and Friederich (1849–50:30, No. 21) on the Balinese religion. For the Balinese intelligentsia of the 1920s, however, the discourse of agama bore the imprints not only of Islam but of Christianity as well. By adopting this term, proponents of these faiths had shaped

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new associations for it, mainly an emphasis on a Supreme Deity, the requirement of conversion to a foreign doctrine whose teachings are contained in a Holy Book, and an ideal of societal progress (Howell 1978, 1982). One can therefore surmise that by appropriating the word agama, the Balinese intellectuals on their part were attempting to elevate their religion to an equal standing with these world religions. If both jaba and triwangsa shared a common reference to agama and adat as the foundations of Balinese identity, they diverged in their opinion regarding the way their respective domains were linked as well as to how Balinese religion related to Indian Hinduism. And it is this divergence, as much as the more visible ‘caste conflict’, which explains the famous schism within Santi. For the founding members of Santi, things were still relatively unproblematic: its statutes proposed ‘to strengthen the Hindu Religion’ (‘menegoehkan Agama Hindoe’), as well as ‘to reinforce both Tradition and Religion’ (‘menegoehkan Adat dan Agama’) (Bali Adnjana 1926, 3/30:5). Whereas the latter objective was pursued by Bali Adnjana, the leaders of Surya Kanta wanted to invigorate agama while ridding adat of whatever they deemed incompatible with the ‘demands of the times’ (‘menegoehkan Agama dan merobah adat istiadat jang bertentangan dengan kemaoean zaman’) (Surya Kanta 1926, 2/8:99). Thus, for Bali Adnjana, the religion of the Balinese was based on tradition (‘agama kita wong Bali berdasar adat’), from which it was indissociable (‘adat dan agama tak boleh bertjerai’) (Bali Adnjana 1926, 3/21:3), while for Surya Kanta, religion could and should be dissociated from a traditional order seen not only as unfair but also as an obstacle to progress. The problem was, however, that the Balinese proved unable to distinguish between tradition and religion (‘tidak tahoe membedakan jang mana adat dan mana agama’) (Surya Kanta 1925, 1/3:1). Hence, whatever their respective views on the matter, it is significant of the common predicament of jaba and triwangsa that one finds neither in Surya Kanta nor in Bali Adnjana an explicit differentiation between that which belongs to agama and that which pertains to adat.14 Reading through their publications, it appears that the main preoccupation of the Balinese intelligentsia was to ensure that their religion could be on a par with Islam and Christianity and thus resist the thrust of their proselytization.15 They disagreed, however, in terms of what should be done to strengthen their religion. According to Surya Kanta, the reason why Balinese converted to Islam or to Christianity was that they did not really know their religion and were the unenlightened victims of ‘superstitions’ (tachjoel), arising from the restrictions placed by the priests (that is, the pedanda, the literate and ordained Brahmana priests, who are not attached to the service of a particular temple) on their access to sacred knowledge contained in traditional manuscripts.16 As long as they contented themselves with blindly following the priests who led their ceremonies, without understanding the true signification of their rites, the Balinese would be easy prey to Muslim or Christian indoctrination. Hence the outburst of Ktoet Nasa during the meeting that sealed the fate of Santi in May 1925, in which he declared that ‘the Hindu religion in Bali was ruined’ ( ‘Agama Hindoe di Bali roesak’), and that it should be reformed accordingly (Bali Adnjana 1925, 2/15:1).17 For Bali Adnjana, on the contrary, as long as the Balinese were holding firmly on to their religion and to their tradition, they were not likely to fall prey to another faith. Indeed,

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they had no reason to feel ashamed of their rites and beliefs, which did not suffer from a comparison with those of the Muslims or the Christians. Witness the longstanding interest for the Balinese religion evinced by numerous foreigners – the latest being Rabindranath Tagore, who had visited Bali on the occasion of his journey to Java in 1927 (Bali Adnjana 1928, 5/2:3). If there was actually a problem, it resulted in truth from the critical stance adopted by the Western-educated intellectuals towards their own religion, and in their ensuing intention to transform it as they saw fit. Viewed from this perspective, the controversy that erupted between jaba and triwangsa over the name that the Balinese religion should adopt makes perfect sense. According to Surya Kanta, the Balinese would not really understand their religion as long as they did not know how to call it. The lack of agreement about the proper name of the Balinese religion was due to the fact that it was suffused with all sorts of practices and beliefs, which in truth did not belong to agama but were part of adat. Hence the extreme variability of its rites throughout the island. For Bali Adnjana, however, this diversity was only natural, in the sense that it resulted from the fact that Hinduism was not a uniform religion, but varied locally in accordance with the context into which it was introduced. Thus, explained Tjakra Tanaja, while most Balinese worship Siwa, some of them are followers of Boeda. Yet, he claimed, Agama Siwa and Agama Boeda should not be seen as different religions, but were just distinct branches of the Agama Siwa-Boeda, which had already taken root in ancient Java.18 In order to come to an agreement, Tjakra Tanaja, as well as most members of Santi and of Tjatoer Wangsa Derja Gama Hindoe Bali, proposed to call their religion Agama Hindoe Bali (the ‘Balinese Hindu religion’), thus stressing the fact that the Balinese had appropriated and reinterpreted Hinduism to such an extent that it had become indigenous to their island. In this way, the triwangsa were clearly trying to preserve the religious-cum-social order of yore by retaining the religion as actually practised by the Balinese (‘nama Hindoe Bali jaitoe jang bererti menegoehkan Agama Hindoe jang soedah ada dan dipeloek olih wong Bali’) (Bali Adnjana 1926, 3/17:2). Whereas in defending the name Agama Bali Hindoe (the ‘Hindu Balinese religion’), Ktoet Nasa and the jaba were claiming that – even though their religious practices were corrupted owing to their ignorance of its real nature – the Balinese were truly Hindu.19 More precisely, in order to become the true Hindus that they should be, the Balinese had to discard all the indigenous accretions that contaminated their religious practices. Hence the allegation frequently implied in Bali Adnjana that Surya Kanta aimed to promote a ‘pure’ form of Hinduism, like the one found in India (‘Surya Kanta, jang bermaksoed mengembangkan Agama Hindoe jang moerni, katanja sebagai Agama Hindoe jang dilakoekan di Hindoestan’) (Bali Adnjana 1926, 3/20:4).20 Consequently, the reformist intellectuals earned the reproach of actually inventing a new religion, which was alien to the Balinese since, according to the traditional manuscripts, their religion originated not in India but in Majapahit. And it was therefore the duty of the Balinese to remain faithful to the religion their ancestors had brought to Bali, risking their lives, when they were fleeing the rise of Islam in Java after the fall of Majapahit.

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What is the Balinese religion? While in the 1920s the context of religious debate had remained essentially Balinese, during the 1930s it was becoming increasingly Indonesian. The questions left in abeyance – namely, the relationship of Balinese religion to adat, on the one hand, and its links to Hinduism, on the other – were re-emerging, more pressing than ever, in Djatajoe (1936–41), a monthly journal published in Singaraja by Bali Darma Laksana, an organization born in 1936 of the fusion of two educational associations, Eka Laksana and Balisch Studiefonds (Putra 1989). Like their predecessors, the founders of Bali Darma Laksana were mostly schoolteachers and civil servants, jaba as well as triwangsa. They were under the leadership of I Goesti Njoman Pandji Tisna, the son of I Goesti Poetoe Djlantik, who had become the ruler (negara-bestuurder) of Buleleng in 1929. Moreover, the editorial board of Djatajoe was composed of former members of Bali Adnjana and Surya Kanta, and members of the editorial board of Bhawanagara.21 Right from the beginning, the polemic on the nature of the Balinese religion and the calls for its reform held a prominent place in Djatajoe. This controversy attested to a noticeable confusion, if not a frank helplessness, no longer solely due to disagreement among the Balinese themselves, but to the fact that they were at a loss as to how to reply to accusations of paganism by foreigners – not only Indonesian Muslims but also Dutch administrators.22 This was particularly the case of young Balinese studying outside Bali, who felt embarrassed whenever they were asked about their religion, and who sometimes converted to Islam or Christianity for fear of being branded as ‘idolatrous’ or ‘animists’ by their schoolmates.23 Illustrative of the Balinese frame of mind at the time is an article bearing the significant title ‘Our Confusion Regarding Religion’ (‘Kebingoengan kita tentang agama’). The author explained to his fellow co-religionists that in the eyes of foreigners: ‘our religion is based on tradition mixed with all sorts of extracts from Hinduism and therefore cannot be compared to any religion found in India; according to the opinion of foreigners we do not have a proper religion and do not worship God, but are like mad men who worship anything they happen to come across’.24 This opinion was mistaken, the author claimed, as it falsely assumed that the Balinese actually worship the effigies (artja) that they use in their rituals, whereas in truth these effigies are only mediations destined to help human beings to communicate with God (Sang Hjang Widi).25 The problem was that most Balinese did not know their religion and that as a consequence their rites displayed endless variations throughout the island. Hence, he advocated that ‘we should investigate the truth and the meaning of our religion so as to be able to refute the charges held against our religious rites by foreigners’.26 Indeed, faced with such a low opinion of their rites, the Balinese could not help calling into question their religion, arguing over what it should be called and the name of its God, as well as the way it related to Indian Hinduism. While a number of changes to Balinese religion had been advocated during the previous decade, no consensus had been reached on the overall direction that reform should take. And despite a tentative agreement to call their religion Agama Hindu Bali, the name of the Balinese religion as well as that of its God remained in question.

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The fact is that prior to the reformist impulse of the 1920s, religion for the Balinese had not been seen as something distinct and in need of a specific name. One could even say that it was not singled out as ‘religion’, in the sense of ‘a set of beliefs and practices that had some kind of systemic coherence and that could be conceptually isolated from other aspects of life’ (Smith Kipp 1993:239). The following quotation from Djatajoe illustrates this point: Before the boys and girls of Bali started going to school, and before there were any newspapers on the island, the Balinese were already practising this religion, and there was no one who criticized and blamed them; what we heard were only comments like ‘the custom in this village is like this, whereas in that village it is like that’, or ‘the people in this area cremate their dead in this way’ . . . Furthermore, one did not speak of religious ceremonies, but rather of village customs. Thus, in short, a proper religion was something unknown; what we knew about were only village customs and Balinese religion, and one did not hear of people who felt ashamed or angry because they had been criticized by mister . . . so and so.27 Now, a combination of internal changes and external pressures was impelling the Balinese intellectuals to come to an agreement as to the true nature of their religion and to codify its rites accordingly. Some of them attempted to find out about the origins of their religion by investigating both Javanese-Balinese and Dutch sources. The question they were asking was the same one that had put Ktoet Nasa and Tjakra Tanaja against one another: Does Balinese religion actually come from India or from Majapahit? In other words, was Hinduism brought to Bali directly from India or via Java? Thus Pandji Tisna endeavoured to discover reliable information about the way Hinduism reached Bali in studies by Dutch historians, such as H. Kern, N.J. Krom, and W.F. Stutterheim (Djatajoe 1936, 1/5:143–6, 1/6:164–8). For most of the contributors to Djatajoe, however, the answer should come from the Balinese priests, who were urged to enlighten followers about religious matters: our priests and other knowledgeable persons should settle once and for all which religion we should profess, which hodgepodge we should get rid of, which tradition we may still use and which should be discarded as bringing about our decline.28 In this perspective, the pedanda were likened to the Muslim kiai and to the Christian priests or ministers, who are expected to teach and propagate their religion. Yet, for a significant minority of authors, the recourse to the priests was fruitless, as the pedanda, lacking in modern education, were confined within the narrow universe of their village and had no experience of the outside world at large. Besides, far from being inclined to transmit their sacred lore, they tended to exploit the subordination of their followers regarding their religious knowledge and ritual celebrations.29

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Whatever the esteem in which they held their priests, during their first congress, held in 1937, the leaders of Bali Darma Laksana requested that the Paroeman Kerta Nagara (Legislative Council of kings and priests established by the Dutch) enlist the help of a commission of pedanda and other literate laymen to compile a Holy Book (Kitab Suci), which would then represent for the Balinese what the Koran is to the Muslims.30 They felt that once the Balinese knew what their religion was actually about, they would be in a better position to defend it against accusations of paganism by both Muslims and Christians, and would be less tempted to embrace another faith (Djatajoe 1937, 2/4:114–15). However, three years later, Djatajoe published a letter from the president of the Paroeman Kerta Nagara, A.A.A. Angloerah Ketoet Karangasem, informing Bali Darma Laksana that the attempt at composing a Holy Book had failed. The reason given was that in Bali agama could not be divorced from adat, and adat differed from one kingdom to the next and from one village to another; hence the members of the commission could not agree on a religious canon valid for the whole island (Djatajoe 1940, 4/9–10:281–2).

Balinese religion between local tradition and universal religion It thus became painfully clear that the first generation of Balinese intellectuals fell short of finding an agreement on the vexed question of how their religion relates to their tradition, on the one hand, and to Indian Hinduism, on the other. Yet, through their debates, they paved the way for the sweeping changes that were to be imposed upon their religious identity once Bali had become part of Indonesia. Contrary to what has been asserted by some foreign analysts (Bakker 1993:43–5), I contend that what happened during the colonial period is not that the former unity of religion and tradition had started to disintegrate due to the opening up of Balinese society, as these conceptual categories were intrinsically alien and had to be appropriated by the Balinese for their own purposes. And it is also not, as some Balinese academics would have it (Atmadja 1987:43–5), that the Balinese had taken refuge in their religion, after having been shaken by the colonial occupation of their island and threatened by the ensuing Muslim and Christian proselytizing. Rather I think it was, on the one hand, the conjunction of the Dutchenforced distinction between religious tradition and colonial administration and, on the other hand, the growing urge to dissociate religion from tradition on the part of the reformist Balinese intelligentsia that eventually led to the creation of the distinctive categories of agama and adat denoting spheres differentiated from the domain of the state. Hence, by giving rise to a sharper contrast between ‘our ways’ (tjara kita) and ‘their ways’ (tjara kaoem sana), the colonial encounter not only helped the Balinese to conceive a notion of themselves as a ‘people’ – a unitary entity – but it also contributed to a further drawing of boundaries between hitherto conceptually undifferentiated domains within Balinese society. This conceptual separation of religion and tradition had in fact actually started when Balinese reformers were attempting to find a name for their religion, thereby initiating a process of objectification of religion as a separate field of action and

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thought. Yet, if the Dutch had de-politicized adat by dissociating political power from customary authority, religion remained merged with tradition in the colonial period. After the integration of their island into the Indonesian state in 1950, the Balinese would be compelled to distinguish explicitly between religion and tradition: in order for their rites to accede to the status of agama, they had to be detached from what was considered as belonging to the domain of adat. But the distinction between religion and tradition – which amounted to imposing a foreign differentiation between the sacred and the profane – resulted in the desacralization of adat by transferring all that is sacred to the side of agama. Such secularization of adat, besides raising inextricable taxonomic problems, was bound to arouse widespread incomprehension and resistance among the Balinese population at large. The turn to India, which Balinese reformers resorted to under pressure from the Indonesian Ministry of Religion, was to be no less controversial. The disagreement between those attempting to find the seeds of regeneration in their own indigenous traditions and those wanting to turn Balinese religion into the local manifestation of a universal religion, on a par with Islam and Christianity, flared up anew in the early 1950s. In the end, the Islamic threat would prove serious enough for Balinese of different persuasions to mobilize their forces in the struggle to obtain the official recognition of their religion. Yet, it was only in 1953 that all the Balinese religious organizations would agree to name their religion Agama Hindu Bali – thus finally adopting the designation that had been promoted by the conservative faction in the 1920s – and it was to be another five years before it would finally be recognized as a legitimate Balinese branch of Hinduism by the Ministry of Religion. Once this recognition had been secured, however, the Ministry of Religion would put increasing pressure on the Balinese to universalize their religion further – to such an extent that when in 1965 President Sukarno announced the names of the religions that were to qualify for official government sponsorship, it was Agama Hindu and not Agama Hindu Bali that was retained.

Notes 1 In dealing with the variations in Malay-Indonesian and Balinese spelling, I have kept the original spelling for personal and institutional names as well as for words in quotations, while following the current usage for toponyms and words not in quotations. 2 While there have been a few studies by both Balinese and foreign academics on the struggle of the Balinese intellectuals to have their religion recognized by the Ministry of Religion, none provides enough historical details to allow the reader to really grasp the full significance of this movement. See e.g. Anandakusuma 1966; Diantari 1990; Wijaya 1990; as well as Swellengrebel 1960; Geertz 1964; Forge 1980; Rudyansjah 1986; Bakker 1993, 1995; and Ramstedt 1995. 3 This recognition was based on a twofold assumption: first, that the Balinese religion was truly Hindu and, second, that Hinduism was monotheistic, in accordance with the Semitic conception of what constitutes a proper religion. While specialists hold contradictory opinions as to whether or not Balinese traditional religious practices and beliefs pertain to Hinduism, there appears a striking convergence between the official version of Balinese ‘Hinduism’ and the Neo-Hindu reformism which has evolved in India since the nineteenth

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century. Besides the emphasis put on monotheism in response to criticisms levelled by Muslims and Christians alike, both these movements have been influenced by Orientalism, colonialism, and nationalism. The story of the Western vision of Bali as a Hindu island in a sea of Islam remains to be written. In the words of one later observer, the Dutch missionary and linguist J.L. Swellengrebel, the nineteenth-century Orientalists ‘saw many things that struck them as being anything but Hindu, but they saw such things through Hindu spectacles, and so had a distorted view’ (Swellengrebel 1960:25). These ‘Hindu spectacles’ worn by the early Europeans who visited Bali have been succinctly described in Boon 1977. This assertion reminds us of the opinion long held by colonial officials and missionaries concerning Islam in Indonesia, and especially in Java, as being only a ‘thin veneer’, underneath which one could easily discern indigenous religious beliefs and rituals, such as ancestor cults and veneration of local spirits. On the implications of the colonial occupation for Balinese society, see Hanna 1976; Boon 1977; Vickers 1989; Robinson 1995; Wiener 1995; and especially Schulte Nordholt 1986, 1994, 1996. The formation and development of these modern organizations in Bali as well as the contents of their publications have remained largely uninvestigated. To the best of my knowledge, there are only two studies devoted to this topic, both by Balinese historians (Agung 1974; Atmadja 1987), except for the occasional mention in foreign publications (e.g. Bakker 1993:39–44; Connor 1982:265–7, 1996:182–9; Goris 1933:33–6; Korn 1932:46–7, 124–5; Kraemer 1933b:48–50; Robinson 1995:33–6; Vickers 1989:150–5) and a few superficial articles and reports by Balinese academics (Agung 1972; Bagus 1969, 1972, 1975, 1996; Kutoyo 1977–8; Padmawati 1982). I myself have recently published an article on the polemic between Surya Kanta and Bali Adnjana (Picard 1999). The problem is that, as early as the 1920s, we are faced with a conception of Balinese identity which is already fully framed in terms of agama (‘religion’) and adat (‘tradition’). Yet, unfortunately, the investigation of these journals does not allow us to elucidate how the Balinese arrived at this conception, which presupposes not only the awareness of a distinctive identity but also the attribution of such a distinction to some specific entities and their imminent reification. I choose to render adat as ‘tradition’ (rather than ‘custom’), in order to stress its normative quality as well as the self-consciousness involved in its appropriation by the Balinese. Thus, adat is not an inheritance passively handed down from one generation to the next, but a conscious model of past ways of life. It denotes a process of interpretation, a symbolic construction of the past in the present. In order to govern the island efficiently, the colonial state introduced uniform administration throughout Balinese society, which had until then been characterized by local idiosyncrasies. A new type of village was created, the ‘administrative village’, generally consisting of several ‘customary villages’. By introducing a dichotomy between customary authority, which they left to the Balinese, and administrative authority, which they appropriated, the Dutch could rule Bali while purporting to restore its traditional order. On the colonial administration in Bali, see Schulte Nordholt 1986, 1994. In their determination to preserve Bali’s traditional order, the Dutch promoted the study of its ‘customary law’ (adatrecht). Thus, in 1923, Resident H.T. Damsté encouraged the Controleur V.E. Korn to compile an inventory of Balinese adatrecht (Korn 1932). While Korn made a point of emphasizing local variations within Balinese adat, the very fact of laying down in one volume what were in fact flexible rules of conduct, negotiable according to the context, transformed them into fixed legal prescriptions, henceforth backed by the bureaucratic apparatus of the colonial state. In this respect, the relationship between ‘tradition’ and ‘religion’ in Bali was different from the situation prevailing in those Indonesian societies that had been Islamized or Christianized, where the local adat was generally perceived as being somehow at variance

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13

14

15

16

17 18

19

20

with the teachings of agama (Abdullah 1966; Von Benda-Beckmann 1988). On the other hand, the situation in Bali was fairly similar to that of other ethnic religions in Indonesia (Smith Kipp and Rodgers 1987). There is a further twist to the already complicated relationship between adat and agama in Bali, in the sense that in the Balinese language, agama means at once ‘religion’, ‘law’ and ‘customs and traditions’ (Warna 1990:7). Moreover, Agama refers to a collection of law texts of Hindu-Javanese origin, the contents of which is markedly different from the Balinese adat – hence the confusion created by the Dutch decision to have these texts translated into Balinese and Malay, for use as the basis of a Balinese code of ‘customary law’ by the members of the Judicial Councils for Native Law, which had been established in each of the former kingdoms. This question appears to have been mostly debated in relation to mortuary rites (ngaben), which were the focus of status competition and for which numerous Balinese would engage in ruinous conspicuous expenditure. In 1924, Tjakra Tanaja had published a booklet written by Poetoe Djlantik, which advocated simplified cremations in order to render them accessible to less wealthy families (Djlantik 1924). On the reform of the mortuary rites, see Connor 1996. While Islam and Christianity were seen as a threat, they also represented, for the reformminded Balinese intelligentsia, a reference of what a true religion should be. Thus, we find in Surya Kanta numerous articles taking as a model the organizational skills evinced by both the Muslims and the Christians in order to defend their faith and propagate its respective teachings. On the other hand, I found only one mention of the Hindu Mahasabha’s efforts to regenerate Hinduism in India with the aim of preventing conversions to Islam or Christianity (Surya Kanta 1927, 3/6:78–80). Traditionally in Bali knowledge was perceived as dangerous, inasmuch as it was dealing with the mysterious powers of the world beyond the senses (niskala). Hence, manuscripts treating of religious matters were surrounded by secrecy and protected by prohibitions (aja wera: literally ‘do not divulge’). Access to them was restricted to those persons who had been initiated (mawinten) and had consequently become immune to supernatural forces. See also Bali Adnjana 1925, 2/18:3, 1926, 3/30:5, 1929, 6/5:3, and Surya Kanta 1926, 2/8:98–9. In Surya Kanta and Bali Adnjana, one commonly encounters the following names for the Balinese religion: Agama Bali, Agama Tirta, Agama Siwa, Agama Boeda, Agama SiwaBoeda, Agama Trimoerti, Agama Hindoe Bali, Agama Bali Hindoe, and Agama Hindoe. The name Agama Tirta refers to the holy water prepared by the pedanda, which is required for most religious rites. It seems that it was mostly used by the Balinese living on Lombok in order to distinguish their religious practices from those of the Muslim majority on this island. Agama Trimoerti was occasionally advocated in reference to the Hindu triad Brahma, Wisnu, and Iswara. As for the names Agama Siwa and Agama Boeda, they pertain to the two main categories of pedanda – pedanda Siwa and the pedanda Boeda (or Boda) – which it would be improper to qualify as Shivaite and Buddhist priests. The appellation Agama Siwa-Boeda points more specifically to the Tantric fusion of these two currents in East Java during the late thirteenth century (Ensink 1978). As a matter of fact, in Bali Adnjana one commonly finds both names – Agama Hindoe Bali as well as Agama Bali Hindoe – the latter appearing to have been the most common appellation during the colonial period. In any case, basing their conclusions on Korn 1932:46–7, both Bakker 1993:40–1 and Robinson 1995:34 (No.52) are mistaken in assuming that the commoners rejected the term Hindoe Bali because it placed too much emphasis on the Hindu components of Balinese religion and, therefore, also on caste hierarchy. In truth, one finds numerous references to India in Surya Kanta, whose contributors were prone to mention the canonical texts of Hinduism, such as the Bhagavad Gita, as well as such contemporary luminaries as Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, or Krishnamurti. It would be no exaggeration to state that what the modernist Balinese intellectuals

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were looking for in India was in many respects similar to what was attracting Muslim reformists to Mecca in quest of a supposedly purer and more authentic form of their religion. 21 In 1928, the colonial government had set up a foundation in Singaraja – the Kirtya Liefrinck-Van der Tuuk – dedicated to the collection and study of Balinese manuscripts. In 1930, the Kirtya launched the publication of the journal Bhawanagara (1931–5) with the financial support of the colonial state. Its main contributors were former leaders of both Bali Adnjana and Surya Kanta, who worked together under the guidance of Roelof Goris towards the politically safe goals of education and culture. The articles published in Bhawanagara were markedly different in tone and content from those in Surya Kanta and Bali Adnjana. To begin with, a significant proportion was in Balinese, as the colonial government was aiming to foster the consciousness of a Balinese cultural identity as opposed to an identity based on caste difference or, even more so, on national unity. Besides, if there were numerous articles on agama and adat, it was as if these topics were more a matter of Orientalist erudition than a crucial question for the Balinese in their attempt to formulate their identity according to the changing times. Religion and tradition were presented as the main constituent parts of a newly emerging entity called ‘Balinese culture’ (peradaban Bali). In this respect, agama was referred to as Kasewasogatan (from Sewa, the followers of Siwa, and Sogata, the followers of Buda – who should not be thought of as Shivaites and Buddhists), while adat was glossed as Tjatoer Dresta (the ‘Four Rules’, namely, Loka Dresta, Poerwa Dresta, Desa Dresta and Sastra Dresta). 22 Thus, in one of its first issues, Djatajoe quoted extensively Korn’s disparaging opinion on Balinese religion: ‘The name Bali Hindoe is misleading, as it leads one to assume that the Balinese religion manifests a Hindu foundation. This is not actually the case. The dominant features of the Balinese religion are pagan’ (‘Perkataän “Bali Hindoe” itoe, tidak benar atau palsoe, karena tambahan kata Hindoe itoe seakan akan memperlihatkan, bahwa agama Bali itoe menoendjoekkan dasar ke Hindoean. Sesoenggoehnja tidak begitoe. Dasardasar agama di Bali ialah: “heidensch” ’) (Djatajoe 1936, 1/4:92–3; cf. Korn 1932:62). 23 One finds in Djatajoe not only frequent mention of Balinese renouncing their religion after having endured the criticism of Muslim or Christian schoolmates, but some of them are even said to have become atheists altogether for having been exposed to the pernicious influence of Dutch education (Djatajoe 1938, 2/11:353–4). 24

[A]gama kita ini bersendi dari adat dan ditjampoeri oleh bermatjam-matjam sari dari agama Hindoe, jang soedah tentoe tiada bisa dibandingkan kepada salah satoe agama di Hindoe, jang mana pada pemandangan Toean-toean bangsa asing adalah kita tak beragama dan tiada menjembah Toehan (Widi), melainkan kita adalah disamakan sebagai orang gila jaitoe menjembah segala jang ketemoe. (Djatajoe 1937, 2/4:98)

This image of the Balinese as ‘heathens’ who ‘pray to whatever they first meet in the morning’ has a long history, dating back to the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies in 1597 and destined to be repeated in a recurrent fashion ever since (Boon 1977:12). 25 Beside other terms, the name Sang Hjang Widi was commonly used in Bali Adnjana and Surya Kanta. This term had long been known among the literati and was popularized by the religious reform before it was expressly adopted in the 1950s as the name of God in the Balinese religion. In the meantime, Christian missionaries had already chosen this same name in order to translate ‘God’ into the Balinese language. According to the Sanskritist J. Gonda: in modern Bali Vidhi (Viddhi) – the Indian designation of ‘rule, destiny’ which is also applied to some individual gods – denotes that principle which, representing the unity of the universe, is beyond all plurality and acts as the guardian of the cosmic and moral order. (Gonda 1975:23)

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26 ‘[H]aroeslah kita menjelidiki kebenaran dan apa arti jang terpakai pada agama kita soepaja bisalah kita djawab toedoehan Toean-toean bangsa asing tentang kehinaän oepatjara agama kita’ (Djatajoe 1937, 2/4:98). 27

Sebeloem poetra-poetra dan poetri-poetri Bali ada jang bersekolah, dan di Bali beloemlah pernah berdiri soerat-soerat chabar, maka keadaan di Bali soedahlah memeloek agama ini, jang mana berdjalan teroes, tiadalah ada mentjela dan menjalahkan, jang mana kita dengar tjoema ada pembitjaraan ‘adat desa anoe begini dan desa anoe begitoe’, begitoe poela ‘orang dibagian anoe djalan ngabennja begini’ . . . Lantas ini tiada diseboet oepatjara agama, melainkan diseboet adat desa. Djadi ringkasnja agama jang sebenarnja tiada diketahoei; jang diketahoei perbedaannja tjoema adat desa dan agama jang diketahoei tjoema agama Bali, dan tiada pernah kedengaran maloe atau marah ditjela oleh Toean . . . anoe. (Djatajoe 1937, 2/5:131)

28

[H]aroes ditimbang oleh para Pandita-Pandita dan orang-orang jang achli mana agama jang haroes dipakai, tjampoeran mana jang haroes diboeang, dan adat mana jang masih boleh dipakai dan mana jang menjebabkan kemoendoeran haroes diboeang. (Djatajoe 1937, 2/5:132)

29 For those Balinese who did not expect much from the pedanda, the salvation should come from India. Already in 1936, a Hindu Brahman had visited Bali where he had delivered religious lectures. And there were talks among members of Bali Darma Laksana about inviting an Indian guru in order to bridge the gap between the religious practices of the Balinese and their Hindu model. Moreover, the readers of Djatajoe – like those of Bhawanagara before them – were provided with Malay or Dutch translations of both classical texts of Hinduism and Western studies on Indian religions. In this respect, one should mention the foundation of the religious organization Trimurti in Klungkung in 1939, which was under the leadership of I Goesti Ngoerah Sidemen (later to be known as Sri Reshi Anandakusuma) and Ida Bagoes Toegoer (Djatajoe 1940, 4/9–10:292–4). Over the years, this organization (which would reappear in 1950 under the name of Madjelis Hinduisme) was to promote religious practices more in line with Indian Hinduism. 30 The ascendancy of Muslim conceptions and vocabulary in the discourse of the Balinese intellectuals had been patent since the 1920s: in quest of a Kitab Suci (a word of Arabic origin, referring specifically to the Koran) as well as of a nabi (a prophet, particularly Muhammad), authors in the journals under investigation frequently described the Balinese as umat, their priests as ulama, and their God as Allah. There was even a proposal in Djatajoe to adopt Bagawan Biasa (Vyasa, to whom is attributed the authorship of the Vedas as well as of the Mahabharata) as the prophet of the Balinese religion, and the Sarasamoestjaja (an Old Javanese compendium of teachings derived from the Mahabharata) as its Holy Book (Djatajoe 1938, 2/6:180–2).

Bibliography Abdullah, T. (1966) ‘Adat and Islam: An Examination of Conflict in Minangkabau’, Indonesia 2, pp. 1–24. Adam, A.B. (1995) The Vernacular Press and the Emergence of Modern Indonesian Consciousness (1855–1913), Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University. Agung, A.A.Gd.P. (1972) ‘Lahirnja idee-idee pembaharuan dalam organisasi sosial di Bali’, Basis 21/6, pp. 183–9. –––– (1974) Perobahan Sosial dan Pertentangan Kasta di Bali Utara, 1924–1928, Yogyakarta: MA thesis, Universitas Gadjah Mada.

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Anandakusuma, S.R. (1966) Pergolakan Hindu Dharma II, Klungkung. Atkinson, J.M. (1987) ‘Religions in Dialogue: The Construction of an Indonesian Minority Religion’, in: R. Smith Kipp and S. Rodgers (eds) Indonesian Religions in Transition, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, pp. 171–86. Atmadja, N.B. (1987) Surya Kanta Sebagai Perkumpulan Sempalan dan Gagasannya Dalam Mewujudkan Kemajuan dan Kesempurnaan Masyarakat Bali (1925–1927), Singaraja: Laporan Penelitian, Universitas Udayana. Bagus, I.G.Ng. (1969) Pertentangan kasta dalam bentuk baru pada masjarakat Bali, Denpasar: Universitas Udayana. –––– (1972) A Short Note on the Modern Hindu Movements in Balinese Society, Denpasar: Universitas Udayana. –––– (1975) ‘Surya Kanta: A Kewangsaan Movement of the Jaba Caste in Bali’, Masyarakat Indonesia 2/2, pp. 153–62. –––– (1996) ‘The Play “Woman’s Fidelity”: Literature and Caste Conflict in Bali’, in: A. Vickers (ed.) Being Modern in Bali. Image and Change, New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, pp. 92–114. Bakker, F.L. (1993) The Struggle of the Hindu Balinese Intellectuals. Developments in Modern Hindu Thinking in Independent Indonesia, Amsterdam: VU University Press. –––– (1995) ‘The Renaissance of Balinese Hinduism in the Context of Independent Indonesia: Its Relationship with Politics’, Leiden: Paper presented at the First Euroseas Conference. Benda-Beckmann, F. and K. von (1988) ‘Adat and religion in Minangkabau and Ambon’, in: H.J.M. Claessen and D.S. Moyer (eds) Time Past, Time Present, Time Future. Perspectives on Indonesian Culture. Essays in Honour of Prof. P.E. De Josselin De Jong, Dordrecht: Foris, pp. 195–212. Boon, J.A. (1977) The Anthropological Romance of Bali 1597–1972: Dynamic Perspectives in Marriage and Caste, Politics and Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bosch, F.D.K. (1932) ‘Een ontoelaatbaar experiment’, De Stuw 3/17, pp. 205–7. –––– (1933) ‘Bali en de zending’, Djåwå 13/1, pp. 1–39. Connor, L.H. (1982) In Darkness and Light: A Study of Peasant Intellectuals in Bali, Sydney: PhD diss., University of Sydney. –––– (1996) ‘Contestation and Transformation of Balinese Ritual: The Case of Ngaben Ngirit’, in: A. Vickers (ed.) Being Modern in Bali. Image and Change, New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, pp. 179–211. Crawfurd, J. (1820) ‘On the Existence of the Hindu Religion in the Island of Bali’, Asiatick Researches 13, Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, pp. 128–70. Creese, H. (1997) In Search of Majapahit: The Transformation of Balinese Identities, Clayton: Working Paper, Monash University Centre for Southeast Asian Studies. Diantari, P. (1990) Gerakan Pembaruan Hindu: Studi Tentang Perkembangan Pemikiran Intelektual Hindu di Bali Tahun 1925–1958, Denpasar: MA thesis, Universitas Udayana. Djlantik, I.G.P. (1924) Penoentoen menghemat mengaben. Tanda peringatan dari I Goesti Poetoe Djlantik atas membitjaraannja dalam vergadering Perkoempoelan Santy Singaradja pada 2 November 1924, Singaradja: I Goesti Bagoes Tjakra Tanaja. Ensink, J. (1978) ‘Siva-Buddhism in Java and Bali’, in: H. Bechert (ed.) Buddhism in Ceylon and Studies on Religious Syncretism in Buddhist Countries, Göttingen: Vandenhoech & Ruprecht, pp. 178–98. Forge, A. 1980: ‘Balinese Religion and Indonesian Identity’, in: J.J. Fox, R.G. Garnaut, P.T. McCawley, and J.A.C. Mackie (eds) Indonesia: Australian Perspectives, Canberra: Australian National University, pp. 221–33. Friederich, R.H.Th. (1849–50) ‘Voorlopig verslag van het eiland Bali’, Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap voor Kunsten en Wetenschappen, 22:1–63, 23:1–57 (English translation: The Civilization and Culture of Bali, Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1959). Geertz, C. (1964) ‘“Internal Conversion” in Contemporary Bali’, in: J. Bastin and R. Roolvink (eds) Malayan and Indonesian Studies Presented to Sir Richard Winstedt, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 282–302.

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Gonda, J. [1952] (1973) Sanskrit in Indonesia, New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture. –––– (1975) ‘The Indian Religions in Pre-Islamic Indonesia and Their Survival in Bali’, in: Handbuch der Orientalistik, Part 3: Indonesien, Malaysia und die Philippinen, Leiden and Köln: E.J. Brill, pp. 1–54. Goris, R. (1933) ‘De strijd over Bali en de Zending.’ De waarde van Dr. Kraemer’s boek, Batavia: Minerva. Hanna, W.A. (1976) Bali Profile. People, Events, Circumstances (1001–1976), New York: American Universities Field Staff (reprinted in 1990, Banda Naira: Rumah Budaya). Hoadley, M.C., and Hooker, M.B. (1981) An Introduction to Javanese Law. A Translation of and Commentary on the Agama, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Hoëvell, W.R. van (1846) ‘Wetenschappelijke nasporingen op het eiland Bali’, Tijdschrift van Nederlandsch-Indië 8/3:223–43, 8/4:205–16. Howell, J.D. (1978) ‘Modernizing Religious Reform and the Far Eastern Religions in Twentieth Century Indonesia’, in: S. Udin (ed.) Spectrum. Essays Presented to Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana on his Seventieth Birthday, Jakarta: Dian Rakyat, pp. 260–76. –––– (1982) ‘Indonesia: Searching for Consensus’, in: C. Caldarola (ed.) Religions and Societies: Asia and the Middle East, Berlin: Mouton, pp. 497–548. Korn, V.E. [1924] (1932) Het Adatrecht van Bali, ’s-Gravenhage: Naeff. Kraemer, H. (1932) ‘Het eenig-toelaatbaar experiment’, De Stuw 3/18, pp. 219–23. –––– (1933a) ‘Repliek op “Bali en de Zending”’, Djåwå 13/1, pp. 40–77. –––– (1933b) De strijd over Bali en de Zending. Een studie en een appel, Amsterdam: H.J. Paris. Kutoyo, S. (1977–8) Sejarah Kebangkitan Nasional (1900–1942) Daerah Bali, Jakarta: Proyek Penelitian dan Pencatatan Kebudayaan Daerah, Pusat Penelitian Sejarah dan Budaya, Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. Padmawati, Ni P. (1982) Pertumbuhan Perkoempoelan Shanti di Singaraja Antara Tahun 1921–1924, Denpasar: BA thesis, Universitas Udayana. Picard, M. (1999) ‘La polémique entre Surya Kanta (1925–1927) et Bali Adnjana (1924–1930), ou comment être balinais à l’ère du progrès’, Archipel 58, pp. 3–36. Putra, A.A.P.O. (1989) Perkumpulan Bali Darma Laksana: Sebuah Organisasi Sosial di Bali, 1936–1942, Denpasar: MA thesis, Universitas Udayana. Raffles, T.S. (1817) The History of Java, London: Black, Parbury & Allen. Ramstedt, M. (1995) ‘Preliminary Reflections on an Ambiguous Relationship: Agama Hindu Bali vis-à-vis Hindu Dharma Indonesia’, Sydney: paper presented at the ‘Bali in the Late Twentieth Century’ conference, Sydney University, 3–7 July. Robinson, G.B. (1995) The Dark Side of Paradise. Political Violence in Bali, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rudyansjah, T. (1986) Modernization and Religion on Bali. A Cultural–Sociological Study of the Parisada Hindu Dharma, Jakarta: MA thesis, University of Indonesia. Schulte Nordholt, H. (1986) Bali: Colonial Conceptions and Political Change, 1700–1940. From Shifting Hierarchies to ‘Fixed Order’, Rotterdam: Erasmus University. –––– (1994) ‘The Making of Traditional Bali: Colonial Ethnography and Bureaucratic Reproduction’, History and Anthropology 8/1–4, pp. 89–127. –––– (1996) The Spell of Power. A History of Balinese Politics, 1650–1940, Leiden: KITLV Press. Smith Kipp, R. (1993) Dissociated Identities. Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in an Indonesian Society, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. –––– and Rodgers, S. (eds) (1987) Indonesian Religions in Transition, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Staal, F. (1995) Mantras between Fire and Water. Reflections on a Balinese Rite, Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen. Swellengrebel, J.L. (1960) ‘Introduction’, in: J.L. Swellengrebel (ed.) Bali: Studies in Life, Thought, and Ritual, The Hague: W. van Hoeve, pp. 1–76. Vickers, A. (1989) Bali: A Paradise Created, Berkeley: Periplus.

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Warna, W. (1990) Kamus Bali-Indonesia, Denpasar: Dinas Pendidikan Dasar Propinsi Dati I Bali. Warren, C. (1993) Adat and Dinas. Balinese Communities in the Indonesian State, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Wiener, M.J. (1995) Visible and Invisible Realms. Power, Magic, and Colonial Conquest in Bali, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wijaya, N. (1990) Dari Agama Bali Menuju Hindu Dharma: Studi Tentang Konflik Sosial di Bali 1913–1959, Denpasar: Laporan Penelitian, Universitas Udayana.

Balinese periodicals Bali Adnjana (1924–30), Singaradja: Perkoempoelan Santi. Surya Kanta (1925–7), Singaradja: Perkoempoelan Surya Kanta. Bhawanagara (1931–5), Singaradja: Kirya Liefrinck-Van der Tuuk. Djatajoe (1936–41), Singaradja: Bali Darma Laksana.

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5 THE DEVELOPMENT OF HINDU EDUCATION IN BALI Ngurah Nala

From the time of the early Hinduized kingdoms in Bali, i.e. from the ninth century, until Bali’s integration into the Indonesian Republic, there was no formal religious education for the common people. Instead, they were socialized in the practices and values of their religious tradition in a way that can best be described as a kind of informal education that consisted of learning by doing. Numerous rituals have structured the daily life of the Balinese and have been highly effective in instilling religious, moral, and ethical values in people. Formal education in the Hindu religion, on the other hand, implies regular, systematic and continuous instruction which takes place either in a pasraman, an ashram, a school, or any other formal institution. The modern informal religious education known in Bali as dharma wacana (‘religious discourse’ consisting of a sermon and a subsequent discussion), the Hindu equivalent to the Muslim or Christian Friday or Sunday sermons, did not exist prior to the 1960s. But even then, the Balinese were not poorer in terms of s´raddha (confidence) and bhakti (devotion) than the adherents of other religions. Since religion in Bali was and still is largely considered to be a way of life, it is very difficult to differentiate between tradition, culture, and religion as they form a unity. As elsewhere, the rapid development of scientific knowledge and technology has affected people’s awareness of what are called religious phenomena in Bali. Religious teachings and practices in the modern age cannot be approached and understood from merely a normative theological or a traditional, pragmatic perspective. People nowadays tend to favour a multi-dimensional approach to religious education. When the religious expressions of the Balinese, which traditionally were spiritual and deeply esoteric, eventually came to be modified and transformed by religious institutions that have tended to be bureaucratic in nature, a formal religious education was introduced that was perceived as being in line with the general sociocultural and economic transformation called ‘modernity’. Modern religious education does not stop with the explanation of the vertical relationship between humankind and God. It also involves an elucidation of the horizontal relations between human beings (sociology) as well as of the values and rules that are supposed to govern them (philosophy, ethics). Furthermore, it teaches how to achieve a firm character and peace of mind (psychology). It even includes ethical instructions on how to have a successful professional career, how to attain

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a ‘good life’ in an economic as well as in an ecologically well-balanced sense. It is this multi-dimensional approach which is applied by the religious institutions responsible for the formal Hindu education in contemporary Indonesia. Formal religious education was introduced in Bali after Hinduism had been acknowledged as one of the religions adhered to by the Indonesian people.1 These developments were preceded by a meeting (pesamuhan) of the leaders of major religious organizations from 21 to 23 February 1959 in Denpasar, in which a common decision was made to form a religious institution called Parisada Dharma Hindu Bali. It counted thirty-three members, eleven of which were sulinggih (priests) and twenty-two of which were walaka (lay experts on the Hindu religion). This institution was to be the highest council of the Hindu community in Bali as well as throughout Indonesia, changing its name accordingly to Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI) at the Sabha Hindu Bali, held from 7 to 10 October 1964. The name of this institution is still used today. With the coming into being of the Parisada, it was expected that the development of Hinduism would parallel that of the other religions in Indonesia. In order to attain this objective, the Parisada decided to establish institutions of formal Hindu education in predominantly Hindu areas. Let us now take a closer look at both informal, or non-formal, religious education and formal religious education as they have been administered side by side in Bali since the official recognition of Hinduism.

Non-formal Hindu education in Bali In contrast to Muslim education in Indonesia or Hindu education in India, there are no ashram or boarding schools for children and adolescents to acquire a formal Hindu education outside primary and secondary schools in Bali or elsewhere in Indonesia for that matter. Instead, children and adolescents receive a traditional, non-formal Hindu education through participation in the numerous rituals structuring the daily life of the Balinese in which they become acquainted with the religious symbols, the religious rites and the way in which to pray. By participating, for instance, in the common prayer taking place at a certain point within a certain religious ceremony, they learn the symbolism connected with the sprinkling of tirtha or holy water by a priest: first, the holy water is sprinkled on the head, symbolizing the purification of the mind, or manah; then, the water is drunk, symbolizing the purification of speech, or wak; finally, water is sprinkled over the whole body, symbolizing the purification of the entire attitude and behaviour, or kaya. Thus, they become acquainted with the ethical values embodied in the concept of tri kaya parisudha, or the attainment of a pure or good mind (manacika), pure or good speech (wacika), and pure conduct (kayika). In a broader sense, manacika also means to think correctly, to have good and correct planning based on good and correct concepts and insights. Wacika also means to talk correctly, to base one’s reasoning on good and valid concepts and plans. Kayika also means to perform one’s actions in accordance with the correct plans, concepts, and insights. The instruction in tri kaya parisudha is very important in the life of Balinese Hindus and seems to be successfully attained in the manner just described.

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Apart from praying, there are also other means of non-formal education within and outside the ritual context: 1

2

3

4

5

Wayang kulit or shadow-play performances based on the stories (lakon) of the Parwa and the Kakawin Ramayana, i.e. the Old Javanese versions of the Indian epics Maha¯ bha¯ rata and Ra¯ ma¯ yan.a. The content of these stories comprise aspects of tattwa (philosophy) and dharma (ethics, moral duty), presented to the audience in the allegoric behaviour, experiences, and adventures of the different dramatis personae: the divine heroes, the demon kings, and so forth. Tembang, traditional Old Javanese poetry containing – like the lakon for the wayang performances – aspects of tattwa and dharma, are chanted (makakawin) in organizations called sekeha kidung or pasantian, where philosophical and ethical questions inspired by the respective verses are also commonly discussed (babaosan). Babanten, offerings, are made and arranged according to the cosmological principles inherent in the Hindu religion. Thus, girls and women, who are usually responsible for the preparation of the offerings, have internalized the cosmological principles by following the traditional rules of making babanten. Traditional dance, painting, and sculpture, when performing or depicting episodes from the classical epics, are means of non-formal religious education similar to wayang performances. Consecrated statues and religious paintings that are placed in various locations throughout Bali remind people of God’s peace and protection. Satua, secular folk-tales told to children, for instance, before going to bed, acquaint them with the moral norms supported by Balinese culture and tradition.

Notwithstanding the fact that these forms of non-formal religious education are still in use, the growing adoption of elements of a Western or modern lifestyle has considerably weakened traditional non-formal Hindu education especially among the young generation. Nowadays, most members of the young generation prefer watching television shows or movies rather than wayang or sacred dance performances. Likewise, they tend to favour modern songs to the disadvantage of traditional tembang or kidung (a form of poetry written in the Middle Javanese idiom) singing. Moreover, the telling of folk-tales has almost disappeared in the last decades due to the fact that, driven by necessity, materialistic concerns, or entrepreneurial zeal, parents engage in all kinds of businesses, their educational role being increasingly replaced by television, film, radio, and books. For the same reason, a growing number of people find buying offerings easier and more practical than making them. And also dances, paintings, and carvings are only truly appreciated by a few people who really like art. Realizing the changing, or rather disappearing conditions for a successful nonformal Hindu education, the stakeholders of the Hindu religion, the Hindu Council, the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI), and others, decided to make an extra effort to upgrade and diversify both formal and non-formal Hindu educa-

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tion for fear that soon Hindus will know nothing about their own religion and thereby easily fall prey to either asocial materialism or to the missionary activities of other religions, namely Christianity and Islam. Hence, the PHDI decided upon measures to improve the formal Hindu education that was already implemented in schools and to increase the means and contexts for non-formal religious education. One of the innovations was religious instruction directly from the Indian Vedas (Catur Veda: R. g, Yajur, Sa¯ ma and Atharva Veda), which had never been the case in the past. In this way, it was hoped, people’s knowledge of the religious doctrines was not inhibited or obscured by interpretations and deviations. In order to provide that kind of religious instruction directly from the holy books, translations had to be made available. Besides, a reinterpretation of the contents of the sacred literature in the light of modernity commenced. Various myths that were considered irrelevant for the present age were consequently omitted from the new editions. This concerned, for example, the famous myth on the lunar eclipse that relates how Devi Ratih (the moon) was eaten by Sang Bhuta Kala Rau, a demon who possessed only a head and not a body. Sang Bhuta Kala Rau was very angry with Devi Ratih as he had been deceived by her. He pursued her and finally devoured her, but as he had no body, Devi Ratih just disappeared for a moment and then reappeared again from his rear. For the young generation, educated at school in the sciences, it is of course impossible to accept this myth as an explanation of lunar eclipses. Another innovation was that religious sermons (dharma wacana) were to be delivered during every religious ceremony. Alas, the implementation of this measure was not as successful as expected. A major obstacle has been the lack of qualified pedharma wacana (religious experts who are able to deliver religious lectures). Several courses on the Hindu religion have been initiated by the Directorate of Hindu Affairs, the PHDI, and other Hindu associations. All these efforts have not obtained the expected results, although they have at least ameliorated the situation a little bit. Courses for candidate pinandita (priests who are still allowed to pursue worldly activities in contrast to the pandita, who have dedicated their whole life to the performance of religious as well as priestly duties) and serati (experts in making babanten, or offerings) have been more successful, owing to the fact that their funding has been provided by the government of Bali on an annual basis. The broadcasting of religious programmes through radio and television and the discussion of religious topics in printed media have also been sponsored by either the government of Bali, the Directorate of Hindu Affairs, the PHDI, or by private donors. These efforts have generally been well received by the public. A further means has been the organization of public discussions on religious topics (dharma tula), often sponsored by the PHDI but also by other Hindu organizations. All these efforts have increased the s´raddha and bhakti of the Hindus in Bali and have thus helped them to lead a more fulfilled life in the sense of moks.a¯ rthan jagaddhitaya ca iti dharma, that is, developing welfare, security and peace in life by following truth, i.e. fulfilling their religious duties.

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The education of the sulinggih Although the sulinggih, or Hindu priests, have the most important function of leading the religious ceremonies, there is as yet almost no formal education available to them. This is largely due to the fact that the source of their spiritual power lies in their respective local Hindu tradition, which also provides the means for their spiritual training. A very short period of formal education (30 days) ensures that the future sulinggih are able to meet the increasing demand of the lay people for an intellectual explanation of the Hindu doctrines against the backdrop of changing living conditions. Indonesian Hindu priests can be divided into two categories: the eka jati (‘once born’) and dwi jati (‘twice born’), the latter having a much higher status than the first one. Priests of eka jati rank are generally called pinandita, while they also bear a local title like pemangku in Bali or wasi in Java, and so forth. As I have said, they acquire their spiritual training according to the ways prescribed by their respective tradition. In Bali, that involves studying with a sulinggih of dwi jati rank, i.e. a pedanda, an ida mpu, or resi bhujangga waisnawa. In addition, they have to attend a 30-day course sponsored by the PHDI, the government, and private stakeholders. After they have finished their traditional training and have attended the said course, they undergo a pawintenan ceremony and legally become pinanita, performing all the duties required by their office. In order to become a sulinggih of the dwi jati category, generally called pandita, a candidate has to find an experienced dwi jati priest (in Bali called nabe) who accepts him as an apprentice. The length of the candidate’s spiritual training as well as religious education depends very much on the opinion of his nabe with regard to his abilities. If the teacher has enough trust in his student, he releases him from his apprenticeship in order to undergo a padiksaan ceremony, i.e. an initiation ceremony indicating his new dwi jati status. In order to perform this ceremony, however, permission has also to be asked from the provincial PHDI office. The approval of the PHDI is very important because the swadharma (duties) of a pandita involve the performance of major rituals such as weddings, death ceremonies, and so forth. Thus, he exerts a major influence on the life of a wide circle of people. The main duty of a sulinggih is to execute loka pala sraya, that is, to provide services to people in the field of religion. In Bali, loka pala sraya traditionally includes: 1

2 3

deciding dewasa, that means determining a day which is considered to be auspicious for holding a religious ceremony or yadnya, or prohibiting people to perform a religious ceremony on an inauspicious day, which would cause ill luck; determining whether a ceremony should be performed very elaborately (utama), on a moderate scale (madya), or in a very simple manner (nista); making holy water, or tirtha, and providing it to the people who ask for it.

However, in modern times, people have requested that the scope of loka pala sraya be widened. They have requested that the sulinggih not only lead religious ceremonies but also provide other services such as dharma wacana, i.e. religious

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lectures, on tatwa (theology, philosophy), the meaning and function of holy water or tirtha, the meaning and function of temples (pura, kahyangan) and other holy places, babanten or offerings, ethics, and so forth. It was in order to meet these demands that formal courses were introduced for candidates aspiring to become pinandita. Since 1985, these courses have been organized on an annual basis by the head office of the PHDI.

Formal Hindu education in Bali With the establishment of the Indonesian Republic after the Second World War, the Pancasila (‘Five Principles’) became the foundation of our country, set forth in the Preamble of the Constitution of 1945 (Undang-Undang Dasar 1945). The first principle of the Pancasila is ‘belief in God Almighty’, from which follows that the government is also responsible for the development of religion based on the Indonesian people’s religious aspirations. Hence, the objective of religious development in Indonesia has been to develop the Indonesian people in both a material and a spiritual sense. Therefore, religious education was to be improved in all its forms, meaning that both formal religious education and non-formal religious education were to be improved and enhanced, especially in terms of developing the mental faculties of Indonesians. After 1950, formal religious lessons were introduced at all educational institutions, ranging from elementary schools to universities. At elementary and secondary schools, these lessons comprise two hours per semester. At universities, religious lessons are taught only for one semester. The official representatives of Hinduism in Indonesia have been keenly aware of the fact that without any qualified teachers of religion, it is hard to execute the ambitious plans for enhancing formal religious education. They have also realized that if religious education is left only to traditional or non-formal ways of spiritual training, it will be hard for the Hindu community to catch up with the development of the other religious communities, especially the Muslim and Christian communities. Therefore, a high school for the formal study of the Hindu religion was established in Denpasar after Hinduism was recognized as a religion adhered to by the Indonesian people. It was called Pendidikan Guru Agama Hindu (PGAH). The students went there in order to study the Hindu religion for three years, after having graduated from junior high schools (SMP). Graduating from the PGAH, they became teachers of the Hindu religion at elementary schools (SD) and junior high schools (SMP) to teach for two hours per week. Sometimes, they also taught at senior high schools (SMA and SLTA) since at that time, such schools were relatively rare. Due to a new policy of the central government in 1990, all vocational high schools were abolished – the PGAH thus being closed. In order to cater to the needs of the growing number of senior high schools in Denpasar and other cities in Bali, a private Hindu college was established in 1990 in Denpasar, from which the necessary religious teachers were to graduate. It was named Akademi Pendidikan Guru Agama Hindu (APGAH). In 1993, it was recognized by the government. In 1999, its status was once more upgraded, and it became the State High School for the Hindu Religion (Sekolah Tinggi Agama Hindu Negeri, STAHN). In some other places in Indonesia, similar colleges for the study of the

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Hindu religion (STAH, STKIP) have been established. The Balinese STAHN consists altogether of three units: one is located in Singaraja, another in Denpasar, and the third one in Amlapura. The graduates of APGAH as well as STAHN have become teachers of the Hindu religion at junior and senior high schools. After a state university, i.e. the Universitas Udayana, had been established in 1962, the Institute for the Hindu Religion (Institut Hindu Dharma, IHD) was founded in 1964. Apart from being educated as teachers and lecturers of the Hindu religion to be deployed to various institutions all over Indonesia, the graduates were also prepared to become civil servants in government institutions such as the Ministry of Religion, the Government of Bali, and the Indonesian Armed Forces (ABRI), or to serve in private sectors where the Hindu religion is of relevance such as the tourist industry. Because of the closing down of the PGA, however, the IHD lost a great number of potential students, since they had often graduated from the PGA first. Furthermore, the government failed to recognize the IHD as a state institution. Hence, the stakeholders of the Hindu religion decided to change the status of the IHD, elevating it to the rank of a university, changing its name to the University of Indonesian Hinduism (Universitas Hindu Indonesia, UNHI) on 19 May 1993. Its curriculum covers not only the study of religion but also the study of economics, biology, and civil engineering. Thus, the graduates of UNHI have become not only scholars and teachers of the Hindu religion but also civil servants working in the Ministry of Religion, the Indonesian army, and so forth. They have also been working in cultural tourism management (because of the important role the Hindu religion plays in Balinese culture, the uniqueness of which attracts most tourists), in fauna and flora conservation projects (since the local plants, for instance, are pertinent for religious ceremonies as well as for traditional medication, called usada), and as civil engineers (participating in subak, i.e. the traditional system of irrigation, maintenance and improvement projects). The graduates of UNHI have been educated to become sujana and sadhubudhi, that is, scholars and professionals in their respective fields, with high work ethics and morals, since such scholars are very important for the future of Indonesia in the era of globalization. The curriculum of the discipline of the science of religion within the Department of the Study of Hinduism at UNHI has been designed to help to turn out scholars who master not only the philosophy and ethics of the Hindu religion but also the Hindu rituals. Books, magazines, and reading materials for Hindus have been published in growing numbers both by private publishers and by government publishers. In 1978, the PHDI launched a pioneer project, the publication of a daily Hindu newspaper, Karya Bhakti, in Bali. Soon, however, the project proved to be a bit too ambitious, and Karya Bhakti has henceforth appeared as a weekly. Besides, the PHDI has been publishing a magazine named Warta Hindu Dharma since 1983. It appears twice a month and also addresses a predominantly Balinese audience. The contents of Karya Bhakti and Warta Hindu Dharma mainly consist of information on religion, tradition, and culture in Bali with some articles touching upon these issues with regard to other areas in Indonesia. In order to support these publishing activities, a printing company named Mabakti was set up. Apart from Mabakti, the

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PHDI also initiated the establishment of a publishing house, PT Upada Sastra, in Denpasar. It has been very active in publishing books and booklets on Hindu religion and culture, including translations of Indian publications.

Conclusion Whereas traditional non-formal Hindu education, consisting, for instance, of wayangkulit (shadow-play) performances, makakawin (chanting religious poetry), babaosan (reading and interpreting classical Balinese religious texts), and various sacred art forms including the making of offerings, has decreased over the years, new forms of non-formal religious education such as dharma wacana (delivering religious lectures) and dharma tula have been successfully introduced. Besides, there has been prolific publishing activity from which many books, periodicals, brochures, broadcastings, etc., have come forth, containing information on tattwa (philosophy), dharma (ethics), and upacara and upakara (religious rituals and ceremonies). In order to improve the services of the priests (sulinggih), the upgrading of their education is quite necessary. Through a multi-dimensional approach, much has already been achieved. However, Hindu educational institutions have experienced a precarious lack of funding when compared to similar Islamic and Christian institutions. Therefore, Balinese Hindus have as yet rarely been able to compete with Christian and Muslim scholars of religion, who have often studied abroad, in public discussions broadcast on television or in other public forums.

Note 1

See the Introduction to this volume by M. Ramstedt as well as M. Picard’s contribution.

Bibliography Abdullah, A. (1996) Studi Agama. Normativitas atau Historisitas? Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar. Bandem, I M. (1996) Evolusi Tari Bali, Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius. Dirjen Pendidikan Tinggi (1998) Tap-Tap MPR 1998: Bahan Penataran BP-7, Jakarta: MPR. Kaler, I G. K. (1990) Butir-butir Tercecer tentang Adat Bali, Denpasar: Bali Agung. Medera, Ngh. (1997) Kakawin dan Mabebasan di Bali, Denpasar: Upada Sastra. Nala, Ngurah/Adia, W. (1993) Murddha Agama Hindu, Denpasar: Upada Sastra. Pasek, I K. (1995) Meningkatkan Fungsi Agama Hindu dalam PJP II. Moksartham Jagaddhita, Denpasar: Upada Sastra. Tim Penyusun Buku Pelajaran Agama Hindu (1996) Buku Pendidikan Agama Hindu untuk PerguruanTinggi, Jakarta: Hanoman Sakti. Tim Penyusun Kurikulum Universitas Hindu Indonesia (1995) Buku Pedoman Universitas Hindu Indonesia, Denpasar: Universitas Hindu Indonesia.

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6 THE PARISADA HINDU DHARMA INDONESIA IN A SOCIETY IN TRANSFORMATION The emergence of conflicts amidst differences and demands1 I Gusti Ngurah Bagus

There are no more gods dancing at the top of meru . . . Let’s go home’, he said suddenly when the sun already set. Then we went home disappointed but still hoping that we would find a trace of the gods in the middle of the cheers of the people who were watching the sunset and at the same time dancing nakedly. (K. Landras Syaelendra, ‘At the Tanah Lot Temple’, Horison, June 1994)2

My discussion of the development of Hindu Dharma Indonesia through the agency of the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI) against the background of a society in structural change or transformation does not bring up a new topic. Several papers on the topic have already been presented at various seminars in different places by myself as well as others. What is new about the contribution of this chapter, however, is that it introduces a critical view of the role of the PHDI in the course of Indonesia’s more recent history from the perspective of the group of activists among contemporary Indonesian Hindu intellectuals. The transformation of Balinese society has been characterized by a transition from an economy based on agriculture to an economy based on industrialization, triggered by many factors such as widespread formal education, population growth, the impact of telecommunication technology, general economic globalization, and so on. Yet, the most dominant factor in this process of socio-economic transformation has been the implementation of a service industry engineered by the New Order regime since more than thirty years. This socio-economic change has to be understood within the entire socio-economic context of Indonesia, into which

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Bali has been integrated as one of formerly twenty-seven and nowadays – since the separation of East Timor – twenty-six provinces. The transformation of Balinese society has indeed become even more complex in the reformation era (era reformasi ) following the demise of Suharto and his New Order regime. In the context of our discussion of the development of Hinduism in modern Indonesia, it is important to bear in mind that Bali has served as a common geographical, cultural and religious reference point for the whole Indonesian Hindu community since the Hindu religion began to flourish in many different enclaves throughout Indonesia. Nowadays, the Hindu religion is not only embraced by Balinese but also by members of other ethnic groups ( Javanese, Tenggerese, Toraja, Karo Batak, Ngaju, and Luangan Dayak). It will therefore be necessary to discuss the role of the Balinese in influencing the thinking and attitudes of the whole Hindu society in Indonesia. If we in fact look at the development of the Hindu religion in connection with the history of its official representative, the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI), which has branch offices all over Indonesia, it must be admitted that all of its main functions have until today been controlled by Balinese. Thus, the development of Hinduism in Indonesia cannot be viewed separately from the conditions in Bali. Even though the main office of the PHDI has since 1996 been transferred to Jakarta, based on the decree of the Mahasabha (Great Assembly) in Surakarta in 1996, it cannot be denied that Bali still plays an important role. During the New Order, i.e. from REPELITA I3 up to REPELITA VII (1969–99), Balinese society experienced significant changes not only in the economic sector, but also in the social, political, and cultural sectors. Whereas the economic achievements can be compared to those in the economically successful regions in Java,4 the political development has rather lagged behind. In Java the political life has always been much more advanced in spite of the fact that during the New Order Golkar monopolized the political discourse everywhere and only two other political parties were allowed that were supposed to support the government rather than criticize it. Conversely in Bali, the autocratic and bureaucratic rule of Golkar, winning six general elections (1971–97) in a row due to the manipulation of the Suharto regime, caused apathy among the Balinese called koh ngomong,5 meaning that people did not like to say anything which had something to do with politics. This situation created nyangut people, that is, people who acted like chameleons, seeking only safety for themselves and mecik manggis, that is, pretending to be polite but in fact being hypocritical. The generally applied motto was jangan melawan arus (‘don’t go against the stream’), meaning that one was just to follow the decisions of the government. At the same time, economic issues dominated the whole public discourse; the government was preoccupied with socio-political stability; and pragmatism was the philosophy of the day. In other words, Balinese were far from touching upon critical political issues in public and from voicing opinions different from those prescribed by the government. This political apathy was rooted in the traumatic experiences of the past: the Dutch suppression of the Balinese branch of the Indonesian Independence Movement (Puputan Margarana) during the time of the Indonesian revolution (1945–9); the subsequent revenge on the members of the NICA (Netherlands Indies Civil Administration) after independence, resulting

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in many casualties; the clashes between the different political parties in the 1950s; the G 30 S PKI (Communist Movement of 30 September) in 1965 leading to the purging of Communists, in which thousands of PKI members were killed; followed by the coercive measures of the New Order regime in 1971 to turn people into followers of Golkar.6 These experiences and the political apathy of the Balinese people again formed the background against which the specific development of the official Hindu Council, the PHDI, took shape. In its formative stage between 1959 and 1966, the PHDI was still neutral in the sense that it was not yet affiliated to any political party. At that time, the Indonesian Nationalist Party (Partai Nasional Indonesia, PNI) still exerted much influence in Bali. The later development of the PHDI, which eventually joined Golkar in 1968, in fact provides us with further insights into the mechanics of the New Order regime as it established its hegemonic discourse in the political, social, cultural, and economic sphere, revealing its efforts to eradicate the left wing of the PNI.7 Claiming to protect Balinese Hindus from the accusation of being left-wingers as well as to safeguard the Hindu religion against the many threats from outside of Bali, the leaders of the PHDI joined Golkar. Members of the PHDI board, such as the scholars Dr Ketut Wiana and Dr I Gusti Agung Gde Putra, have confirmed that these were the reasons for this decision, but the Balinese have been questioning them. They have maintained that in this uncertain political situation, the PHDI should have stayed neutral. By joining Golkar, the PHDI had generated many conflicts within the Hindu community in general and within Balinese society in particular. However, due to the fact that the members of the PHDI board were of a bureaucratic bent and, furthermore, were participating in Golkar’s authority, almost no conflict actually surfaced while the New Order lasted. These architects of the PHDI under the New Order included Prof. Dr Ida Bagus Mantra; I Gusti Putu Raka, SH; Dr Ida Bagus Oka Puniatmaja; I Gusti Ngurah Sindya, BA; and Prof. Dr Tjok Rai Sudharta, MA. They were prominent members of Golkar, simultaneously occupying important positions within the government at various legislative and executive levels for more than thirty years. Those holding the most elevated positions were Prof. Dr Ida Bagus Mantra, who was the governor of Bali for two terms, and Colonel I Gusti Putu Raka, SH, who chaired the Provincial People’s Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah, DPRD) for one term.8 The fact that these people were dominating the socio-political as well as the religious affairs in Bali enhanced the political apathy of the Balinese. There was practically no place outside their circle from which to contribute to the development of the religious discourse, let alone to criticize their influence on it. Religious life thrived on the outside in terms of abundant ritual activities, but on the inside it got stuck. Due to the influence of these people, there was no critical review of the development of the Hindu religion in relation to the social and political problems in Bali. Moreover, during the New Order the PHDI hardly placed any attention on the potential of religion to help to overcome or at least to alleviate social problems; it really only focused on the issue of how ceremonies should be properly conducted. Although there were some efforts to publish books on the Hindu religion, their number remained rather limited. The development of the

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spiritual aspects of religion as well as contextual interpretations of religious doctrines were regrettably neglected. Non-Balinese Hindus received next to no support and were left to their traditional ways. No attempts were made to develop religious approaches with regard to socio-political issues. The transformation process, which I have mentioned above, started to question the traditional role of religion. Yet the PHDI did not equip people with the means to respond to the transformation by reinterpreting their religious doctrines and to readjust their religious life. Even though some religious reforms had been made during colonial times and in the 1960s,9 in Bali, too, people were basically left to their traditional ways. With the advance of formal education and the fact that people increasingly worked in white-collar jobs, the demand to intellectually understand religion in a comprehensive manner was rising. It was particularly the members of the growing middle class10 in Bali and in Jakarta who were not satisfied anymore with merely performing their ritual duties (yadnya). If we assess the development of Hinduism as it is was engineered by the PHDI during the New Order, it is quite apparent that much is still in need of improvement and much still needs to be accomplished, especially when we take a look at the much greater achievements of the other religious communities in Indonesia. It is not surprising that there emerged questions, especially among the Hindu middle class, as to why the Hindu community is lagging behind. Much criticism of the role of the PHDI was expressed directly by the very society that was experiencing the socio-cultural transition. Realizing this situation, the PHDI was in fact trying to do something but was rendered powerless through its affiliation with Golkar when dealing with the government. So what the PHDI has done has not been enough. That is why many people themselves have started to look for avenues towards religious change. Some have suggested simplifying the rituals and to improve the quality of moral education by studying tatwa, or philosophy, which would be able to transform people by enabling them to fully comprehend the religious doctrines. They have, in other words, suggested striking the right balance between the performance of rituals and the study of Hindu philosophy and ethics. Following their own suggestions, they have been more capable of maintaining an inner balance during the transition into a new way of life. Other have taken recourse in mystic teachings based on bhakti, or personal devotion, usually originating in Vais.n.ava sects such as the Hare Krishna movement or Ananda Marga. The Satya Sai Baba movement has even been more influential in this respect, in spite of the fact that the government had originally banned both the Hare Krishna and the Satya Sai Baba movements. Other efforts to bring about religious changes were made by descent groups not belonging to the three upper castes (triwangsa). These efforts have been geared towards the liberation of these clans from the dominance of the Balinese Brahmin priests (ida pedanda). They have been consequently conducting their rituals without the guidance of a pedanda Siwa or a pedanda Budha, simply appointing a priest (ida mpu or resi bhujangga waisnawa) from their own clan to lead their ceremonies. This has, of course, created many conflicts and even turmoil among the various descent groups in society, which have reverberated in the debates between the various factions within the post-New Order PHDI.

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Another important factor, which has to be taken into account with regard to the socio-cultural and religious transformation in Bali, was the development of the tourist industry in Bali. Launched by the New Order government in 1985, the plan to develop tourism on the island was soon supplemented by further policies to attract foreign investors and to create many tourist facilities like hotels, golf courses, and so forth. These measures, however, have led to the massive destruction of the natural environment and to the conversion of much needed fertile land into tourist facilities.11 The expansion of tourism has taken place in a capitalistic fashion, which has meant that foreign investors have proven much stronger than Balinese investors who have lost out in this competition. The problems involved in this process have not only touched upon social and political matters but also have raised sensitive religious issues. This situation was aggravated by the fact that Muslims seemed to experience a ‘honeymoon’ period under Suharto that had begun at the end of the 1980s. This ‘honeymoon period’ was inaugurated by the establishment of the ICMI (Indonesian Association of Muslim Scholars) under the leadership of B.J. Habibie. The ICMI sought to Islamize all bureaucratic and scientific institutions, disseminating Islamic discourse through various popular as well as scientific publications. For the first time, Hindus began to feel that they were a minority and that they were being marginalized. Furthermore, Muslims started to openly insult the feelings of the Hindu community. In 1991, the derogatory statements about the Hindu religion in the tabloid Iqra, published in Surabaya, led to the protest of the entire Hindu community dispersed over different parts of the country. The protest movement was strongest in Bali and Java, demanding that the insinuations and insults made by Iqra be thoroughly examined. This protest movement was supported by various groups of intellectuals including, among others, the Foundation for the Maintenance of Religion (Yayasan Dharma Yatera), founded by myself, and the Organisasi Pemuda Peradah, the youth organization of the PHDI, led by Ida Bagus Gde Agastia. These two intellectual groups frequently conducted seminars on the role of the Hindu Religion in society, usually attended by many prominent Hindu scholars. The protest movement could not bring about any satisfactory solutions; nevertheless, it was perceived as a necessary symbolical struggle, strengthening the sense of unity and solidarity among Indonesian Hindus. It also made many people openly turn against the PHDI and accuse it of not reacting properly to the issues that have emerged in society. The mocking term paraseda for Parisada was coined, paraseda meaning ‘dead men’ (from Balinese para signifying ‘a group of people’ and seda signifying ‘to die’) which expressed the people’s growing discontent with the fact that the PHDI only concentrated on ritual. The strongest and most comprehensive criticism of the PHDI and its policy was advanced by the Forum of Indonesian Hindu Intellectuals (Forum Cendekiawan Hindu Indonesia, FCHI) and the Association of Indonesian Hindu Youth (Ikatan Pemuda Hindu Indonesia, IPHI). Their criticism focused on the bureaucratic attitude of the PHDI and its concentration on the formal aspects of religion only. They also expressed the rising concern among Hindus that the holy rituals were being used in improper ways, for instance, when a Balinese priest conducted a

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Hindu wedding ceremony for Mick Jagger and his bride; that religious laws were being violated, for example, by the construction of the Bali Nirwana Resort (BNR) in the direct proximity of one of Bali’s most sacred temples, Pura Tanah Lot; or that Hindu symbols were being denigrated by using them for commercial ends, as was the case with the construction of the landmark Garuda Wisnu Kencana in Ungasan. The construction of the BNR triggered the massive protest of students and scholars in Bali. Yet the government did not stop the mega-project and recommended that it be continued. The protests, however, also persevered, and finally President Suharto handled this problem personally. A number of Hindu scholars in Bali responded to these issues by founding the Indonesian Forum of Those Concerned about the Hindu Religion (Forum Pemerhati Hindu Dharma Indonesia, FPHDI) on 2 January 1995.12 The goals of the FPHDI were the following: 1 2 3 4 5

to deepen the understanding of the fundamentals of the Hindu religion, i.e. the ‘Five Beliefs’ or Panca S´raddha, among its adherents; to foster the unity of and solidarity among Hindus; to foster respect among the adherents of the different religions in Indonesia in order to strengthen national unity; to aid the PHDI and the government in improving the spiritual life of the Indonesian people; to take any necessary action to protect the needs of the Hindu community.

The work of the FPHDI has been focusing on Bali. Because of its pronounced engagement in various fields of social life, some people have considered the FPHDI to be the PHDI’s opponent. This is, of course, not true since the FPHDI has actually been helping the PHDI in its mission to develop the religious and spiritual life of the people. The FPHDI also participated in the Great Assembly (Mahasabha VII) of the PHDI held in Surakarta from 18 to 21 September 1996, because it wanted to propose changes concerning the internal structure of the PHDI. The representatives of the FPHDI (I Dewa Gede Ngurah Swastha, S.H., and Drs I Ketut Ngastawa, SH), the representative of the Ikatan Pemuda Hindu Indonesia (Putu Alit Bagiasna, Sm. Hk.), and the representative of the Forum Cendekiawan Hindu Indonesia (I Wayan Sudirta, SH) demanded the reorganization and the reorientation of the PHDI so that it would not only respond to the issues that have emerged in connection with dharma agama, that is, to issues involving the relationship between religion and its adherents as well as the relationship between adherents of the different religions in Indonesia. They also wanted the PHDI to develop dharma negara, that is, to develop a concern for the relationship between religion and the state.13 There were many debates on how the organization and function of the PHDI could be improved. Several participants eventually formulated a draft (PHDI AD/ART), which addressed the PHDI head office in Jakarta as well as the branch offices at the provincial level, suggesting to adapt to the changing conditions of the Hindu community in the modern world. These high hopes, however, proved futile due to the opposition of the dominant conservative faction within the PHDI.

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It was not only dominant in the Mahasabha: more importantly, it dominated the meetings of each organizational commission, refusing all the suggestions from the pro-reformation group. Because of the anti-democratic attitude and behaviour of the conservatives who dominated the PHDI board, the pro-reformation group began to question the legitimacy of the board. Some of the activists even wanted to take the matter to court. Among the Hindus in Bali alone, people have increasingly been expressing different opinions with regard to the vision and mission of the Hindu religion. Since these differences have largely been irreconcilable, they have enhanced the friction within the Hindu community, which has been suffering from caste and clan problems even in recent years. On a national level, this friction is enhanced by inter-ethnic misunderstanding and conflict within the multi-ethnic Indonesian Hindu community. Another major conflict quite recently emerged within the Hindu community in connection with the celebration of the Panca Wali Krama ritual at the Pura Besakih in April 1999. The Yadnya Agung (Great Ritual), taking place at Besakih every ten years, was jointly co-ordinated by the Provincial Government of Bali (Pemerintah Daerah Bali) and the PHDI. There were at least three issues that the newly found Forum for Raising the Consciousness for Religious Matters (Forum Penyadaran Dharma) pressed the PHDI to consider: 1

2 3

It should be democratically decided upon who, meaning which priests, would be the religious leaders of the ceremony. Thereby the conservative tri sadhaka (three priests) group – insisting that according to tradition only Balinese pedanda Siwa, pedanda Budha, and resi bhujangga waisnawa (sengguhu) priests have the right to be the leaders of that ritual – would be prevented from having its way. The conservatives were opposed by the sarwa sadhaka (all priests) group which claimed that Hindu priests from all over Indonesia should lead this important Hindu ritual. The final decision as well as the procedure of the ceremony should be explained to the public by the members of the PHDI board. An emergency meeting of the Mahasabha should be held in accordance with the fact that the New Order had passed and the reformation era had dawned.

Even though the last two points were not taken up by the PHDI, the board finally permitted sarwa sadhaka to lead the Panca Wali Krama ceremony at the Besakih temple. In concluding this chapter, I would like to point to the fact that the abovementioned transformation process, which has been further complicated by the recent socio-political developments in Indonesia, has posed many problems with regard to the role and function of religion in contemporary society. It cannot be denied that the PHDI has raised the position of the Hindu religion in Indonesia and has fostered its role especially in Balinese society. Yet, because of the lack of human resources as well as due to the frozen structure of the internal organization of the PHDI, this role could not be performed perfectly.

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The recent emergence, which has been extraordinary for Balinese standards, of intellectual groups daring to start civil movements, analysing, criticizing, and commenting upon socio-political issues, must be considered as a development with important implications for the future. These groups will be able to profit from globalization and open communication in Indonesia,14 stimulating healthy conflict that is intrinsic to any democratic culture. A major issue in the establishment of such a democratic culture will be the transformation of the PHDI into a truly independent15 Hindu organization that can be a more effective vehicle for the development of the Hindu religion and community in Indonesia, simultaneously fostering real tolerance and co-operation with the adherents of the other religions.

Notes 1 This chapter was kindly rendered into English by Tri Budhi Sastrio, member of the teaching staff of the Dr Soetomo University. 2 This poem was analysed by a group of scholars (I Nyoman Dharma Putra and others) from the Faculty of Letters at Udayana University, Denpasar, in 1997. It was composed against the backdrop of the conflicts that broke out in connection with the erection of the Bali Nirwana Beach Resort within close reach of the Tanah Lot temple. These conflicts revealed how the sacredness of temples has been threatened by the encroaching tourism industry. For further reference see the work of I Nyoman Dharma Putra on modern poems in Bali relating them to the social changes taking place in the 1990s: Dharma Putra 1998:179–214. 3 Five-year development plan issued by the government. 4 cf. Mubyarto 2000:35–54; Silalahi 2000:87–101. 5 See Santikarma 1995. 6 This statement is based on the writer’s own experience and direct involvement for more than fifty years in the various instances of socio-political turmoil in Bali. The turmoil of the years around 1950 was aptly described, for instance, by Pendit 1979 and Geertz 1991:165–97. With regard to the people’s revenge on former members of the NICA see Bagus 1991:199–212. The G 30 S PKI affairs and the purge of Communists in Bali was described by Robinson 1995, while the biography of Wayan Mertha Sutaja, a military official, relates how Golkar established itself as the overall power. 7 My approach is influenced by, among others, Michel Foucault’s discourse analysis. 8 See I.B. Mantra, Biografi Seorang Budayawan 1928–1995, Denpasar: Upada Sastra, 1998. 9 See, for instance, Geertz 1973, Bakker 1993, and also the Introduction as well as Chapter 3 of this volume. 10 There is as yet no comprehensive analysis concerning the middle class in Bali, especially not with regard to the New Order era. Some authors like Vickers 1989 or Bakker 1993 have briefly mentioned the emergence of a Balinese middle class. I have taken my understanding of the term from Tanter and Young 1993. 11 See Bagus 1996. 12 Many prominent figures, among them a former prime minister and a former ambassador, were involved in the establishment of the forum: Ibu Gedong Bagoes Oka; Prof. Dr I Gusti Ngurah Bagus; Dr Ida Anak Agung Gde Agung; I Dewa Ngurah Swastha, S.H.; Jero Mangku Ktut Subandi; Ida Pedanda Gede Ketut Tianyar Subali T; I Wayan Sudirta, S.H.; Putu Alit Bagiasna, Sm. Hk.; and Agus Indra Udayana. 13 The concepts dharma agama and dharma negara were issued as the ethical guidelines for the Hindu community at the constitutive meeting in Campuhan Ubud in 1961. 14 cf. Appadurai 1990:296–310. 15 See also Bagus 2000:97–110.

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Bibliography Appadurai, Arjun (1990) ‘Disjuncture and Differences in the Global Cultural Economy’, in: Mike Featherstone (ed.) Global Culture, Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity, London: Sage, pp. 295–310. Bagus, I Gusti Ngurah (1991) ‘Bali in the 1950s: The Role of the Pemuda Pejuang in Balinese Political Processes’, in: Hildred Geertz (ed.) State and Society in Bali, Leiden: KITLV Press, pp. 199–212. –––– (1996) ‘Masalah Tanah dalam Pembangunan Khususnya Pengembangan Pariwisata di Bali: Dampak Terhadap Kehidupan Orang Bali’, Yogyakarta: Paper presented at the Simposium Internasional Ilmu-ilmu Humaniora III. –––– (1999a) Renungan Empat Tahun PHDI untuk Menyejarah, Denpasar: Forum Penyadaran Dharma. –––– (1999b) ‘Keresahan dan Gejolak Sepuluh Tahun Terakhir di Bali: Beberapa Catatan Tentang Perubahan Sosial di Era Globalisasi’, in: Panggung Sejarah Persembahan Untuk Prof. Dr. Denys Lombard, Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia. –––– (ed.) (2000) Dinamika Hindu di Indonesia, Yogyakarta: Duta Wacana University Press. –––– Ida Bagus Ngurah Narendra and I Nyoman Sulaga (1988) Kebudayaan dan Pembangunan: Upaya Pemantapan dan Ketahanannya Menuju Tahap Lepas Landas 11, Denpasar: Udayana University. Bakker, F.L. (1993) The Struggle of the Hindu Balinese Intellectuals: Development in Modern Hindu Thinking in Independent Indonesia, Amsterdam: VU Press. Darma Putra, I Nyoman (1998) ‘Space and Person in Recent Balinese Poetry’, RIMA 32/1, June 1998, pp. 179–214. Dasgupta, S.N. (1973) Yoga as Philosophy and Religion, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas. –––– (1987) Hindu Mysticism, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas. Geertz, Hildred (1991) ‘A Theatre of Cruelty: The Contexts of a Topeng Performance’, in: Hildred Geertz (ed.) State and Society in Bali, Leiden: KITLV Press, pp. 165–97. Hefner, Robert W. (1995) ICMI dan Perjuangan Menuju Kelas Menengah Indonesia, Yogyakarta: Tiara Wacana Yogya. Kusuma, Ananda (1998) Pergolakan Hindu Dharma, Denpasar: Bali Mas. Mubyarto (2000) ‘Otonomi Daerah dan Ekonomi Kerakyatan’, in: Bonar Simorang-Kir (ed.) Otonomi atau Federalisme Dampaknya terhadap Perekonomian, Jakarta: Suara Pembaruan. Pendit S. Nyoman (1979) Bali Berjuang, Jakarta: PT Gunung Agung. Picard, Michel (1996) Bali: Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture, Singapore: Archipelago Press. Robinson, Geoffrey (1995) The Dark Side of Political Violence in Bali, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Santikarma, Degung (1995) ‘Kob Ngomong, Sebuah Penerimaan dan Penolakan Politik Orang Bali’, Sydney: Paper presented at the Third International Bali Studies Workshop. Silalahi, Pande Radja (2000) ‘Implikasi Kebijakan Ekonomi Pemerintah Pusat dan Tantangan Ekonomi Daerah’, Analisis CSIS Th. XXIX/1. Tanter, Richard, and Kenneth Young (1993) Politik Kelas Menengah Indonesia, Jakarta: LP3S. Vickers, Adrian (1989) Bali: A Paradise Created, London: Penguin Books.

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7 HINDU REFORM IN AN ISLAMIZING JAVA Pluralism and peril Robert W. Hefner In the aftermath of the great Islamic revival of the 1980s, it is perhaps difficult to recall how different things looked a few years earlier to Indonesia’s and, in particular, Java’s fledgling Hindu community. The 1970s seemed a brightly optimistic period for Java’s half-million Hindus. When I began my research in East Java in the late 1970s, I was struck by the millenarian euphoria widespread in Hindu circles. In private, some leaders spoke confidently of an impending wave of Hindu conversion. This event, they forecast, was about to restore Java’s tiny Hindu community to the cultural greatness enjoyed centuries earlier under the HinduBuddhist kingdom of Majapahit. A few leaders even went so far as to predict the conversion of the majority of ethnic Javanese to Hinduism. The Hindus among whom I first worked in those years were the descendants of a Javanese sub-ethnic minority known as Tengger or Tengger Javanese; unlike most of their mainstream Javanese counterparts, they had been Hindu for centuries.1 In the 1970s, however, a state-sanctioned movement for Hindu reform under the banner of the Parisada Hindu Dharma had taken hold in nearby Javanist2 areas of the countryside where I also worked, especially in South Malang and Blitar to the southwest of the Tengger highlands. An even more impressive growth in Hindu numbers occurred in the Klaten region of Central Java, which I also visited during these years.3 The Parisada codified and standardized a religious tradition once joyously eclectic in its symbols and concerns. Responding to government demands for mandatory religious instruction, the Parisada also introduced religious education into public schools.4 With the financial backing of the Department of Religion, the Parisada in Java also set out on an ambitious programme of temple construction. This programme succeeded in introducing Bali-style open-air temples (pura) into areas of the Javanese countryside with no prior history of Hindu architecture or temple worship. With the temples came educational programmes, which relied on scriptures and textbooks prepared, tellingly enough, with the assistance of a Hindu-Buddhist bureau in the Indonesian armed forces. The speed with which these innovations spread in Hindu communities convinced a few leaders that Java was on the verge of a massive Hindu revival. In retrospect, of course, we know that the great transformation of religion and society foretold by Hindu leaders did not take place. The Parisada movement did

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succeed in establishing footholds in several non-Islamic areas of the archipelago, including Central Kalimantan, South Sulawesi, and Sumatra’s Karo highlands. At first, it also recruited a couple of hundred thousand Javanese converts to the faith, although the continuing affiliation of some of these converts is now, a generation later, very much in question. In establishing Hindu communities in these diverse regions, the Parisada realized the long-cherished dream of Balinese intellectuals of transforming Indonesian Hinduism from a Bali-centred religion into a genuinely pan-Indonesian one. With more than half of Indonesia’s population and with its pre-modern Hindu legacy, Java had always been regarded as the linchpin in this campaign. Put simply, the Balinese felt that for Hinduism to achieve national prominence, it had to re-establish itself among ethnic Javanese. Despite some progress, the programme of Hindu conversion in Java was plagued by problems from the start. I discuss local aspects of these difficulties below, many of which had to do with the contradictory aspirations of Javanese converts and Balinese leaders. These local-level difficulties were complicated, however, by developments that had little to do directly with Hindu intrigues. In the mid-1980s, the Suharto dictatorship shifted its attitude on Islam from one of hostile confinement to strategic co-optation. By the end of the decade, the regime’s willingness to provide moral and financial support to non-Islamic minorities – Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and worst of all perhaps the Javanese mystical sects known as kebatinan – had declined greatly. As one Christian leader in Yogyakarta commented to me in 1993, for the first time in modern history Indonesia’s non-Muslims were made to feel they were marginal minorities indeed. The consequences of this shift for Javanese Hindus were quickly apparent. By the late 1980s, the state’s support for temple construction in Javanese Hindu communities had been drastically curtailed. It even became difficult for Javanese Hindus to secure permits for the construction of temples in well-established Hindu communities. State funds for Hindu teacher-training schools in Klaten (Central Java) and Blitar (East Java) also dried up; eventually the Klaten school was closed. State funding for Hindu educational programmes was slashed as that for the much larger Muslim community increased. Most alarming of all as far as Javanese Hindus were concerned, the late 1980s saw the state’s reopening of Hindu Javanese communities to proselytization by Muslim missionaries. One such target area was the Tengger highlands of East Java, a majority Hindu region where I had worked in the late 1970s and in 1985. In 1990 and 1991 a village in the Tengger region became the focus of a well-financed proselytization campaign by the most conservative of Indonesia’s dakwah organizations, the Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia. Although district-level military commanders at first insisted that the mission be closed, they were quickly overruled by their superiors. A similar ratcheting up of pressures on Hindu converts took place in Hindu settlements around Klaten and Yogyakarta. As a result of these and other changes, the 1990s saw some of the 1960s converts revert to Islam. Changes in state policies on Javanese Hinduism were related, then, to the Islamic turn in Indonesian politics in the 1980s and early 1990s. Although some members of the Indonesian military continued to defend the interests of religious minorities, others, especially in the inner circle of Suharto advisers, argued for a new and

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more collaborative relationship with Muslims, at least regime-friendly ones. The policy went through several permutations from its first airing in the mid-1980s to its violent deployment in the final months of the Suharto regime in 1998, when Suharto aides recruited Islamist hardliners for a campaign of intimidation against Chinese and Christian minorities.5 (It must be emphasized, however, that the great majority of Muslim leaders rejected this vile deployment of their religion for antidemocratic ends, and that Muslims were at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement.) But the underlying logic of the policy was consistent over these years. As explained to me by a minister in the Suharto cabinet in 1993, the policy was premised on Suharto’s conviction that the Islamic revival that had swept Indonesia in the 1980s could not be reversed, and that any attempt to do so would doom Indonesia to a maelstrom of violence like that seen in Algeria. Faced with this dilemma, Suharto advisers counselled a new policy of proactive co-optation, whereby the regime extended institutional favours to conservative Muslims if they agreed to support the regime in its campaign against pro-democracy opponents. Liberal and democratic Muslims were, of course, as excluded from this deal as Christians and Hindus. The single most dramatic example of this new, co-opting policy was regime support for the now famous Association of Muslim Indonesian Intellectuals, or ICMI, in the 1990s.6 But the change in state policy was visible in a host of other policies, all of which converged in Java to render the Hindu community vulnerable to new threats. Among Javanese Hindus themselves, the once-millenarian hopes of national revival gave way to cultural panic. Having discussed the political logic of government religious policy in other publications,7 in this chapter I want to shift my attention away from regime politics and focus on the fate of the Hindu reform movement in Javanese society itself. Since elsewhere I have discussed the plight of Tengger Javanese Hindus in highland East Java, my primary focus here will be on the Hindu community in Yogyakarta and a few neighbouring areas, most notably Klaten in Central Java, where I did several stints of research between 1978 and 1980 and more intensive research from January to August 1999. While the Tengger highlands have maintained a popular S´aivite religious tradition since the fall of Hindu Majapahit in 1525, the Hindu revival in the Yogyakarta region is more typical of that in the rest of Java, inasmuch as it post-dates the founding of the New Order regime (1966–7). The Yogya example provides insight into the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Hindu movement and the dilemmas it encounters in the face of the Indonesian state and Java’s vastly more powerful movement of Islamic predication, or dakwah. The comparison also raises broader questions related to the prospects for Hinduism, and religious pluralism generally, in the post-Suharto era.

Hindu conversion in an Islamic sultanate Yogyakarta is a ‘special administrative district’ (daerah itsimewa) located in the heartland of Javanese culture in south-central Java. With a population today of just over 3 million, the province is the only one in Indonesia still officially recognized as a sultanate. The special status is related to the progressive role of the late Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX in the Indonesian struggle against Dutch colonialism during

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the period 1945–9. Although it has lost much of its political distinctiveness over the years with its integration into the national bureaucracy, the sultanate still plays an important role in Yogyakarta public culture. To take but one example, the court’s support for annual rites of supplication to the spirits of the mountains and the South Java Sea and its historic ties to nearby pilgrimage centres for Islamic saints (wali) lend the cultural weight of the court to a distinctively Javanist variant of Islam, one that elsewhere in Java encounters stiff opposition from Muslim reformists. One should remember, however, that Yogyakarta is one of the most religiously plural regions in all of Indonesia. In addition to its Muslim majority, it has small numbers of Buddhists, Hindus, and followers of Javanese mystical sects. At about 8 per cent of the population, its Christian community is one of the most securely established in all of Java. The city is also the home of the largest and most important of Indonesia’s modern reformist organizations, the Muhammadiyah.8 Muhammadiyah is an organization that among other things systematically opposes key elements of Javanist Islam, including the veneration of saints, ritual propitiation of ancestors, and especially the provision of offerings to spirits. All this said, although the city has a significant non-Muslim minority and many more supporters of Islamic reform, Yogyakarta is a region in which both courtly and popular variants of Javanist Islam enjoy what is by Indonesian standards an unusual degree of cultural saliency.9 This distinctive background had a decisive influence on the development of Hinduism in Yogyakarta in the 1960s. Prior to 1965, there were virtually no Javanese Hindus in the Yogyakarta area and no public institutions for Hindu education or proselytization. There was a small Hindu population but it was almost exclusively ethnic Balinese and was associated with some 200 Balinese studying or teaching at the Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), at the time the second of Indonesia’s most important national universities. Despite the Balinese presence, there was not a single Hindu pura in Yogyakarta during these years. What collective worship there was, was conducted at private temples at the residences of high-status Balinese. One such man, a faculty member in the natural sciences department at UGM who had come to Yogyakarta in 1959, played an especially important role in co-ordinating social and religious activities among the resident Balinese. He and his friends served as the patrons of a Balinese student hall from which religious affairs for Balinese Hindus were co-ordinated. In the aftermath of Javanese conversions in the late 1960s, this mild-mannered gentleman was appointed head of the government-sanctioned agency for Hindu reform, the Parisada Hindu Dharma. Although in the pre-New Order period there were a few Javanese mystics interested in Hindu practices,10 no Javanese joined in the religious activities of Yogyakarta’s Balinese Hindus. The appeal of Hinduism among Javanese was limited by the perception that it was essentially an ethnic-Balinese religion. All of this changed after the tumultuous events of 1965–6. In the aftermath of a failed junior officers’ coup in Jakarta the night of 30 September 1965, conservative military and religious organizations joined forces to destroy the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). At the time, the PKI was the country’s largest mass-based political organization, with some 20 million people in its affiliated organizations. Yogyakarta itself

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was one of the strongholds of Communism in Java. The subsequent campaign against the PKI reached its worst extreme in East Java, where Muslims and Communists had been locked in a bitter contest for a decade, and in Bali, where high-caste conservatives joined with army officials to suppress a movement portrayed in anti-Communist propaganda as an atheistic threat to Balinese religion.11 There were mass killings in the Yogya special district as well, but they never reached the awful scale seen in Bali, East Java, or nearby Klaten in Central Java. Two things underlay the more muted pattern of bloodletting in these territories. First, an ardent nationalist and moderate democratic socialist, Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX worked to contain the bloodletting, urging military officials to concentrate their energies on arresting rather than killing suspected Communist cadres. The second influence dampening the violence were the strong Sukarnoist sympathies of the local bureaucracy and the military rank-and-file. The strength of support for Sukarno led the generals in the capital to realize that if they unleashed too fierce a campaign of violence they might well incite opposition among local members of the military and government. While there were mass killings in Yogya, they did not reach the extremes seen in East Java, nearby Central Java, or Bali. The limited nature of these killings was also to have an important influence on the movement for Hindu conversion. In the aftermath of the violence, the regime cracked down on left-leaning mystical organizations and banned most of the new religions popular among some ethnic Javanese in East and Central Java. Villagers in the Yogya region whom I interviewed in 1979 and 1999 remember this period with a telling phrase. This, they say, was the period of agamasasi, literally ‘religionization.’ One could no longer remain non-committal, experimental, or playfully syncretistic about one’s religious affiliation. The state required everyone to identify with one and only one of the five recognized religions: Islam, Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. All of these religious communities in turn had to fulfil certain ideological and administrative requirements if they were to continue to enjoy official recognition. The faithful had to affirm their belief in monotheism (no small matter for Buddhists and Hindus), establish a delimited corpus of sacred scripture (kitab), and develop rituals and beliefs for dissemination in public schools, where the requirement for universal religious education was enforced with a new vigour. The definition of religion implicit in these regulations was drawn largely from Islamic reform, but its heavy-handed implementation showed the influence of Indonesian bureaucratic authoritarianism. In making religious affiliation mandatory, the state denied citizens the options of agnosticism, syncretism, or traditional ethnic religions. For the majority of Javanese, of course, this was no problem. Although many ethnic Javanese were lax about praying and were even heterodox in their beliefs, most unhesitatingly identified themselves as Muslim. Since the end of the last century, however, a small portion of the Javanist Muslim community has placed itself at such a distance from contemporary understandings of normative Islam that they render problematic this identification with Islam. As the historian Merle Ricklefs has noted, the cultural challenge of nineteenth-century Muslim reform was so great that it led some Javanists to conclude that they must not be Muslims at all.12

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The scale of this culturally radical Javanist community has sometimes been exaggerated in academic discussions of the varieties of Javanese religion. Contrary to some recent commentaries on Javanese society, however, there can be no question that this community existed and still exists. It was this community, after all, that produced most of the alternative religious movements seen in Java in the twentieth century, whether towards Christianity, Hinduism, or kebatinan mysticism (which often combines Sufi and Hindu elements). Radical Javanists also provided the bulk of the recruits for Indonesia’s once lively tradition of secular nationalism. In the 1950s, fierce political competition between Muslim parties and the Communists as well as the nationalists swelled the ranks of Javanists considering the option of diversion from Islam. There was an even larger community of Javanists dabbling in syncretistic variants of mysticism drawing from Sufism, Hinduism, and Javanese folk traditions. The leftist Permai, described by Clifford Geertz in his Religion of Java was one such radical syncretism, with its distinctive blend of Sufi devotionalism, Hindu-Buddhist symbolism, and populist-socialism.13 As with the ‘Javanese Buddha–Vis.n.u religion’ that I have described from Pasuruan, East Java,14 there were other equally experimental new religions in Java at this time. They never managed to attract a true mass following and their cultural vitality should not obscure the fact that the majority of ethnic Javanese continued to identify themselves as Muslims, even if their practice and beliefs are sometimes eclectic. Although their scale was limited, Javanese new religions were nonetheless indicative of the degree to which religious identity in Java had been de-traditionalized and deeply politicized. What attracted some Javanese to syncretistic new religions was their free-wheeling experimentation and fluid organization, qualities lacking in many established religions. As one elder villager south of Yogyakarta recalled in a discussion with me in March 1999: I didn’t want to be tied down (terikat) by any single religion. I wanted to go where I wanted to go, and just that. Religions always have leaders and followers, and I didn’t want to be part of that. I didn’t have religion and I didn’t want it. You could be like that back then. That was before the government’s programme of religionization (agamasasi ). The mass killings of a half million Communists in 1965 and 1966, and the violent intimidation of the religiously liminal made this kind of free-spirited eclecticism untenable. This, then, was the context in which conversion to Hinduism in the Yogyakarta region took place. Unlike Hindu converts in some outlying islands – the Karo in Sumatra,15 for example, or the Dayak in Kalimantan – converts to Hinduism in the Yogyakarta region came overwhelmingly from the ranks of Javanese earlier associated with syncretistic new religions. They turned to Hinduism because, of all of the options offered by the state, it seemed to come closest to offering the eclectic menu of spiritual options they had earlier enjoyed. Many of the Hindu converts were going to find, however, that the standardized credos disseminated by the local branches of the Parisada Hindu Dharma differed significantly from their earlier free-spirited Javanism.

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Improvising conversion There were two major areas of conversion in the Yogyakarta region: first, and most significant, the impoverished highlands of the Gunung Kidul region 40 kilometres to the southeast of Yogyakarta; second, and less extensive, a handful of settlements in metropolitan Yogyakarta itself. Official government statistics from the period indicate that approximately 7,000 people converted to Hinduism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, or about 0.3 per cent of the Yogyakarta population. Hindu leaders today insist that the number of converts was higher, numbering around 15,000, and that local government officials systematically underreported Hindu numbers. Yogya Hindus admit, however, that their numbers were nowhere near those seen in the Klaten region in Central Java, immediately east of Yogyakarta. There whole communities converted to Islam, with the total number of converts estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000. During my visits to Hindu communities in the Yogyakarta region in 1979 and again during the first eight months of 1999, I was at first perplexed by this contrast between the relatively high rates of conversion in Klaten and the low rates in Yogyakarta. After all, prior to the violence of 1965, Yogyakarta had enjoyed an organized left as large or even larger than that in the Klaten region. Even more important, Yogyakarta was better known than Klaten for the strength of its non-Islamic or nominally Islamic mystical movements. On the basis of my interviews with Hindus, however, it became clear that there were important differences between Klaten and Yogya, and these influenced the resulting patterns of conversion. The first and most important of these differences is that in Yogyakarta the popularity of the sultanate and the sultan’s actions during 1965 provided a kind of buffer for the Javanist public’s continuing identification with Islam. There was less killing in Yogyakarta, and the sultan’s efforts to restrain the killing provided a compelling demonstration of a fair-minded and tolerant Islam. All this worked to make the Javanist public’s disaffection for Islam less severe than in places like Klaten, where the violence and polarization were more severe. There was a second, related influence on the limited scale of Hindu conversion in Yogyakarta. Unlike Klaten or much of East Java, in Yogyakarta the primary political schism in the early 1960s had not been between Communists and Muslims, but was between (relatively) conservative nationalists and Communists. Sharing as they did similar religious convictions and a similar reserve towards normative Islam, the nationalists and Communists did not politicize religion to the degree seen in areas of Java where Muslim parties and the Javanist left stood in polar opposition. The less dichotomized nature of Yogyakarta’s religious politics reduced the likelihood that left-wing Javanists would identify the mass killings with Islam and see diversion from Islam as the next logical phase in that competition. A third point follows from these first two. We know from studies of Hindu conversion in other parts of Java that a key requirement for the consolidation of Hinduism was the intervention of high-status elites with ties to and knowledge of state bureaucracy. These intermediaries were critical because they protected the Hindu converts in the early phases of their movement, and later provided the

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converts with the administrative counsel required to guide them through the maze of administrative regulations imposed by the New Order state. No new religious movement could survive without such bureaucratic protection. As Margaret Lyon has shown, in the Klaten region leadership of the Hindu movement was dominated by disaffected members of the local elite linked to the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), some of whom were in turn linked to low-ranking members of the Surakarta court.16 This nationalist elite had been locked in bitter rivalry with Muslim organizations, and the ferocity of the 1965 killings prompted some to opt out of Islam entirely. In Yogyakarta, by contrast, the limited scale of the killings and the high regard for the court and court-related Javanist Islam ensured that almost none of the nationalist elite opted to make the pilgrimage from Islam. They remained comfortable in professing Islam and in the confidence that their religion could tolerate mysticism, saint worship, and nationalist political ideas. This last point underlies one of the most interesting contrasts seen between Hindu conversion in Yogyakarta and Klaten. In Yogyakarta, the patrons for the Hindu conversion movement consisted overwhelmingly of people not native to Yogyakarta. No one among the local Yogyakarta elite joined the movement to repudiate Islam. Not surprisingly then, when time came to develop an administrative structure for the new Hindu community, most of the leadership posts went to ethnic Balinese. This created what was to be an awkward dichotomy between a Balinese administrative elite and a Javanese rank-and-file. In the Gunung Kidul mountains southeast of Yogyakarta, the convert community was larger than that in metropolitan Yogyakarta, but still much smaller than in nearby Klaten. In this desperately poor region there were no Balinese to lend a hand to the conversion movement. As in Klaten, then, the conversion movement’s leadership was dominated by people linked to the once-powerful Indonesian Nationalist Party. In this poor territory, however, local political leaders lacked the knowledge and administrative skills required to develop an effective programme of religious education for the rag-tag assortment of folk mystics and peasant leftists from whom converts to Hinduism were recruited. Not surprisingly, the Hindu movement in Gunung Kidul has suffered from a chronic shortage of educational and devotional programmes. Even in 1999 there were several communities in which there was no temple, no public instruction in Hindu beliefs, and no organized worship. Although elders in these villages still affirm their commitment to Hinduism, their children have no memory of the polarized religious politics of the 1950s and 1960s. On the contrary, they have come of age at a time when the signs of Islamic resurgence are everywhere – on television and radio, in the schools, and in the habits and dress of people in nearby villages. A key feature of this resurgence, one which distinguishes public Islam today from the 1950s, is that Islam is portrayed in the mass media as a property of people from varied lifestyles and political persuasions. On Sunday morning television shows, when there is an unusually high concentration of Islamic broadcasting, within the course of an hour one can be treated to professions of the faith by politicians, long-haired rock stars, sexy soap opera actresses, and sweet-singing kindergarteners. In an age in which Islam is no longer associated with any single ideology or lifestyle, it is perhaps not surprising

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that some children of Hindu converts find themselves wondering why their parents gave up what so many of their neighbours hold dear.

From conversion to institutional consolidation Even in metropolitan Yogyakarta, where from early on there was an educated and skilled Parisada leadership, the movement for Hindu conversion ran into serious problems, one consequence of which has been a significant flight of post-1965 youth from Hinduism. Although official records on religious affiliation are no longer collected in Indonesia, estimates by Yogya elders of youth abandoning Hinduism range from a low of 25 per cent to a high of 60 per cent. Based on casual observations in several villages, I have the impression that the figure lies midway between these two estimates. Again, this defection has, in part, little to do with the organizational difficulties of Yogya Hindus, reflecting broad changes in public culture since the Islamic revival of the 1980s. A notable feature of that change has been a retreat on the part of the national elite away from earlier affirmations of the equality of Indonesian religions towards a new emphasis on Indonesia as a majorityMuslim society in which Muslim cultural dominance is inevitable and appropriate. But the problems Yogya Hindus have experienced are also related to the challenge of transforming themselves from a crisis-inspired charismatic movement to a formally institutionalized religion. One village, which I will call Ngadegan, illustrates this problem. The leader of the conversion movement in the 1960s, whom I will call Pak Sumandi, was a low ranking army officer who had resided in Yogyakarta since the early 1950s. Early in his stay, Pak Sumandi had founded a Javanese new religion known simply as the ‘four-five group’ (paguyuban empat-lima). The four-five imagery in the group’s name refers to oneself and one’s body (which together make one) plus the four guardian spirits of the body recognized in Javanese and Balinese tradition (but elaborated differently in each). Four-fiver doctrine was an eminently practical spiritualism concerned above all with the achievement of health, wealth, and social well-being. As with some other variants of popular Javanist mysticism, and as with Tengger Javanese Hinduism, the four-fivers also had a vaguely Tantric concern with male and female complementarity, viewing human sexuality as a spiritual metaphor for the mystery of life and spirit.17 An ardent nationalist and mystic, Pak Sumandi was not native to Yogyakarta but hailed from the Magelang district north of Yogya. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he had attempted to recruit Yogya court officials to his mystical movement but failed. Although his new religion had hundreds of followers in small towns and villages across Yogyakarta and nearby areas of Central Java, it remained a predominantly peasant and lower-class organization. In the aftermath of the 1965–6 bloodshed, Pak Sumandi and his followers were told by local government officials – many of whom were sympathetic to the mystics – that they could no longer be just four-fivers, but would have to declare their affiliation with a formal religion. After several tumultuous meetings in Ngadegan, Pak Sumandi and his supporters announced that they could not choose Islam but would convert to Hinduism. Interestingly, Pak Sumandi made no effort to claim that his movement had always been Hindu. He emphasized that, although he

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would have preferred not to affiliate with any of its religions, the New Order regime had made clear that it would never recognize four-five-ism as a religion. In the absence of this option, Pak Sumandi said it was best to affiliate with Hinduism because its rituals and beliefs most resembled four-five-ism. He pointed out that, like Hindus, four-fiver adepts present offerings to spirits, face the East in prayer rather than towards Mecca, pray three times a day, and venerate ancestral and guardian spirits. Although many four-fivers rejected Pak Sumandi’s appeal, in Ngadegan the majority of followers joined him. In this semi-urban settlement, a full 80 per cent of residents announced their conversion to Hinduism. The success of the conversion movement in Ngadegan was related to the fact that this village had long been among the most vigorously Javanist in the whole metropolitan area. The majority of its residents were four-fivers, and, unusually, there were only one or two followers of normative Islamic organizations like the Muhammadiyah. One other index of the culturally radical nature of Javanism in Ngadegan is that the man officially recognized as the Islamic modin, responsible for performing marriages, praying at religious festivals, and officiating at funerals, was an enthusiastic four-fiver. More remarkably, this modin joined with Pak Sumandi and other villagers in 1967 in a public ceremony held on the steps of the regency government to declare his conversion to Hinduism. In my twenty-three years of research in East and Central Java, I have never encountered an example of another modin converting to Hinduism. At the time of their conversion, however, Pak Sumandi and his friends knew little about Hindu doctrine or ritual organization. Not one among the converts had read Hindu scripture. None had visited Bali, although several had held discussions with Balinese Hindus in the Yogyakarta region. Two years after their conversion, Ngadegan’s Hindus were required to implement programmes of religious education in the local elementary school. This and other efforts were overseen by the Yogya branch of the Parisada Hindu Dharma, the upper ranks of which were, again, overwhelmingly Balinese. But the Ngadegan Hindus resisted pressures to bring their mystical tradition into close conformity with Parisada Hinduism. They went along with the state directives that their children were to receive religious instruction in school. But the man whom they invited to teach in the local school was the Islamic modin-turned-Hindu, Pak Suci. Before 1970, Pak Suci had never taken a course on Hinduism, although he had read a few pamphlets provided for him by the Hindu bureau in the Yogyakarta office of the Department of Religion. In 1971, he also attended a one-month course on Hindu ritual and belief held in nearby Klaten. At this event, he gladly agreed to memorize the Parisadadevised formula for daily prayer (sembahyang). He also received instruction on the clothing to be worn in worship, the proper form for offerings, and basic aspects of Hindu cosmology as instructed in the Parisada literature. The 1970s represented the peak of Parisada activism in Ngadegan. In addition to training people like Pak Suci in elementary aspects of prayer and cosmology, the Parisada also secured funds from the Department of Religion for the construction of a Bali-style Hindu temple (pura). This event was welcomed by Ngadegan Hindus inasmuch as it buttressed their claim that they were indeed non-Muslim and, as such, not fair game for the missionizing campaigns of Muslims or Christians.

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In this and other instances, however, the new Hindu institutions brought unanticipated cultural consequences, some of which were viewed ambivalently by Ngadegan Hindus. For example, the Parisada insisted that the temple be open-air with an offering altar to the front, as in Balinese pura. The Ngadegan Hindus, by contrast, insisted that the temple be enclosed, on the model of a Javanese mosque or saint shrine. The Javanese also took issue with Balinese instructions on religious dress such as the requirement that Hindu males wear a white headscarf and jacket when visiting the temple. The Ngadegan Hindus insisted that these were Balinese traditions, not Hindu, and countered that they should be allowed to wear their conventional black Javanese jacket and colourful batik turban (blangkon). These seemingly trivial issues generated serious tension, and they illustrate a larger problem between the Balinese officials within the Parisada and the Javanese rank-and-file over exactly what Hinduism is and the boundaries between it and ethnic customs. Eventually – particularly as it became clearer that some youths were deserting Hinduism for Islam – the Balinese gave way on many of these matters of dress and temple organization. Today, with genuine sincerity, Balinese in the Parisada are quick to point out that Hinduism is not the same as Balinese culture, and that it is appropriate and important to allow Javanese and other nonBalinese Hindus to use their own styles of dress, worship, and offerings. On matters of ritual and doctrine, however, the Parisada quite understandably insists that there are limits to this cultural relativism; Indonesian Hindus of all ethnic backgrounds have to agree on fundamentals. For example, when it comes to the names and characteristics of supreme deities and the ritual officiants entitled to address them, Parisada leaders insist there can be few compromises. It is the deities themselves, after all, that require a certain spiritual protocol; to think otherwise is to deny the most basic reality of Hinduism. Faced with spiritual necessities like these, Parisada leaders have placed their hope in the idea that with time and education18 the next generation of Javanese Hindus will converge with the Balinese on matters of central religious importance. Such a convergence is indeed taking place, especially among Ngadegan’s educated religious elite. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, three low ranking templepriests, or wasi, were initiated after undergoing one-month of Parisada training in ritual, cosmology, and purity notions. In one sense, the training of these men contributed to a significant consolidation of Hinduism in Ngadegan. The men became an example of Hindu piety. Their treks each evening to the temple for worship were a source of pride for villagers, demonstrating in effect that ‘Hinduism is a great religion too’, as one villager put it, and the Javanese can participate as actively in its devotions as the Balinese. But the process of consolidating a Hindu ritual leadership also served to accentuate its differences with the Javanist culture into which most of the converts had been born. Although most Ngadegan Hindus have only a general idea of the purpose of different Hindu rituals, all of them know that the wasi is low on the ritual totem pole and entitled to perform only a narrow range of Hindu rituals. Villagers also know that even after almost thirty years of Hindu enculturation, the only people qualified to train priests and perform important rituals are high-status

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Balinese. In private, some Hindu villagers express doubts not only about this ritual hierarchy, but about the whole system of warna, or caste hierarchy. Two of Ngadegan’s three wasi respond to reservations like these by insisting that the spiritual hierarchy expressed in priestly rankings and warna groupings generally have nothing to do with real Hinduism. But the third priest, the best trained and most articulate, insists that distinctions of birth and caste are indeed at the heart of Hinduism. They are, he insists, the ontological consequence of the law of karma and the process of reincarnation. Although the disagreement among the wasi on this issue of spiritual hierarchy has never degenerated into public argument, a number of Ngadegan youth are familiar with it. A few cited the doctrinal disagreement to back up their claim that the Hinduism their parents embraced is really quite different from Javanese tradition, which knows nothing of warna or caste. Some youths take this observation further. As one put it: we know our grandparents were Muslim, Javanese Muslims. And we know our parents left Islam not for religious reasons but because of the political trauma of their time. But, for me, to be Javanese is to be Muslim. That’s what our ancestors believed, and why should we see things differently?

Conclusion: pluralism and cultural peril As with South Asian Hinduism, the diverse religious streams that make up Indonesian Hinduism never comprised a homogeneous congregation on the model of denominational Christianity or reformist Islam. In India, we know that Protestant Christianity and reformist Islam were a major influence on the colonial and postcolonial invention of reform Hinduism.19 A similarly contestational dynamic took place in twentieth-century Indonesia. Protestant missions posed a deep threat to traditional Islam, providing a catalyst and model for modernist Muslim organizations like the Muhammadiyah.20 The eventual success of reformist Islam created strong pressures for the creation of a standardized, codified, and formulaic Hinduism. Much more than was the case in early post-colonial India, however, in Indonesia state-based officials, not public intellectuals, led the way in promoting Hindu reform. Concerned about threats to Hinduism in a majority-Muslim Indonesia, officials in Bali and the Jakarta-based Department of Religion worked to create a version of Hinduism acceptable to the Muslim-dominated bureaucracy.21 The top-heaviness of the early reformist initiative helps to explain the perception to this day among some ordinary Hindus that the Parisada is an artificial and bureaucratic creation.22 Certainly this impression is shared by Javanese critics of the Parisada. Whatever its bureaucratic origins, however, it is clear that without some kind of administration like the Parisada, the Hindu movement in Java would have been in worse shape than it is today. Indeed, mass conversion probably would never have occurred. The Parisada provided the hodgepodge of urban mystics, rural pantheists, and Javanist spiritualists who made up the Hindu conversion movement with administrative shelter at a time when minority religions and new religious movements were otherwise being banned. Over time, of course, some Javanese Hindus have

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come to regard the shelter as more of a corral, cutting off their options and forcing them down spiritual channels not of their choosing. But the Parisada’s contribution to Javanese Hinduism was important and real. In reflecting on the disaffection of some Javanese Hindus for the Parisada, it is useful to remember that one of the most-often overlooked features of new religious movements in pre-New Order Java was their structural fluidity and cultural eclecticism. Struck by the complexity of formal speech and etiquette in Java, some Western academics have portrayed popular Javanese culture as pervasively hierarchical.23 In fact, however, Javanese society – like Javanese speech – is a headily variegated mix in which select zones of high structure and formality coexist with domains of great fluidity, improvisation, and egalitarian commensuality. Ordinary Javanese barred from high status posts devote much of their daily energies to taking shelter from the big-man agonism of everyday life. Whether it be manifested as the will of newlyweds to establish an independent household or as the appetite of mystics for spiritual self-direction, the concern for autonomy and self-definition is a recurring one in Javanese society, and fits poorly into our over-simplistic models of Javanese hierarchy.24 These same concerns for autonomy and self-direction underlay much of the appeal of Javanese new religions in this century. In them, simple people who ‘did not want to be tied down (terikat)’ found a free space for religious exploration and momentary refuge from the status agonism of public life. The majority of Javanese who converted to Hinduism in the aftermath of 1965–6 were simple people from folk mystic and Javanist backgrounds. Prior to conversion, most of them had been affiliated with loosely structured new religions. In converting to Hinduism, they thought they were entering a religious tradition that would tolerate and even amplify their eclectic spiritual interests. For reasons that have much to do with the religious politics of the New Order state, however, the version of Hinduism they were offered in classrooms and textbooks was controlled and formalistic. Rather than autonomy and experimentation, the converts were offered a tunnelled vision of Hinduism’s variety. This was consistent with the bureaucratic demands of the Muslim-dominated Department of Religion. But it also dampened what many converts had regarded as Hinduism’s most attractive traits: its cultural eclecticism and joyous spiritual exploration. For this and other reasons, including the Islamic revival, we should not be surprised in the near future to see a continuing decline in Hindu Javanese numbers. Whether the decline accelerates and results in the extinction of whole Hindu villages, as has already occurred in some parts of Gunung Kidul, will depend heavily on state policies in the aftermath of the Suharto regime. Even as the decline takes place, however, we should not be surprised to see another trend: the effort of well-educated Hindu youth and intellectuals independent of the Parisada to forge new and more pluralistic varieties of Hindu religion. Already one can discern the outlines of such an effort in the metropolitan wing of the Yogyakarta Hindu community. Around the campus of the Gadjah Mada University, there are small groups of Hindu youth who come together to study texts from India, sing devotional songs, and worship. Some among these new Hindu youth identify themselves as devotees of Indian gurus – even gurus who

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are officially banned by the Indonesian government but who are tolerated by senior Parisada members in Yogyakarta. Interestingly, the most important of these devotional movements meets in the house of one of Yogyakarta’s most prominent Parisada leaders. This suggests that at an individual level Parisada officials are not all the stuffy bureaucrats some of their critics claim them to be. The other feature of this new Hindu movement is its vigorous pluralism and concern for inter-religious dialogue. Many among the new Hindu youth are activists in Yogyakarta’s remarkable movements for inter-religious dialogue. These movements took shape in 1996 and 1997, as it became clear that the Suharto dictatorship was exploiting conservative Islam for its own purposes and, among other things, provoking awful acts of ‘ethno-religious’ violence. Yogyakarta is the headquarters of the most respected of Indonesia’s dialogue organizations, the Interfidei. But it has also spawned a variety of independent youth groups. The most unusual feature of these is their experimentation with inter-denominational worship, including performance events in which prayer, poetry, music, and theatrical arts inspired by different religions are deliberately juxtaposed. In experimenting with these cultural forms, the youth groups are taking aim squarely at the compartmentalized ‘religionization’ used to divide and control citizens during the New Order. The youth point out that in matters of spirituality it is necessary to distinguish between ‘religion’ (agama) and ‘inner faith’ (iman). The distinction is vital because, although Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and others may differ in their religions, their iman can and should be the same. Here is a religious humanism that speaks to the most pressing of moral and political problems. After four years of state-inspired ‘religious’ violence, and, in 2000, in the face of a sickening cycle of religious violence in Maluku, it would be foolish to make any predictions about the prospects for Hinduism and religious pluralism in Indonesia. What we can see, however, allows us to say that at least in Java the fate of Hinduism will be as it has been for a generation: inextricably dependent on the outcome of contests between pluralist and anti-pluralist factions in state and society. To put the matter a bit too glibly, Hinduism’s future in Java will depend not just upon Hindus, but upon the broader consolidation of a plural civil society. But changes in society are not all that is required. No civic-pluralist society will be possible without a civil and civilized state that works with, rather than against pluralist trends in society.25 Sadly, the awful violence in East Timor in 1999 and in Maluku in 1999 and 2000 demonstrates that it is too early to predict whether or how such a civil state and society will take shape. What is clear is that its achievement will require a sustained and courageous collaboration among Indonesian pluralists of all faiths.

Notes 1 In Java after the fall of the last great Hindu-Buddhist empires, the term Buda was used generally to refer to the religion of pre-Islamic times, even though Hinduism, not Buddhism, had been the dominant popular religion. Consistent with this usage, Tengger Javanese called their religion Agama Budha until their formal re-identification as Hindu in the 1970s and early 1980s (cf. Hefner 1985).

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2 ‘Javanist’ Muslims, also known as abangan, are those who mix a variety of Javanese ritual and mystical practices with those of Islam. 3 On the Klaten movement, see Lyon 1977. 4 Since the founding of the ‘New Order’ regime in 1966, the state-imposed requirement that all Indonesians receive two hours of religious education in state schools has been enforced with a vigour lacking in the earlier parliamentary (1950–7) and Guided Democracy (1957–65) periods. Over the course of the New Order (1966–98), it became clear that normative Muslims have been the primary beneficiaries of this policy, since it introduced many nominally Islamic ‘Javanist’ children to an orthodox tradition their parents had shunned. 5 See my discussion of the phases of this evolution in Hefner 2000. 6 cf. Ramage 1995:75–121; Hefner 1997:55–127. 7 Most recently and extensively see Hefner 2000. 8 See Alfian 1989; Peacock 1978. 9 The new sultan, Hamengkubuwono X, works closely with Muhammadiyah, has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and in general makes more extensive concessions to normative Islam than any Javanese sultan in modern times. Nonetheless, as I learned in conversation with court officials in 1999, the sultan has considerable sympathy still for popular mysticism and regards annual offerings and calendrical celebrations as (in the sultan’s words) ‘a wisdom of the ancestors’ that must not be suppressed. 10 In nearby Klaten, to the east of the Yogyakarta special district, there had been more informal contacts with Balinese Hindus, and political tensions between Muslim parties and the Communist Party had spurred the development of a movement for diversion from Islam much larger than was the case in Yogyakarta. However, as in Yogyakarta, Hinduism was identified by most Javanese as a Balinese religion and the preferred options for those (a small but militant minority) who sought to repudiate Islam. They were adherents of Javanese mysticism (kebatinan) and part of various folk movements preaching a return to the ‘religion of Majapahit’. On the cultural logic and political fate of one such movement in East Java, see Hefner 1987:533–54. 11 On the killings in Bali, see Robinson 1995. On the violence in Java, see Young 1990:63–99; Chapter 7 in Hefner 1990. 12 cf. Ricklefs 1979:100–28. 13 cf. Geertz 1960:112–18. 14 See Hefner 1990. 15 See Chapter 12 and Chapter 13 of this volume. 16 cf. Lyon 1977:88–132. 17 This theme of sexual reproduction as an expression of and metaphor for spiritual generation also runs through Tengger Javanese Hinduism. See also Hefner 1985. 18 See Chapter 4 of this volume. 19 See Veer 1994. 20 On this point, see Noer 1973. 21 On the Balinese state’s role in sponsoring Parisada reformism, see also e.g. Warren 1993:291. 22 See also Chapter 5 of this volume. 23 This deeply conservative portrayal of Javanese culture pervades, for example, the otherwise interesting book by Siegel 1986. 24 David Martin has encountered a similar dynamic in Latin American Protestantism. There, too, individuals otherwise deprived of public voice find off-stage avenues for dignity and self-expression (Martin 1990). 25 On the cross-cultural possibility of democratic pluralism, see Hefner 1998.

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Bibliography Alfian (1989) Muhammadiyah: The Political Behavior of a Muslim Modernist Organisation under Dutch Colonialism, Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press. Geertz, Clifford (1960) The Religion of Java, New York: Free Press. Hefner, Robert W. (1985) Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam, Princeton: Princeton University Press. –––– (1987) ‘Islamizing Java? Religion and Politics in Rural East Java’, in: The Journal of Asian Studies 46/3 (August), pp. 533–54. –––– (1990) The Political Economy of Mountain Java: An Interpretative History, Berkeley and London: University of California Press. –––– (1997) ‘Islamization and Democratization in Indonesia’, in: Robert W. Hefner and Patricia Horvatich (eds) Islam in an Era of Nation States, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pp. 55–127. –––– (ed.) (1998) Democratic Civility: The History and Cross-Cultural Possibility of a Modern Political Ideal, Rutgers: Transaction Press. –––– (2000) Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lyon, Margaret L. (1977) Politics and Religious Identity: Genesis of a Javanese–Hindu Movement in Rural Central Java, Berkeley: PhD diss., Department of Anthropology, University of California Berkeley. Martin, David (1990) Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Evangelical Christianity in Latin America, London: Basil Blackwell. Noer, Deliar (1973) The Modernist Muslim Movement in Indonesia 1900–1942, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Peacock, James (1978) Muslim Puritans: Reformist Psychology in Southeast Asian Islam, Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Ramage, Douglas E. (1995) Politics in Indonesia: Democracy, Islam and the Ideology of Tolerance, London and New York: Routledge. Ricklefs, Merle C. (1979) ‘Six Centuries of Islamization in Java’, in: N. Levtzion (ed.) Conversion to Islam, New York: Holmes and Meier, pp. 100–28. Robinson, Geoffrey (1995) The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Siegel, James T. (1986) Solo in the New Order: Language and Hierarchy in an Indonesian City, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Smith Kipp, Rita (1993) Dissociated Identities: Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in an Indonesian Society, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Veer, Peter van der (1994) Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India, Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Warren, Carol (1993) Adat and Dinas: Balinese Communities in the Indonesian State, Kuala Lumpur: Southeast Asian Social Science Monographs, Oxford University Press. Young, Kenneth R. (1990) ‘Local and National Influences in the Violence of 1965’, in: Robert Cribb (ed.) The Indonesian Killings 1965–1966: Studies from Java and Bali, Clayton, Australia: Monash Papers on Southeast Asia, no. 21, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, pp. 63–99.

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8 ETHNIC, NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL LOYALTIES OF INDONESIAN CHRISTIANS Karel Steenbrink

The most common divisions within Christianity in present-day Indonesia run along confessional or denominational lines. The three major groups are the Roman Catholics, the mainstream or classical Protestant Churches (forming the PGI, Persekutuan Gereja Indonesia, the Indonesian Union of Churches), and the Injili or Evangelical and Pentecostal assemblies. Since Abdurrahman Wahid became the new president of Indonesia in October 1999, all the religious communities recognized by the Indonesian state are represented in the Indonesian Parliament (MPR, Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat) through twenty delegates. Fifteen delegates represent Islam, whereas there is one delegate for Hinduism, one for Buddhism, one for Catholicism, one for the PGI Churches, and one for the Injili. Apart from denominational differences, Indonesian Christians also differ in whether they have a more regional, a more national, or a more international orientation. These differences underline the great potential of Christianity as a global religion to be adopted by a local society. They also show the innovating power global religions have within particular historical conditions in general. Conversion to a world religion is not simply an absolute rupture with older beliefs and practices and a recognition of a new timeless and universal religious system. It is an often-partial participation in a changing and dynamic global network that provides new rituals and values.1 In this respect, an investigation of the ethnic, national, and international loyalties of Indonesian Christians provide us with insights that can be of great value when analysing equivalent loyalties of the Indonesian Hindus. My examples will mostly be taken from Java, because this gives me the additional benefit of being able to debate the position of Christians towards elements of the Hindu tradition within Javanese culture. I will not restrict myself to discuss only the positions of Indonesian Christians, but will also examine those of expatriate missionaries. In the case of Islam, scholars of foreign descent, such as Nuruddin ar-Raniri, Abdussamad al-Palimbani, and Sayyid Uthman bin Yahya al-Alawi, are usually accepted as important, even dominating among representatives of Islam in Indonesia. The same can be said about the impact and the role of expatriate missionaries for Christianity. Each case I have introduced throughout this chapter provides enough material for a whole chapter or even an entire monograph. Here, however, I can only

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summarize the relevant information and indicate some general lines of interpretation that may suggest the direction for a new and more general theory of the development of Christianity as a localized global or universal religion in modern Indonesia.

Lion Cachet versus Van Lith: Dutch versus pro-Javanese preferences in the Sadrach affair Until the last decades of the nineteenth century, most Christians in Central and East Java were European planters, officials, or soldiers and their Eurasian offspring, and there were only few Javanese Christian villages where small numbers of Javanese Christians lived in isolation from Javanese society in general.2 One of the most remarkable personalities among the Javanese Christians was Kiai Sadrach Surapranata, born in 1835. Sadrach, as he is usually referred to, acquired his first knowledge of Christianity through a Javanese translation of the Gospel of John, which he purchased at a pasar (market). For some time, he was a member of a missionary group, led and financed by F.K. Anthing (1820–83), judge and vice-president of the Supreme Court in Batavia. Finally, Sadrach established his own ‘Christian Congregation’ (organized like a local religion, nowadays referred to as aliran kepercayaan) in isolation from those of the European Protestant ministers and missionaries. Between 1880 and 1890, he acquired at least some 6,000 to 7,000 followers in Central Java, whom he served from his residence (pondok) in Karangjasa, near Purworejo. The doctrines taught by Sadrach diverged from those of the European ministers and missionaries in so far as they consisted partly of Muslim-Javanese elements stemming from his earlier pesantren education as well as his readings of the few existing Javanese books on the Christian doctrines portraying Christianity in a way that related it to the Muslim-Javanese worldview.3 When in 1891 the staunch orthodox inspector of the Reformed Mission, the Rev. Lion Cachet, visited Central Java, he declared Sadrach a heretic. Lion Cachet’s verdict was not only caused by what he perceived as doctrinal failures, but also by the fact that Sadrach considered himself to be on a par with, if not superior to the Dutch Protestant missionaries. Lion Cachet saw the low position of the Dutch missionaries in the colonial society as a great evil for the spread of Christianity both amongst the Europeans and the natives. Against this background, he could only see it as a grave sin that this Javanese heretic leader would not succumb to the white leadership of the Church. In Lion Cachet’s own words ‘[t]he mission had to break with the liar Sadrach, who poisoned our mission completely and had brought a Javanese Christianity into existence in which there is no place for Christ.’ 4 Already during and even more so after the visit of Lion Cachet to Central Java, the Protestants were divided with regard to their position on Sadrach’s activities. In 1899, the missionary L. Adriaanse published a 450-page book on ‘Sadrach’s circle’ (Sadrach’s Kring), defending the thesis that space should be given for different interpretations of Christianity, especially to first-generation converts. Later generations of both Dutch and Indonesian Protestants have mostly been in favour of allowing Christianity in Java to acquire a definite Javanese character. Sutarman Partonadi, for instance, earned his doctoral degree in 1988 with a dissertation on the ‘Sadrach

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affair’, and he described Sadrach’s doctrine of Jesus as ‘an adequate and meaningful image for use in the Javanese context’ (thesis attached to Partonadi 1988). The internal conflict amongst the Protestants, aroused by Lion Cachet’s verdict, caused the first large group of Javanese Christians to convert to Catholicism. In 1904, the pioneering Jesuit missionary Frans van Lith accepted some 400 former members of Sadrach’s community into his parish. In his reflections on the Protestant discussion, Van Lith went very far to express his liberal attitude towards Javanese and Muslim practices. In order not to separate the Catholics from the non-Catholic Javanese, he allowed participation in the slametan ritual, saw no problems in circumcision, and was even prepared to allow nuptials before the Muslim village official, the modin, who received most of his income from the wedding and burial ceremonies for Muslim villagers.5 In the secondary school of Muntilan, the establishment of which was another major success in his missionary activities, Van Lith urged his pupils to practise gamelan music next to the Gregorian chanting required by the Catholic liturgy, and the rich repertoire of Javanese wayang stories became an important storehouse for moralistic lessons. Eventually, Van Lith became an ardent defender of the sublime values of Javanese culture. He did not want the support of the colonial system for his Catholic congregation. Notwithstanding the generous subsidies for education from Batavia, which made his enterprise possible, he became so critical of the colonial system as a whole that in 1922 some officials wanted to prohibit his return to the Indies after his sojourn in the Netherlands for health reasons. With every possible means he supported a strong and solid Javanese cultural setting for his new Catholic congregation, which he made as independent from Dutch colonial society as possible. Van Lith had two advantages over his Protestant colleagues in this respect. The Jesuit missionary tradition had already had famous examples of adapting to local cultures in the work of Roberto De Nobili in India and Matteo Ricci in China. Besides, the close ties between Dutch political power (especially the ruling royal family) and Protestantism made it much easier for Catholics to keep a distance from Dutch authority and culture in the colony and to experiment in embedding Christianity in a distinct Javanese setting. Already before 1920, Father van Lith had been of the opinion that the Catholic community should be independent from the colonial government as well as the European circles in the colony, realizing the importance of the nationalist movement in Java. He granted all aspects of the Javanese culture compatibility with the Catholic creed as long as native elements were not used to contradict the Catholic conviction. For that reason, Islam was not a partner in his effort, but wayang, slametan, circumcision, and even some contributions of Islamic religious officials were welcome to strengthen the Javanese character of the new Catholic community in Java.

Hendrik Kraemer and Barend Schuurman: interest for local culture blocked by Church dogmatics Hendrik Kraemer (1888–1965) studied Indonesian languages and culture in Leiden and wrote a doctoral dissertation about popular Javanese mysticism under the

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supervision of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. He therefore seemed to be really prepared for the encounter between Javanism and Christianity. But his religious exclusivism and his disapproval of syncretism prevented him from endorsing any deeper exchange between Christianity and the spirituality of the Javanese culture. Quite different from Lion Cachet, who combined his conviction of the religious pre-eminence of the Protestant creed with a colonialist belief in Dutch superiority, Kraemer’s rejection of Javanese religiosity was more strictly based on religious grounds. Kraemer was not the only Protestant missionary in the 1920s and 1930s to reject the possibility of understanding and exchange between Javanese religiosity and Christianity. His fellow missionary and lecturer at the theological school of Malang, Barend Schuurman (1889–1945), also wrote a dissertation on Javanese mysticism (Schuurman 1933). In this dissertation, any form of mysticism, and therefore ipso facto Javanese mysticism, is considered as a sinful human endeavour which constructs a kind of religiosity that can only be false. Like Van Lith, Hendrik Kraemer realized that the nationalist movement was important and decisive for the future of Christianity in Indonesia. In the last decade of colonialism, he made great efforts to push the regional Churches towards greater independence. His efforts resulted in the development of a number of local Protestant Churches, the respective local orientation of which was already demonstrated in their name: Batak Protestant Church (Huria Kristen Batak Protestan), Minahasan Evangelical Church (Gereja Masehi Injili Minahasa), Javanese Protestant Church (Gereja Kristen Jawa), and East Javanese Protestant Church (Gereja Kristen Jawi Wetan). For Kraemer, this regional identification should not involve any compromise with Javanese religiosity. In fact, the ethnic Christian communities usually lived together in separate Christian villages because: In the desas there is the traditionally recognized influence of ‘core-villagers’ as Prof. Van Vollenhoven called them. There is also a unity of desa-interests, and of religious activities promoting these desa-interests, such as slametans, bersih desa, agricultural ceremonies etc., in which the desa authorities, the lurah and the modin play the leading role. All this is aimed at warding off evil influences and obtaining divine blessing. To the Javanese mind there is no separation in these matters between the secular and the religious realm.6 Kraemer seems to have had an ambiguous attitude towards ethnic nationalism. On one hand, he wrote with some pride about ‘the Batak lands as a Christian country’7, but otherwise he realized that Christianity could not easily be identified with certain ethnic traditions. Finally, although he always pledged distance from the Dutch authority, he was unrelenting in his Christo-centrism, seeing the attachment to Christ as being above any cultural or ethnic identity. Kraemer’s exclusivist stance still has a strong impact on Protestant Christianity in Indonesia. While some of Indonesia’s Protestants (such as Thomas Sumartana, who led some kind of a crusade against the legacy of Kraemer) have rejected its rigidity, it can still be noticed in many ideas and practices of Indonesian Protestant Christians.

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The Catholic Raja Lorenzo II’s political dream and Sam Ratulangie’s national and politically neutral Christianity Today, it is quite commonly accepted that the founding fathers of the Indonesian Constitution of 1945 rejected the Islamist proposal to take the syariat (Islamic law) as the ideological foundation of the new Indonesian Republic, because they feared that the ‘Christian parts’ of Indonesia would then want to separate themselves from the Republic. Instead, the Pancasila was propounded and accepted as the new state ideology. Since then, it has become a kind of political ‘wisdom’ that Indonesia would fall apart if anything like an ‘Islamic state’ would be proclaimed. It has been quite apparent that there were and still are Indonesian Muslims who dream of some kind of Islamic state. What then about Christian political fantasies? There have been political parties under the banners of both Protestantism and Catholicism. But what was the political strategy of the Christian politicians? As far as I know, there have been very few plans or hopes for independent, self-ruling Christian regions in Indonesia.8 One of the very few projects that were ever developed was carried out under the rule of Don Lorenzo II, raja of Larantuka, East Flores. Born in 1859, the same year that the Dutch formally took power over this region from the Portuguese of Dili, Lorenzo was educated under Dutch Jesuit missionaries. His predecessors had been ‘semi-pagan’ rulers, who had still practised polygamy and many animistic rituals. In 1887, Lorenzo II became raja of Larantuka, and the missionaries hoped that he would propagate strictly orthodox Catholicism in his realm; regulate marriages; and make baptism, church attendance, and catechism lessons more or less obligatory. During mass, they prayed for him the official prayer: ‘Domine salvum fac regem nostrum Laurentium’ (‘Lord, save our King Lorenzo’). Lorenzo II on his part hoped that the Catholic priests would support him in his struggle to resist the growing influence of Dutch colonial rule, personified by the resident of Kupang, on the internal affairs of his realm. His struggle was not successful though. In 1904, Lorenzo II was sent into exile to Yogyakarta, and some missionaries were reprimanded for supporting an unruly citizen of the colonial empire.9 From the 1920s onwards, nearly all Christian political leaders kept local and national interests in balance. Hence, they were never too outspoken about the Christian character of their political activities. A good example is the great Minahasan leader Sam Ratu Langie (1890–1949). Although originating from a region that was in the twentieth century ‘an overwhelmingly Protestant land’ (Henley 1996:64), and although he did not want to choose between the options of a united Indonesian Republic or a federal Indonesian state, Ratu Langie was very outspoken in his rejection of Christianity (or religion in general) as a source for political action, because: Religion should be pushed into the background, in order not to create differences between Christians and those groups in society that adhere to other religions. The final result of political strife is co-operation towards one goal, but the Christian groups will never mix with a greater coalition and will try to defend themselves as separate units.10

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As the most powerful Christian political leader and secretary of the Minahasaraad since 1924, Ratu Langie promoted the nationalist dream of a greater Indonesia. Being strict and outspoken about Christian ideals was not in tune with this goal. Like other Christian politicians, he had to envision more modest political goals for Christianity.11

St Darmawijaya, J.B. Banawiratma, and Reksosusilo: double loyalty to Javanese wisdom and Christianity12 Catholic theology was never solely based on an analysis of Christian scripture, but followed and integrated much reasoning from (Greek/Western) philosophy, according to the old slogan ‘philosophia ancilla theologiae’ (‘philosophy is the servant of theology’). During the last decades of the twentieth century, several systematic efforts were made to also incorporate elements of Javanese philosophical and religious thinking into Catholic theology. One of the protagonists of this new trend is Dr S. Reksosusilo, who was born in 1938 in Madiun, studied in Sydney and Rome, and became a theology lecturer in Malang. In one of his studies he compared the Western concept of ‘conscience’ with similar Javanese notions, concentrating on the concepts of rasa, of Nur Muhammad as an emanation from divinity into the material and human world or some kind of a divine spark in the history of humanity, and of atma. He mentioned as his sources the works by Ki Hadjar Dewantara, the Old Javanese translation of the Bhagavad Gita, the Negarakr.ta¯ gama, the Wedhatama by Mangkunegoro IV, and Ronggowarsito’s Wirid Hidayat Jati. Reksosusilo ascribed some superiority to the Javanese concepts compared to the Western term conscience, which in his opinion is too much concentrated on the individual, while the corresponding Javanese ideas take into account not only the individual human being and divinity but also the whole social environment of the individual: The most striking feature within Javanese thinking is its emphasis on the self of humans as something not independent. It does not become a free and autonomous centre, responsible to itself alone, but there is some kind of togetherness or dualism in the Javanese concept of self. In this concept of the ego also close neighbours are involved. One might even say that the self in Javanese thinking has a tripartite aspect: the ego, other humans, and also the Mysterious or Absolute. This means that within the decisions of Javanese people, other people and the Absolute are also constantly involved.13 This article by Reksosusilo was only the first of a whole series of six studies in which he criticized Western aspects of Christianity and replaced them with concepts taken from the Javanese religious and cultural heritage.14 Another prominent theologian in modern Indonesia is the Jesuit priest J.B. Banawiratma, who published his doctorandus thesis Jesus the Guru. The Encounter of Javanism and the Gospel in 1977. He compared the description of Jesus as teacher in the Gospel of John with the intimate teacher–pupil relation in the Javanese

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tradition, which is actually usually depicted as being equivalent to the relation between father and child, for instance, in the Wulangreh by Pakubuwana IV or in the story of Dewa Ruci in the wayang tradition, where Bima is instructed by the small spirit of Dewa Ruci. Banawiratma came to the conclusion that the Javanese concept of ‘guru’ is so elaborated and rich that it is suitable for use as a key concept for the description of the personality of Jesus. He also stated that it is necessary to formulate a new doctrine about Jesus in Javanese culture: Javanese or Christian, this is not a question of an alternative. To become a Christian does not mean alienating oneself but rather finding oneself and one’s life. This shows how important it is to realise that the religious experience of the Scriptures are at the same time the religious experiences of a particular culture.15 Banawiratma’s standpoint with regard to the compatibility and mutual enrichment of Christianity and the Javanese tradition is not the outcome of his historical and literary study; rather it was a presupposition from which he started, letting his conclusions validate it. A third example of an attempt at harmonizing the Javanese tradition and Christian culture can be found in the writing of Stanislas Darmawijaya. This Javanese priest published a study on the idea of ‘servant’ in 1988, where he gives a lengthy analysis of the character of the panakawan in Javanese folklore and the servant of God in Isaiah and later sections of the Christian scripture. Although Darmawijaya acknowledged a number of differences (there is always an aspect of joking and humour in the panakawan stories; Jesus was a historical figure, while the panakawan are pure mythology), he found so many similarities between the two concepts that, according to him, Jesus can rightly be called a panakawan. He is the pathfinder and helper in troubles: The wisdom, social engagement, solidarity, endurance and many other human qualities, which are found in the panakawan, are also found in Jesus, who by the Christians is seen as the perfect human being (manusia paripurna).16 There are no references to Jesus as the Son of God or as a divine being. Reading this book, one gets the impression that all arguments are put together in order to show the similarities between Jesus and Semar, certainly the most wise and praiseworthy of the panakawan, but also with Petruk, Gareng, Bagong, and minor figures of Javanese folklore. Another study by Darmawijaya is focused on the concept of faithfulness/loyalty (kesetiaan). He concentrated on Dewi Anggraini and her husband Prabu Palgunadi from the Bha¯ ratayudha, the Old Javanese version of the Indian Maha¯ bha¯ rata and its Javanese lakon wayang (stories for the wayang) as well as on Wibisana and Kumbakarna from the Old Javanese version of the Ra¯ ma¯ yan.a and its respective lakon. The behaviour of these dramatis personae is often characterized by dispute or even open

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opposition, for instance: when Wibisana leaves the camp of his brother Ravana, because Ravana had committed the sin of kidnapping Sinta, the wife of Rama; while Kumbakarna, who is also a brother of Ravana, criticizes his brother but remains with him loyally until the last fight. This divergent behaviour is explained as the complicated way of compromising and sometimes difficult decisions to be taken by a person who wants to be loyal. The same complicated web of loyalties, Darmawijaya pointed out, is found in the persons of David and Jonathan, both loyal to Saul (Jonathan’s father), who was also not a virtuous person. In his conclusion, Darmawijaya does not make any statement about the superiority of one literary corpus over the other or one religious culture over the other: To become a true Christian and a perfect lover of one’s country (patriot) is not only an objective but also a mission. To be sure, a Christian should not become a narrow-minded patriot, chauvinistic, someone who only wants to exalt one’s own nation and is blind to the quality and excellence of others. As a true believer, one has the obligation to bring this patriotism in tune with global values, with ‘catholic’17 values, with values that are inherent to humanity.18 The only explicit purpose of Darmawijaya is to stimulate his readers to a mutual enrichment of the values of the wayang theatre and the values taught by true faith.

The Schmutzer brothers, Bagong Sudiarso, and Nyoman Darsana: artists between local culture and Christianity The efforts by Father Frans van Lith to provide a solid cultural basis for the small Catholic congregation of Central Java were continued by many of his successors. An interesting example of this Javanese cultural expression of Christianity is the work of several members of the Schmutzer family in the Yogyakarta region. The Schmutzer family settled in Gondang-Lipuro (Ganjuran), in Bantul, south of Yogyakarta in 1862, where Gottfried Jozef Julius Schmutzer bought a sugar plantation. He had two sons, Jozef Ignaz and Julius Robert, who continued the plantation and used it for socialist experiments (introduction of a trade union, taking on native employees as partners with regard to the ownership of the plantation, introduction of health insurance, schooling and medical care for the native employees; they also financed the Panti Rapi Hospital of Yogyakarta) and missionary work. In 1920, Jozef became professor at the Agricultural School of Bogor and later also became member of the Volksraad. Julius married a daughter from the Rijckevorsel family, a prominent Catholic family in the Netherlands, who sent five sons as Jesuit missionaries to the Dutch East Indies between 1870 and 1940. In 1927, the Schmutzers started the building of a candi (a Hindu-Javanese or Old Javanese temple structure) devoted to Jesus on their estate. A small statue of Jesus, created in the traditional Javanese style, showing his heart, was placed in the foundation, which was then closed. The statue was carved by the (Muslim) Sundanese artist Iko following suggestions of Jozef Schmutzer. A larger copy in stone was placed in the inner chapel of the candi, built in the style of the minor buildings of

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the Prambanan compound. In 1930, the whole work was finished and the candi was formally inaugurated by the bishop of Batavia, A. van Velsen, who on that occasion commended the whole island of Java to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Since then, great annual celebrations have taken place around the candi (and not inside the parish church, which is situated only some 50 metres away from the candi). Offerings are made in the style of the ceremonial gerebeg (major Javanese Islamic holiday) of Yogyakarta and Surakarta, complete with beautiful gunungan (the most important requisite of the Javanese shadow-play or wayang kulit), symbolizing the harvest obtained from agriculture. Only Javanese songs are sung, accompanied by the gamelan (traditional Javanese gong-orchestra). Not only are the altar boys in Javanese dress kain (sarong, traditional loin cloth worn around the lower part of the body), keris (traditional Javanese dagger), and blangkon (traditional Javanese headcloth), but also the priests wear the traditional Javanese dress for this occasion. There is no kneeling or ceremonial bowing as in the common Catholic liturgy, but the people sit in the sila (traditional Javanese way of sitting: the men with crossed legs, the women with their legs put sidewards) way and honour the candi, host, and statues in the ceremonial sungkem (traditional Javanese way of greeting: palms put together in front of breast) way. Three years before the construction of the Christian candi was started, i.e. in 1924, a church had already been built on the Schmutzer estate in the traditional joglo style (style of the traditional Javanese houses). It looked like a great pendopo (traditional Javanese pavilion). Later enlargements, however, changed the original structure, and today the church looks more like a ‘common’ church, with chapels, in the form of a cross, and even a small bell-tower. This indicates perhaps that the Catholic congregation in that neighbourhood did not regard the Javanese style as appropriate for a Christian building like that built by the Schmutzer family. Nowadays, the gamelan is only used once a month, while on most Sundays the singing during Mass is accompanied by the electric organ. Is this development in line with the general preference of the modern Indonesian youth for a more Western style of music? Does enculturation not sometimes imply the adaptation to a traditional culture that is already left by many younger people? The yearly festival, which I attended on 29 June 1997, was announced as an act ‘to continue the tradition of the people who brought the faith to Ganjuran, the Schmutzer family, who strove for enculturation in order to make the faith grow in accordance with the Javanese culture’.19 But it also showed an adaptation to modern religious habits in Indonesia. The great ceremony placed much emphasis on miracles and healing, employing a terminology and style of preaching very similar to the Evangelical and Pentecostal style of service, which is mostly of American origin and has become so popular in contemporary Indonesia. In the early 1970s, the Catholic Catechetical Institute of Yogyakarta started a quite uncommon experiment. Six professional artists from the village of Ubud in Bali were brought to Yogyakarta to make some hundred paintings after stories from the Bible. The artists, none of them Christians and until then not familiar with biblical stories, read a story from the Bible (beginning with Adam, Noah, and Abraham up to the parables of the gospels) every morning and were free to give their own interpretations to them in their paintings. They were only urged to

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remain faithful to the basic techniques of Balinese art. The paintings were then put on slides showing them in total as well as in detail. The slides were to be used in the catechism lessons during the next decades. Around 1985, slide shows became rather dated in middle class families living in the urban centres of Indonesia, because video films were considered more fashionable. The Catechetical Institute then made a number of video films to celebrate the basic meaning of the great Christian holidays in dance performances. The Protestant artist Bagong Kusudiardja was the designer of costumes, dance, music, and text. He made performances and films for Christmas, the Crucifixion, and the Ascension. To give some indications about his interpretation of the Christian holidays, I will elaborate on the Ascension performance. The film starts with an image of the beach at Parangtritis. The text mentions that everywhere in the religious history of mankind special places have a function in the communication between humankind and God. This is especially the case with mountains (e.g. Moses received the ten commandments on a mountain; the sacred character of the volcanoes in Indonesia). Parangtritis is sacred for Javanese people because of its location between the Merapi volcano and the ocean where Nyai Loro Kidul, the goddess of the Southern Ocean, dwells in her palace. Jesus appeared to his disciples for the last time on a mountain in Galilee, and therefore this beach at Parangtritis is a good place for the Ascension celebration, being so close to the mountain Gunung Kidul, the place where Pangeran Diponegoro received his divine instructions in the cave of Goa Slarong. Is this simple syncretism, putting together elements from different traditions without proper distinction, without the right boundary between the various religious traditions? Or is it a creative religious act? What we see in many of these local adaptations of Christian themes is a mixture of old and new elements. This can also be clearly seen in the work of the Balinese Christian artist Nyoman Darsana. In his wayang presentation of the life of Jesus, he modelled the false high priest Caiaphas after Drona, the priest and teacher who deceived Bima. For Jesus, however, he made an absolutely new figure.20

Two Protestant Churches in Central Java: the Chinese GKI versus the Javanese GKJ In 1998, people of Chinese descent were estimated to be between 3 and 4 per cent, some 6 to 8 million people, of the total Indonesian population of 202 million.21 During the turmoil accompanying Suharto’s demise on 21 May 1998, the Chinese Catholics – identified by many Indonesians with the CSIS (Centre for the Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank of the government where many Chinese (and) Catholics held prominent positions) and Suharto’s business partner Liem Sioe Liong, alias Sudomo Salim – were often blamed as the cause of the economic troubles of the country. King Seng (better known as Bob Hassan since his conversion to Islam), a forest tycoon and golf and business partner of Suharto, was the minister of trade and industry in Suharto’s last cabinet, installed on 15 March 1998. There was, however, no general identification of Indonesian-Chinese people with Islam; people identified them exclusively with Protestantism and even more so with Catholicism.22

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This is quite different from the situation two centuries earlier. In the eighteenth century, Ong Tae-hae, a Chinese traveller to Java remarked that: when the Chinese have settled for several generations in foreign countries without ever returning to China, then they easily forget the teachings of their ancestors and Chinese sages. They adopt the way natives eat and dress, read their books. They do not object to call themselves Javanese and become Moslems. Because these people (Chinese Moslems) have become numerous, the Dutch have placed them under a Kapitan who supervise them.23 Since then, the religious affiliation of assimilated24 Chinese has changed from a more or less general acceptance of Islam to that of Christianity. For the first part of the twentieth century, we must also note a revival of Chinese religion, especially Confucianism. After 1945, however, the Indonesian Republic did not recognize Confucianism as a proper religion.25 Besides, Buddhism, which was recognized by the Indonesian government, became dominated by the Theravada tradition through the missionary work of monks from Thailand.26 Since the Chinese Buddhist tradition belongs to the Mahayana branch of Buddhism, the dominance of the Theravada monks within Indonesian Buddhism has strengthened Chinese sympathies for Christianity. In the 1930s, Hendrik Kraemer wrote on ‘the Chinese problem’ in a report about the transition from a type of Christianity led by expatriate missionaries towards an indigenous church, reflecting on the question whether the Chinese could be considered as real ‘children of the soil’ (peranakan) and whether they should (or want to) be treated the same as the native Christians or receive a special position as Chinese-Indonesian Christians. Kraemer was not sure but considered the continuation of a Chinese identity as the most probable solution: [T]he peranakan are thoroughly Chinese and they wish to remain Chinese. For that reason too, Islam has to them so little appeal. To them masuk Islam, ‘embrace Islam’, implies becoming native and that they do not want. They do not want it, because, being Orientals, they consider a change of religion a change of their socio-religious group.27 In the pre-independence period, the Protestants modelled their institutional structure more or less after the colonial pattern of a country divided according to ethnicity. Outside Minahasa, the Moluccas, and Timor, the Indische Kerk was the Church for the whites. Besides, there were several Chinese Churches and regional Churches for natives, such as the above-mentioned Central Javanese Church and East Javanese Church. Some theological manoeuvres had to be executed in order to formally escape the recognition of ethnic Churches. Eventually, the three Chinese Churches (until 1954 called Tiong Hoa Kie Tok Kauw Hwee) merged into one Church, the Gereja Kristen Indonesia, GKI, still commonly known as ‘the Chinese Church’. It differs from the (Central Javanese) Gereja Kristen Jawa (GKJ) in so far as the GKI uses Indonesian as its liturgical language, while the GKJ uses Javanese.28 The

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GKJ, although mostly limited to the provinces of Yogyakarta and Central Java, has parishes also in Jakarta, notwithstanding the general agreement among the Indonesian Protestants not to serve parishes of their own denomination outside their own region. This, however, does not apply to the Batak Church, the Huria Kristen Batak Protestan, the largest of the ethnic Protestant Churches in Indonesia.

Romo Dick Hartoko: between Pastoran Kota Baru and Padepokan Kaliurang: the dynamic relation between Catholic theology, universal humanism, and ‘Eurasian’ Javanism Dick Hartoko was born as Theodorus Geldorp in 1922 on an East Javanese plantation in Jatiroto. His father was Dutch and his mother Javanese. He was educated in Batavia, entered the Jesuit order in 1942, studied philosophy and theology in Yogyakarta, and followed a teacher-training course in the field of history in the Netherlands. From 1957 onwards, he worked as a parish priest in Yogyakarta and at the same time as secretary of the editorial board of the cultural magazine Basis, which he later directed as chief editor. He accepted the name Dick Hartoko as the Javanized version of his Dutch name (the name Hartoko is derived from harta, which is the Javanese equivalent to the Dutch geld, i.e. ‘money’, which forms the first part of Hartoko’s original Dutch name Geldorp). In his priestly sermons and pastoral work, Hartoko remained a true follower of the rather exclusivist and dogmatic Roman Catholic Church of his days. But in his work as budayawan, as an interpreter of modern Indonesian culture, he was a non-denominational intellectual who defended universal humanism rather than a closed Catholic doctrine. ‘Universal humanism’ even became the title of a book published to honour his seventieth anniversary.29 Hartoko’s humanism was not a return to the Javanese tradition. He translated much contemporary philosophy in order to make the contact between modern Indonesian culture and the basic values of Western society. But in his later years he became more and more conscious of his ‘Javanese roots’. He translated the classical work of another Jesuit, i.e. Dr Piet Zoetmulder’s book on Javanese mysticism, which appeared under the title Manunggaling kawula gusti.30 Until 1990, he delivered his orthodox and (to my personal taste) rather dull and dry sermons in the parish of Kota Baru, Yogyakarta, on Sundays, and from Monday to Friday he worked on translations of philosophical books in his recluse, padepokan, in Kaliurang, on one of the slopes of Mount Merapi. From the early 1990s onwards, he increasingly closed himself off from the world in East Java, seeking his Javanese roots after he had found his half-sister. One even gets the impression that he more or less followed the older Javanese tradition of retiring as a sage and hermit when having reached a more advanced age. In another publication,31 I have defended the thesis that notwithstanding the prominent position of the major world religions in Indonesia, many individuals have actually divided loyalties in the field of religion. A double or even triple religious identity is not an exception, but rather occurs quite often. Also the pious priest Dick Hartoko can be considered as embracing quite distinct religious styles,

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which neither interfere nor intermingle with each other. They can thus be seen as distinct religious identities. In line with our general topic, we may consider Hartoko’s Roman Catholic identity as the universal and global one; his work as budayawan and editor of the monthly Basis as an expression of a modern national Indonesian identity; and his growing mystical interest in his later years as more inspired by the local Javanese tradition. These three identities are distinct within his personality, yet not unconnected and definitely not in clear and open conflict. The distinction, however, is clear enough to be accepted as significant for the understanding of not only Hartoko’s personality, but that of quite a few modern Indonesian Christians as well.

Franz Magnis-Suseno and the place of Islam in the process of the Indonesianization of Christian identity During the political turmoil that was taking place in connection with the transition from the Suharto regime to the present Indonesian government under President Abdurrahman Wahid, there occurred an interesting incident for the comparison of certain Muslim and Christian perspectives on Indonesian religious identity. In mid-1999, the acting President Yusuf Baharuddin Habibie and PAN-chairman Amien Rais made the proposal to the separatist groups in Aceh that the Islamic law (syariat) could be accepted as common law for the special province of Aceh. While the separatists (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAK) wanted more political power, more financial autonomy with regard to the province’s natural resources of oil, gas, and forests, they instead received the promise of what was offered as a kind of religious autonomy by the central government (on 18 August 1999). Whereas neo-modernist Muslims like Nurcholis Madjid have discussed the process of adaptation of Islamic values to Indonesian culture in relation to the issue of ‘secularization’ (menduniawikan) since the early 1970s, B.J. Habibie and Amien Rais passed over the specific Acehnese character of Islam in Aceh in their proposal. There was no mention of the specific position of women in Acehnese society, nor was there mention of the old Acehnese customs such as breaking the fast with the highly alcoholic beras ketan, a snack or pudding made from well-fermented sweet rice. The proposal was only about the implementation of an orthodox Arab or at least Middle Eastern formulation of Islamic rules. Is the Christian position so much more tolerant? One of the promoters for a modern Javanese enculturated formulation of the Catholic doctrines is the Jesuit Dr Franz Magnis-Suseno. In a recent article, however, he put forward the question of whether the inter-religious dialogue (i.e. especially the dialogue between Islam and Christianity) in Indonesia has come to a deadlock. He considered the obsesi dialog (i.e. the obsession with dialogue) as a new symptom starting in the 1960s with the second Vatican Council. This ‘obsession’, he wrote, makes sense for the internal Christian ecumenical movement, where the contacts can be based on a common scripture. Yet ‘it is very difficult to see at what common basis a Muslim–Christian dialogue should be held . . . and certainly a dialogue in order to obtain a unity (dialog pemersatuan) is not possible’.32 Just as B.J. Habibie and Amine Rais did not bother to mention the pre-Islamic customs in Aceh, thereby

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showing their intolerant attitude towards non-Islamic cultural and religious traditions, Magnus-Suseno seems to have recently joined in the general Indonesian trend of intolerance by acknowledging firm boundaries between the different religious traditions, in spite of his positive attitude towards the Javanese culture. Has he forgotten that from the time of John of Damascus (d. c.750), Islam has been pictured as a ‘Christian heresy’ by many Eastern Christian theologians, granting at least some common ground between the two traditions? Does he not endorse the statements of the second Vatican Council, supporting the inter-religious dialogue? In other publications, he certainly preferred the national Indonesian culture,33 or more specifically the traditional Javanese culture (1984), rather than Indonesian Islam, as context for the elaboration of a distinct Indonesian Christian theology. Magnis-Suseno is not the only Christian theologian who prefers the Javanese and other regional traditions as well as the general national socio-political discourse to Islam as a context for a local formulation of Christian ethics and doctrine. I have given more examples of this attitude in the earlier parts of this chapter. Although there is no Christian anti-Muslim apologetic, there is indeed a neglect or should we say a deliberate strategy to ignore one of the greatest world religions as a context for theologizing and for designing local liturgies. The firm walls between the religions, erected by the New Order, have cast the mutual image of the universal religions for decades to come (see also Steenbrink 1993).

Conclusion In this chapter, I have discussed the question of how a universal religion can adapt to local, national, or ethnic conditions. I have found within modern Indonesian Christianity more positive steps for adaptation than within modern Indonesian Islam. There is more enthusiasm for local identity among Catholics than among Protestants. Evangelical and Pentecostal (sometimes also labelled as fundamentalist) Christians often reject the idea of an adaptation of doctrine altogether.34 There is not much criticism of Western Christianity in the whole movement of ‘inventing’ an Indonesian Christian identity. Nevertheless, such criticism is considered by many as an essential stage in order to develop a sound and meaningful, more or less independent tradition within the global Christian community. This stance as well as the whole range of Christian strategies of adapting to local, national, and global contexts, which I have described above, can be found in similar guises within the development of Hindu Dharma Indonesia.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

See also, for instance, Gerard Persoon’s contribution to this volume. See Hoekema 1995; Van Akkeren 1970. cf. Adriaanse 1899:224–32. Quoted in Steenbrink 1993:106, from the report by Lion Cachet. From the manuscript Kjahi Sadrach, Eene les voor ons uit de Protestantsche Zending van MiddenJava, summary and references in Steenbrink 1993:116–18. 6 Kraemer 1958:93; first written in Dutch in 1930.

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7 Ibid.:50. 8 We will not deal here with the mixture of Christian messianism and Moluccan nationalism expressed in the struggle for an independent ‘Republic of the South Moluccas’ (Republik Maluku Selatan, RMS), because it mostly developed in the exile community in the Netherlands after 1950. 9 The story of Lorenzo II and the dream of a Catholic Kingdom of Larantuka are described in full detail in my forthcoming book Catholics in Indonesia, Leiden: KITLV, Vol. I, Chapter V. 10 Quoted after Ngelow 1994:98; speech from 1929. 11 The most detailed description of Ratu Langie’s political ideals is in Van Klinken 1996:146–88. Among the most prominent defenders of the Pancasila ideology amongst Protestant theologians we have to count Tahi Bonar Simatupang (the Batak army general, who after retirement at the age of thirty-nine became president of the Indonesian Council of Protestant Churches, himself not a member of the Batak Church but of the West Javanese Church) and Eka Darmaputera, who is of Chinese descent. Perhaps it was because both were more or less emancipated from their regional roots that they promoted the Pancasila so much and a national orientation of Indonesian Christianity. 12 This part has been elaborated in more detail in Steenbrink 2000. 13 Reksosusilo 1979:66–7; my translation. 14 A summary is provided in Reksosusilo 1994. 15 cf. J.B. Banawiratma, Jesus the Guru. The Encounter of Javanism and the Gospel, Yogyakarta, 1977, p. 67. 16 Darmawijaya 1988:105. 17 The original meaning of the Greek word catholic is ‘universal’, ‘covering the whole world’. Darmawijaya used quite a few Hebrew and Greek words in his commentary on Christian scripture and without doubt knows this etymology, which he puts against denominationalism as well as narrow nationalism. 18 Darmawijaya 1989:129–30. 19 ‘[M]elestarikan tradisi warisan leluhur penyebar iman di Ganjuran yakni keluarga Schmutzer yang telah melaksanakan usaha inkulturasi dalam rangka pembinaan iman sesuai budaya Jawa yang agung’; from the sixty-four-page booklet, which was printed as a guide for the ceremony. Although all songs/hymns were in proper Javanese (macapat), many prayers and guidelines were in Indonesian, because of the many faithful from Jakarta who made the pilgrimage to this place in order to attend the ceremony. Altogether some 10,000 people participated. 20 cf. Sundermeier and Kuester 1991:70. 21 The last official statistics date from 1930, when 1,233,856 citizens of Chinese descent were registered, i.e. about 2 per cent of the total population of some 60 million people living in the Dutch East Indies. The group of 240,000 (Indo-)Europeans living in the Dutch colony at that time was actually much smaller than the Chinese group. 22 I could not find religious statistics on the present-day Chinese. In 1980, the diocese of Jakarta counted 45 per cent of its 277,808 Catholics as being of Chinese descent; of those new converts baptized as ‘adults’ in the period 1975–80, some 67 per cent were of Chinese descent; for the diocese of Bandung this percentage was 67 per cent. In Central and East Java, this was 11.4 per cent, and in Sulawesi and Ambon 26.3 per cent. Due to the wish to show an ‘Indonesian face’, these Chinese do not feature in the image of Catholicism of Indonesia. For the last statistics see Boelaars 1991:158, 169–75. 23 Ong Tae-hae: The Chinaman Abroad: A Desultory Account of the Malay Archipelago Particularly of Java, translated by W.H. Medhurst, quoted after Ong Hokham, ‘The Peranakan Officers’ Families in Nineteenth Century Java’, in: G.J. Schutte (ed.) Papers of the Dutch–Indonesian Historical Conference Held at Lage Vuursche, The Netherlands, 28–29 June 1980, Leiden, Jakarta: Bureau of Indonesian Studies, 1982, pp. 278–91. 24 Often the word peranakan is used (literally ‘child of the country’) for people of pure or mixed Chinese descent born in Southeast Asia, especially in the present states of Malaysia and Indonesia.

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25 It was on the occasion of the Chinese New Year (Imlek) in February 2000 that President Abdurrahman Wahid issued a statement that he wanted to see Confucianism accepted as a religion with the same rights as the other religions already recognized by the state. Wahid did not consider the task of the state or the government to issue a declaration about the definition of a religion. Suara Pembaruan, 18 February 2000. 26 See Iem Brown’s chapter in this volume. 27 Kraemer 1958:151. 28 See also Hartono 1999. 29 cf. Rahmanto et al. 1992. 30 Jakarta: Gramedia, 1990. 31 See Steenbrink 1998a:323–9. 32 Magnis-Suseno 1999:26–7. 33 See Magnis-Suseno 1989. 34 It was impossible to elaborate more here on the evangelical strategies. There is a strong effort to make the Bible available in all local languages. Institutions such as the Summer Institute of Linguistics and the Wycliff Bible Translators do marvellous work in philological research and with regard to the translation of the Bible, even in languages that have no tradition of printed texts at all. In general, however, the evangelical tradition within Christianity has an ideology of rejecting the idea of having various differing traditions within the one global religion.

Bibliography Adriaanse, L. (1899) Sadrach’s kring, Leiden: Donner. Boelaars, Huub (1991) Indonesianisasi. Het omvormingsproces van de katholieke kerk in Indonesi’ tot de Indonesische katholieke kerk, Kampen: Kok. Darmawijaya, Stanislas (1988) Pengabdian: Panakawan atau Hamba Yahwe? Yogyakarta: Kanisius. –––– (1989) Kesetiaan. Suatu Tantangan, Yogyakarta: Kanisius. Guillot, Claude (1985) Kiai Sadrach, Riwayat Kristenisasi di Jawa, Jakarta: Grafiti Pres (translated from the French original). Hartono, Christophorus (1999) ‘The Union of Three Indonesian Churches’, Exchange, Journal of Missiological and Ecumenical Research 28, pp. 24–40. Henley, David E.F. (1996) Nationalism and Regionalism in a Colonial Context. Minahasa in the Dutch East Indies, Leiden: KITLV Press. Hoekema, Alle (1995) ‘The Russian Connection: The Contribution of German-Russian Mennonites on the Mission Fields in Indonesia’, in: L. Lagerwerf (ed.) Changing Partnership of Missionary and Ecumenical Movements. Essays in Honour of Marc Spindler, Leiden: IIMO, pp. 100–12. Kraemer, Hendrik (1958) From Missionfield to Independent Church. Report on a Decisive Decade in the Growth of Indigenous Churches in Indonesia, London: SCM (English translation and summaries of reports from the 1930s). Madjid, Nurcholis (1987) Islam, Kemodernan dan Keindonesiaan, Bandung: Mizan. Magnis-Suseno, Franz (1984) Etika Jawa. Sebuah Analisa Falsafi tentang Kebijaksanaan Hidup Jawa, Jakarta: Gramedia. –––– (1989) Neue Schwingen für Garuda. Indonesien zwischen Tradition und Moderne, München: Peter Kindt. –––– (1999) ‘Dialog Antar-Agama di Jalan Buntu?’, in: Olaf Herbert Schumann (ed.) Agama dalam Dialog. Pencerahan, Pendamaian dan Masa Depan, Punjung Tulis 60 Tahun Prof. Dr. Olaf Schumann, Jakarta: BPK Gunung Mulia, pp. 19–32. Ngelow, Zalaria J. (1994) Kekristenan dan Nasionalisme. Perjumpaan Umat Kristen Protestan dengan Pergerakan Nasional Indonesia, 1900–1950, Jakarta: BPK Gunung Mulia. Partonadi, Sutarman S. (1988) Sadrach’s Community and Its Contextual Roots. A Nineteenth Century Javanese Expression of Christianity, Amsterdam: Rodopi.

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Rahmanto, B. (1992) Tantangan Kemanusiaan Universal. Kenangan 70 tahun Dick Hartoko, Yogyakarta: Kanisius. Reksosusilo, S. (1979) ‘Hati Nurani pada Alam Pikiran Jawa dan pada Alam Pikiran Barat’, Orientasi, Pustaka Filsafat dan Teologi XI, pp. 42–71; reprint in Franz Magnis Suseno (1983) Etika Jawa dalam Tantangan. Sebuah Bunga Rampai, Yogyakarta: Kanisius, pp. 115–46. Reksosusilo, S. (1994) Reksa Pastoral dalam Budaya Jawa, Surabaya: Yayasan Sanggar Bina Tama. Schuurman, Barend M. (1933) Mystik und Glaube im Zusammenhang mit der Mission auf Java, Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Steenbrink, Karel A. (1993) Dutch Colonialism and Indonesian Islam. Contacts and Conflicts 1596–1950, Amsterdam: Rodopi. –––– (1998a) ‘Muslim–Christian Relations in the Pancasila State of Indonesia’, The Muslim World 88, pp. 320–52. –––– (1998b) ‘Opposition to Islamic Mysticism in Nineteenth-Century Indonesia’, in: Frederick de Jong and Berndt Radtke (eds) Islamic Mysticism Contested. Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics, Leiden: Brill. –––– (2000) ‘Five Catholic Theologians of Indonesia in Search of an International or Local Identity’, Exchange 29, pp. 2–22. Sulastomo (1995) Kontekstualisasi Ajaran Islam. 70 Tahun Prof. Dr. H. Munawir Sjadzali M.A, Jakarta: Yayasan Paramadina. Sundermeier, Theo and Kuester, Volker (eds) (1991) Das schöne Evangelism: christliche Kunst im balinesischen Kontext, Nettetal: Steyler Verlag. Van Akkeren, Philip (1970) Sri and Christ. A Study of the Indigenous Church in East Java, London: Lutterworth Press. Van Klinken, Geert Arent (1996) Migrant Moralities: Christians and Nationalist Politics in Emerging Indonesia, A Biographical Approach, Brisbane: PhD diss., Griffith University. –––– (1997) ‘Power, Symbol and the Catholic Mission in Java. The Biography of Frans van Lith SJ’, in: Documentatieblad voor de geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Zending en Overzeese Kerken 4, pp. 43–59.

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9 PEACEMAKER FOR RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS? THE VALUE OF PELA RELATIONSHIPS IN AMBON Tanja Hohe and Bert Remijsen

Since early 1999, religious riots between Muslim and Christian communities have split the Central Moluccan population. While the inter-religious clashes have been covered by all international news agencies, the fact that the representatives of a local student movement have claimed a feature of local Moluccan tradition as a potential peacemaker for the religious conflicts is less well known outside the area. The students propounded that the traditional pela relations can serve to transcend the critical distinctions between Christians and Muslims, which have recently become the putative sources of social conflict.1 Pela relations are a well-known institution of Central Moluccan societies. A conspicuous feature of pela is its capacity to transcend the religious distinction between Christians and Muslims. This makes it an unusual phenomenon, and raises the question of what the concept of pela entails and how it is enacted. In previous studies, the phenomenon has been interpreted as an alliance between villages, especially important in times of war,2 and as a traditional institution serving a religious function.3 As inter-village warfare had ceased and traditional values were thought to have changed, most authors have expressed doubts as to its relevance for contemporary Central Moluccan societies.4 In this study, we report on a re-emergence of pela in a climate of political change (reformasi ), social unrest, and inter-religious strife. This recent re-emergence puts into question the previous interpretations of pela and its relevance for contemporary Central Moluccan societies as mentioned above. In the Central Moluccas, some groups use the concept of ‘Hindu’ in referring to their traditional, supposedly ‘animistic’5 belief system (adat), which forms the cultural context of the pela institution. In doing so, they try to legitimate and defend their adat as it is challenged by state-supported religion (agama).6 Similarly, the pela relationship confronts the powerful value of agama. It legitimates the age-old bond between villages that are separated by agama. First, we will discuss the traditional pela institution, review the literature on the subject, and explain our own point of view. Then, we will report on the recent appeal to pela by university students, on the basis of our own field research.

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Haruku Liang

Ambon

Saparua

Pelau

Waai

Seit

Haria Oma

UNPATTI Laha

Ambon

Siri-Sore Ulath Ouw Tawai

Hutumuri

Nusalaut

LEASE ISLANDS Map 9.1 Ambon and Lease Islands. Source: Map by Bert Remijsen

Moreover, we will discuss how pela has been transformed during its recent reemergence, and finally we will examine to what extent the various views on pela discussed in the first section can account for pela’s survival and development.

Previous studies Pela designates a relationship between two or more villages. It occurs on several islands of the Central Moluccas such as in Ambon, the Lease Islands, and the coastal areas of western Seram. The villages can lie far apart. A pela bond relates, for example, Ulath, a village on the island of Saparua, to Boano, an island off the west coast of Seram. A pela relationship can also connect villages, the inhabitants of which adhere to different religions. In many cases, pela-related villages claim a common ancestry and thereby, to a certain extent, a common identity. The inhabitants of villages that are linked by pela consider each other as siblings. Consequently, they are not allowed to intermarry and must assist each other in times of need. The pela relations are characterized by the idea that transgression of these rules results in the ancestors inflicting physical ailments or death.7 The shared identity, deriving from a common origin, is constructed in myths and reproduced in rituals. Pela ties are reinforced in ceremonies called bikin panas pela, ‘to heat up the pela’. The ceremonies are held either regularly or in times of insecurity, depending on the local context. The participants of the pela bond come together in one of the villages to re-enact the way in which their bond came into being in a mythical past. The most detailed study on pela is D. Bartels’ dissertation from 1977. He considered pela to be the ‘cultic centre and vehicle of Agama Nunusaku (the Nunusaku religion)’.8 Nunusaku is a sacred mountain that plays an important role in western Seramese cosmologies. According to Ambonese myths, the ancestors of all villages had originated from there:

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The vehicle of Agama Nunusaku is pela. Ostensibly an economic alliance, pela is also the cultic centre of Ambonese ethnic religion. Pela symbolises for the Ambonese the unity at Nunusaku. The institution of pela by the ancestors negated the wrongdoing that occurred at Nunusaku and restored brotherhood among all Ambonese.9 Bartels saw pela essentially as a pre-Christian/pre-Muslim religious institution.10 He stated that Christianity and Islam are subordinate to this ethnic religion. In 1977, pela was still very much existent. If the influence of the ‘ethnic religion’ were to become less dominant, pela would lose its unifying potential, leading to conflict between Islam and Christianity. In an earlier study, Cooley had defined pela as: an institutionalised bond of friendship or brotherhood between all native residents of two or more villages, which bond was established by the ancestors under particular circumstances and carries specific duties and privileges for the parties thus bound together.11 Cooley assessed the kinship relations between the parties to be ideologically generated by pela, rather than a genuine genealogical connection. The main function of this bond would be mutual assistance in times of war. According to Cooley, pela bonds have become considerably less important because of the increased safety and other aspects of life in modern Indonesia, such as the promotion of Christianity, education, individualism, and a monetary economy.12 He asserted that the marriage prohibition is still observed, although it has lost much of its meaning: In the days when the other functions of pela were very important to security and well-being, this taboo on intermarriage may have served the important positive one of supporting the other functions. But now, when all other functions have been largely lost, this last remaining function of pela, certainly the one that is most known and feared, can no longer be said to serve a positive function.13 Huwaë, in a case study on the pela between the villages of Tamilou, Siri-Sori, and Hutumuri, published in 1995, described pela as a ‘collectivist role model’: The pela alliance of Tamilou–Siri-Sori–Hutumuri is also collectivistic. . . . Pela members are very close to each other. In my conversations with respondents, the ties . . . were often compared with the ties between brothers and/or sisters.14 Huwaë considered this collectivist institution as threatened by the Pancasila state ideology, Western influences, and Christianity. Her quantitative data, however, show that the marriage prohibition is still widely respected. As for the function of pela, Huwaë asserted that it lies in pela’s capacity to promote harmony between

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Muslims and Christians. She also mentioned the risk of conflict, if pela were to disappear.15 Huwaë considered the claim of a common origin of people related to each other as pela brothers to be historical fact.

The idiom of siblingship In the social systems of the Central Moluccan societies, consanguine relationships are based on the idea that the persons related to each other have ‘the same blood’ and a common primordial ancestor. Such a shared identity-in-blood precludes marriage and the establishment of affinal alliances between consanguine relatives. In contrast, marriage brings forth a connection between groups. In marriage ceremonies an exchange of objects takes place. In Ambonese societies the group of the wife-taker (WT) gives plates, money, or gold to the wife-giver (WG) and receives specific kinds of cloth in return.16 The values objectified in the exchanged goods establish a close bond between the groups. The different values attached to the objects express the difference in hierarchical status between them. Pela is a relation of shared identity. To construct such a shared identity a certain idiom is applied. The idiom of pela is that of consanguinity. The members of two or more villages related by pela are of the ‘same blood’ and not ordered by an affinal hierarchical relationship. Within a kin group, there are several kinds of relations, which are characterized by the idea of ‘same blood’. From all possible consanguine relations one specific relationship is selected for pela: that between brothers.17 Each pela partner is conceived of as either a younger brother (yB) or an elder brother (eB) (adik or kakak, respectively) of the other, both descending from the same grandfather. Consequently, the villages that are linked by pela refer to each other as yB and eB. The choice to specifically apply the idiom of a yB–eB relation can only be explained on the basis of the relation between brothers being one of solidarity. No exchange of differing values can take place. This pela identity is constructed in myth and ritual and enacted in various practical situations. Let us start with the myths, as they play a crucial role in the conceptualization of pela.

Pela identity constructed in myth There are various types of pela relations, all of which share the idiom of consanguinity, or at least involve the typical obligations and prohibitions: (1) pela gandong; (2) pela keras/tuni; and (3) pela tempat sirih. As for the first type, the word gandong is related to the Malay/Indonesian word kandungan, ‘womb’. In the case of pela gandong, the parties involved consider themselves to be of ‘one womb’, hence of ‘one mother’. They share the same patrilineal ancestors and have the same mother, an idea constructed in myths.18 One such origin myth tells of the establishment of the pela relationship between the villages of Ulath (Saparua), Oma (Haruku) and Boano (on an island off the west coast of Seram):

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Three brothers who had left Nunusaku stayed together for a while but economic difficulties finally made it impossible for them to remain together and thus they decided to search on their own for a new place to stay. The split occurred on the island of Buano, on the northwest coast of Seram, where the brothers had apparently settled for some time. They drew lots in order to decide who would be able to stay and the oldest brother, Latukurandjina, won. Before the other two left, they planted a banyan tree and bamboo, nowadays called ‘yellow banyan tree’ as a sign of unity. During their odyssey, the two brothers lost sight of one another and finally one of them, Latuaren, settled in Ulath on the island of Saparua and the other, Latuputty, took up residence in Oma. Because they never again heard anything from one another, they continued to be on the lookout, hoping that they would meet again. Latuaren one day decided to go and look for Latuputty, sailing with his raft around the islands. While sailing along the coast of one of the islands, he became thirsty and went ashore. When he found no water, he took his spear and jabbed it into the ground and when he pulled it back, water sprang out of the rock. He slaked his thirst and just as he was about to return to his raft, he saw people inland and he went to request some bananas. One of the men handed him a banana stuck to the top of the parang [‘machete’], a sign that he wanted to fight, and he took up the challenge immediately. But neither of them could win, and they stopped the skirmish and asked each other about their origins. Suddenly Latuaren realised that he had been fighting his long lost brother Latuputty. Latuputty stayed at Oma for some time and before he returned he invited his brother to visit him at Ulath. When Latuputty went there, he couldn’t find his brother at first, so he sat down near the mouth of a river and watched some women washing clothes while waiting for his brother to come to take his daily bath. But the first to arrive were men from the village and when they saw the stranger sitting there, ogling their women, they wanted to beat him to death. But his brother arrived just in time to save him by explaining the situation to the others and as result a pela was concluded.19 This myth clearly shows the main features of pela gandong. Two younger brothers leave their older brother in some location ‘abroad’ to settle in the pela villages of today. The exact spot of the shared origin, however, is not of major importance. It is crucial that the groups consider themselves related through descent from a common origin ‘abroad’,20 which in various Moluccan societies represent the value category of ‘male’/‘violence’. In contrast, by planting a tree prior to their departure the value of a common ‘female’ origin is featured. Then the brothers separate and settle in different areas. Water is created with a spear, and a banana is offered on a sword. Again the contrasting values of ‘violence’ and ‘fertility’ are formulated. They are both part of a cosmic whole, and only the arrival of the male values from ‘abroad’ can insure the female ‘autochthonous’ part with ‘fertility’. Finally, the brothers are involved in a violent act until they realize their common

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origin. Here, the two value categories are put into a hierarchical order. Violence is subordinate to a common origin. One brother has his eyes on the women of the brother’s village, the male inhabitants of which want to kill him until they are told about their common origin. Here, the value of marriage, involving the fight that goes with marriage ceremonies, is subordinated to the value of the ‘same blood’ relation. The common origin is expressed in the banyan tree that refers to a female ‘fertility’/’autochthonous’ value category and stands at the beginning of the myth. It is a condition that does not have to be established first. The affinal and violent relations that occur in the myth are clearly subordinate to the consanguine origin. In the origin myths about pela keras/tuni (‘hard’/‘real’ pela) relationships, the blood of the parties, usually that of their leaders, is mixed and drunk. This procedure may be accompanied by the pronouncement of an oath. Such a pact is established to pacify relations after a conflict or when one village has supported another one in an extraordinary way.21 The pela between the two Seramese villages of Seleman and Makariki is such a case: A kapitan (‘war leader’) from Makariki met with a kapitan from Seleman. After shaking hands, the pair engaged in a parang duel in an open field, but in the heat of the fight, they became entangled in a piece of cloth before they could inflict even a single wound on each other. At this point they drank the pela oath.22 This myth begins with two kapitan fighting and then shows a change of context. What started off as a violent fight, ends in a peaceful entanglement in a piece of cloth. The machete and the cloth are typical exchange goods of marriage groups, indicating a context of affinity, which is then transformed into consanguinity. During violence no blood is shed. The blood of the oath is ‘female’ blood. The cloth represents the female value, the ‘womb’, which results in siblingship in the next generation. In this example consanguinity encompasses affinal ties. The third kind of pela is the pela tempat sirih (pela of the betel nut box). These pela relations do not come into being after a particular incident, nor have they existed since time immemorial. They have a preventive character.23 Before tensions can disrupt social life, villages are linked by a pela tempat sirih relationship. In comparison to the other two categories of pela bonds, ‘being of the same blood’ is not emphasized. Still, the counterparts are considered to be kin.24 ‘When Abubu went to Hoamol, they stopped in Liang on Ambon for a rest and were received cordially here. After a meal, the betel box was taken out and a pela tempat sirih established’.25 To pass betel nut to a guest and eat it together is a sign of friendship.26 It is given to strangers, often presented by the son-in-law. The son-in-law represents the affinal tie that will merge into consanguinity in the next generation. Once again affinal ties are subordinate to consanguine relations. Comparing the three kinds of pela, it can be said that in the pela keras/tuni and the pela tempat sirih a transformation from affinity to consanguinity is constructed.

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It leads to the subordination of affinity and unifies people on the basis of the ‘female’/‘autochthonous’ value category. In the pela gandong myth, unity on the basis of the female value has always existed, and the superiority of female ‘fertility’ over male ‘violence’ is emphasized. Besides, all three kinds of pela relationships show a different type of initial difference: (1) yB–eB; (2) people competing for a reputation for superior violence; and (3) immigrant–local. The pela gandong emphasizes the yB–eB relation, which is based on a joined matrilineal origin. In the pela keras/tuni myths, people compete for a reputation for superior violence and become unified by the cloth (representing the ‘womb’). The cloth subordinates the idea of violent supremacy. The pela tempat sirih stresses the difference between the ‘immigrant’ and the ‘local’. The exchange between them features a gift. The gift creates a relation based on differences and relates the stranger to the local people.

Pela relations represented in ritual Panas pela rituals have the function of forging the common bond of the yB–eB relation. These rituals are conducted in times of ‘economic depression and the social unrest of war’.27 Bartels gives a description of a panas pela ceremony between the villages of Ruteng and Rumahkai, which are involved in a pela gandong relationship.28 To that end, all members of the pela-related villages, even the ones living abroad, gather in one of the villages. The members of the other village come with their boats and pass by the tree that symbolizes the pela in the myth. At the tree, the tuan tanah (landowners) greet them. Here, the connotations of the category ‘female’/‘autochthonous’/‘landowner’/ ‘one origin’ is stressed. The villages meet each other in a context where the common origin in a female context is emphasized. All leaders, including tuan tanah, raja, kapitan, and officials, are dressed in traditional clothing and gather in front of the baileu (community house, traditional meeting house). A complete society is reconstructed; a complete order reproduced. As everyone has to take part, everyone comes back to his origin. All the status differences that usually exist inside the village are encompassed by the pela relationship, turning everyone into people of ‘one mother’. The status hierarchies inside one village can only be overcome by connection to a second village. The fundamental distinction between tuan tanah and kapitan is united in relation to another village that has the same structure. Hence, what is opposed on the village level is united in the context of pela. On the village level itself this unification could never happen, as the tuan tanah and kapitan would immediately be opposed and ordered in a hierarchical relation. All other types of social relations are also subordinate to pela; all become yB–eB. Further in the ritual, the ancestors are called to descend. The two groups line up, facing each other. Adat leaders, church officials and raja stand in the centre, whereas the unmarried people flank them. The female raja of the host village greets the other raja and hands over a ‘womb cloth’ to him. The unmarried people of the other village sing the conditions of the bond, and how it came into being. Then people are united; they proceed to the village gate, where the unmarried

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people from the host village sing. In the village, the newcomers are surrounded by married people and wrapped in a white cloth. They proceed to the baileu, and boys dressed up as warriors stop them. A cakalele (war dance) is performed. An older woman sings and the tuan tanah invites the people to enter the baileu. The newcomers enter first. Sopi (distilled palm wine), cigarettes, and betel nuts are shared.29 It is the female raja of the host (‘autochthonous’) village who hands over the cloth to the ‘immigrant’, thereby unifying with him. The value of ‘one womb’ is emphasized by the use of the cloth. This could either be the sign of the persistent brotherhood or the establishment of affinal ties that will turn into consanguinity in the next generation. Differences such as affinal relations (here formulated through the cloth and the opposition of the unmarried people) are subordinate to the value of consanguinity. It is the married people who wrap the cloth, give birth, and therefore turn an affinal relation into a consanguine one. The war dance is only performed by boys and is stopped by a woman singing. Up to this point in the ceremony, the mythical process is repeated. The climax of the ceremony is reached when the initial oath is repeated. A substitute for blood from both sides is mixed ‘in a receptacle with water drawn from the ancestral springs of both villages’. Weapons are dipped in it, and both sides drink from it.30 In an example from Sahulau, only the two kapitan of the villages drink.31 The bond is renewed through a ‘heating up’ of the initial event. The production of blood is connected to ‘female’ values, here represented by the water of the springs. Then the use of weapons is implied. Hence, a change of the level of values takes place. Starting from the level where ‘cool’/‘female’/‘fertility’ is the encompassing value, things are ‘heated up’. The drinking of the blood now subordinates ‘fertility’. The temperature of the blood is transformed into a ‘hot’ state. What started off as ‘female’ blood is transformed into ‘male’ blood. Common ancestors are made throughout the ritual in the state of ‘hot’ blood. The participants enter a certain state of mind in which the ancestors can act through them. According to this, the structure that was conceptualized in the myth is inverted in rituals. In the gandong myth, shared blood is reproduced by birth. Being of one womb combines brothers with the ‘same blood’. Violence is subordinated in this context. In the keras/tuni myth, the kapitan (‘violent blood’) is entangled in the cloth. Thus, the myth constructs the value relation of the cloth being more important than the fight. The ‘female’ value subordinates the ‘male’ value of violence. The ritual transforms the myth: the blood is heated. Something ‘cool’ is turned into something ‘violent’. On the level of the villages connected by pela, the ‘female’ category is still relevant, but the ‘heating up’ inverts the value relation: ‘violence’ becomes superior to ‘fertility’. This happens on a different level. It is not the pela partners getting involved in a ‘violent’ relationship with one another; as a whole they create a ‘violent’ relation towards yet a third entity. The subordination of ‘fertility’ in the bikin panas pela takes place only in reference to a third party: an enemy. Involving what is perceived as their ‘outside’, violence becomes the encompassing value.

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The striking point, as becomes clear from the panas pela rituals, is that the value of solidarity between the pela villages can only be constructed by creating an opposite. The stressed solidarity that dominates the relation of the pela partners only comes into being by the violent relation towards a common enemy. The value of solidarity between two or more villages is reached by subordinating all kinds of differences (violence, affinal hierarchies, etc.) through the ‘female’ value category. But this solidarity can only be established in face of a violent relation to a third party: ‘In the interior of Seram pela was never merely a defensive system but was just as effectively used in the offensive. Pela partners frequently united to undertake head-hunting raids.’32 As pela implies the values of ‘fertility’, it is opposed to illness and death. So warfare is needed in order to be fertile. Hence, in times of social crisis many panas pela ceremonies are conducted. As the solidarity created is only created against a common enemy, pela was usually heated up in times of conflict.

Traditional pela and modern religion A dominant feature of pela is the obligation of mutual assistance. This entails mutual help in warfare, in working projects (like the construction or renovation of buildings) and being entitled to share the possessions of a pela partner.33 All participants in the pela are bound by the obligation of mutual assistance, irrespective of their religious affiliation. This characteristic is illustrated by the following quote, on the relation between Tawai (Nusalaut) and its pela partner Pelau (Haruku): The people of Pelau are adherents of Islam and on [the island of] Nusalaut, people are Christians. In the past, the church of Tawai was built with building materials from the people of Tawai. But the ones who came to build the church were from Pelau. The same happened in Pelau, where the people of Pelau gave the building materials and people from Tawai came to work.34 The ability of pela to transcend religious distinctions is striking, as the different spheres of Islam and Christianity are usually strongly guarded in Central Moluccan societies. For example, taking a marriage partner who adheres to the other religion can bring shame upon the families. The only point where religious distinctions seem to be irrelevant is in the shared identity of pela. As stated above, Bartels sees Islam and Christianity as subordinated to Agama Nunusaku, the ‘ethnic religion’.35 The obligation of mutual assistance is then explained as being based on this ‘ethnic religion’. We believe, however, that there is no need to draw on the existence of Agama Nunusaku in order to explain the strong bondage that is involved in pela. By its consanguine nature, pela automatically implies a very strong bond. The consanguine identity built through pela is of a higher value than that of religious identity. From this perspective, it is a self-evident fact that Muslim pela members help their Christian blood-brothers in building churches and vice versa. One supplies all possible help to kin relations, whatever their religion.

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A modern call to heat up the pela At the end of November and the beginning of December 1998, three Indonesian cities ( Jakarta, Kupang, and Ujung Pandang) were disturbed by riots in which Muslims attacked Christians and vice versa. People were killed, and places of worship and other buildings damaged. These incidents created an atmosphere of tension. The riots occurred in the context of the era reformasi, during which the basic principles of the Indonesian state have been questioned. Throughout the whole country, students protested after the conclusion of the special session (sidang itsimewa) of the Parliament (Majelis Perwakilan Rakyat) in mid-November, because they found the reform plans of this meeting to fall short of their expectations. In Ambon, the provincial capital of the Moluccas, there was a demonstration on 18 November 1998. This demonstration ended in a violent clash between students and the military. Four students of the Technical Faculty of the Universitas Pattimura (UNPATTI) in Ambon decided to mobilize resistance to the impending threat of religious conflict and secessionism. In this effort to counter the disintegration, they made use of the concept of pela. They were aware of the capacity of pela to bridge the difference between religions and thus drew the attention of the local authorities to its potential. They wanted the authorities to encourage bikin panas pela ceremonies. On 3 December 1998, the students of UNPATTI presented a list of demands to the Provincial Parliament of the Moluccas (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah Tingkat Satu Maluku) and requested that this list be passed on to the National Parliament. The list had been agreed upon by representatives of all UNPATTI faculties. It also contained the pela proposal of the students from the Technical Faculty. The day after the formulation of the list of demands, a student who had participated in the demonstration of 18 November died. Some of the students claimed that she died of wounds inflicted by soldiers during the demonstration. The same four students who had added pela to the UNPATTI list of demands, now issued a leaflet in a direct appeal to the population. The leaflets were printed, authorized by the Technical Faculty student body – which put its stamp on every leaflet – and two days after the death of the student, 200 copies were distributed in Ambon city and on the UNPATTI campus. The leaflet called on all Moluccans to remember pela gandong: We students of the Technical Faculty of UNPATTI call on the whole society of the Moluccas not to let themselves be provoked by issues that can destroy the unity and the co-existence of religions, ethnic groups, and races [originally written in Standard Indonesian]. Let us remember pela gandong, our ancestral legacy [originally written in Ambonese Malay]! According to the four students, reactions from the larger society towards the leaflets were positive; people came and asked for more leaflets, and minibus drivers put them on the windows of their vehicles. By the end of December, the leaflets had been spread all over the island, at post offices and other public buildings.

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The students (three males, one female) have Christian Ambonese backgrounds. They are intellectual, articulate, and enthusiastic. On the basis of their discussion of the subject, we concluded that they have a good knowledge of traditional pela. They are aware that the kind of pela they use in their appeal to society, pela gandong, is only one among a number of different types. They chose this type of pela for their appeal because it implies the closest tie between the participants. We asked why they called on people to heed pela gandong between all members of society, as pela only links the inhabitants of specific villages to each other. In response to this, they put forward the following argument: when inhabitant ‘A’ of the village of Ulath has a pela relative ‘B’ in the village of Oma, and ‘B’ is married to ‘C’ from Waai, then ‘A’ is related to ‘B’s’ affinal relatives in Waai. Through this network, all autochthonous inhabitants of the region are eventually inter-related.

Interpretation of the students’ action In the recent crisis, Ambonese communities were aware of looming conflict, and a small group of university students took recourse to a traditional value in order to prevent the conflict from erupting. The motivations for their call for pela were the tense relations between Muslims and Christians in the Moluccas and the general unstable socio-political situation in Indonesia. To counter these threats, they drew on the unifying potential of pela: Observing the situation in our country right now, there seems to be a conflict between religions. The religions which are in conflict now, i.e. Islam and Christianity, had no conflict before, until they burnt the churches. . . . Well, we have a culture in Maluku; this culture is pela gandong.36 For our informants, pela is the type of relation that might prevent inter-religious strife. The action on the part of the four students was in line with the traditional behavioural pattern that as soon as a conflict arises, pela has to be remembered. Consequently, they made an appeal to the communities on Ambon, who were aware of the strength of pela. The way they attempted to reach their objective was by bikin panas pela: ‘the local government has to organize [things in such a way that] each village conducts a bikin panas pela ceremony with its pela partner.37 In this respect, the leaflet action with which they reminded society of its pela bonds, can be seen as a bikin panas pela itself. Significantly, this appeal to shared identity – ‘remember the pela gandong’ (the essential objective of bikin panas pela) – was written in Ambonese Malay, the rest of the text being in Standard Indonesian. Given the positive reactions, we can conclude that the idea to apply pela in times of conflict is still accepted by a large part of society. Pela then was taken at face value: when two villages (‘A’ and ‘B’) are of the same blood through pela, the in-law relatives in village ‘C’ of an inhabitant of ‘B’ are also related to the people in ‘A’. In this context, the two contrasting values of ‘being of the same blood’ and marriage bonds were simultaneously evoked. But in order to unify the communities, consanguinity (pela gandong) was emphasized. Here, it was

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confirmed how in pela, affinity is encompassed by consanguinity. Especially the choice of pela gandong, claiming descent from a common ancestor to legitimize the blood relationship, emphasized the importance of solidarity. That our informants chose this particular type of pela in their appeal to society, makes evident that they acknowledge the yB–eB relation to be the essential strength of pela, as its participants originate from one mother. As one student put it in an interview ‘pela gandong is a high culture (budaya tinggi), the importance is the strength of the word’.

Pela is not under threat: its relevancy today In the previous paragraphs, we have discussed a number of interpretations of pela, both those from other authors as well as our own. Now, we are going to evaluate these interpretations by investigating whether they can account for the recent appeal to pela reported above. In this way, the students’ call for pela functions as a test case for the interpretations put forward in the ethnographic literature. In his analysis of pela, Cooley focused on its economic and military functions. As those functions are less relevant in a money economy controlled by the Indonesian state, he viewed pela as being under threat of extinction: With the advent of colonial rule, Christianity, education, the civil service, individualism, and a money economy, changes began to be felt which altered the situation drastically. These changes reduced substantially the significance of pela-bonds.38 Consequently, he assumed that nowadays the traditional marriage prohibitions connected to the institution of pela serve a superfluous function.39 Huwaë (1995) made similar statements on the influence of Christianity, Western culture, and the Pancasila. Bartels (1977) considered the modern religions as the major threat. The notion that pela is threatened follows from the assumption that it is inextricably linked with traditional Ambonese culture or, according to Bartels, with the autochthonous Agama Nunusaku. From this perspective, it follows that any influence from the outside would limit the chances for survival of pela. As we see from their backgrounds, the four students involved in the appeal for pela are not really grounded anymore in traditional Ambonese culture, which as the above-mentioned sources witnessed has been subject to various external influences. On the contrary, these students are positively oriented towards the modern Indonesian culture, and they rely on state institutions to advance their goals. They adhere to a ‘modern’ religion (Christianity), and in their motivation there is no trace of influence of the ‘ethnic religion’ that Bartels propounded to be strongly linked with pela. Nevertheless, they still believe in the traditional value of pela and confidently seek to implement it in times of need. In the students’ appeal, we see support for our hypothesis that what is essential to pela is the blood relationship, i.e. the solidarity implied in the yB–eB relation. There is no reason to sing the swan song for pela as long as its value and with it the structural properties of the kinship relations are acknowledged by people sharing the same ideas and values. Both Cooley (1962) and Huwaë (1995) confirmed that

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the marriage restriction is still observed. People still fear the scorn of ancestral powers in response to violations of the marriage prohibition.40 This prohibition is not a function, but a main structural property of the model of consanguinity. Therefore, the observance of the marriage prohibition is the hallmark of both the strength of a pela tie and its chances of survival. Violation of this prohibition is incest, and it constitutes a serious threat to the social sphere. As long as society heeds this restriction, bikin panas pela, the appeal to remember pela has a chance to restrain conflict. The action of the four students gives an example of how local values can reverse external influences, in our case pela counteracting the conflict on the basis of agama, or world religion. Hence, we think, doubts about the chances for the survival of pela are rather unwarranted. In times of unrest, it seems, the value of pela is still available as a resource to unite communities against certain kinds of threats. In peaceful times, pela may appear insignificant. Yet as long as its structural properties are alive, society can turn to it in times of insecurity, i.e. bikin panas pela. The external influences that have been considered threats for pela, seem to have the paradoxical effect of giving rise to bikin panas pela, which reinforces the traditional bonds. The call for pela is an articulation of the traditional value system, grounded in mythical events and re-enacted in daily life.

Towards the creation of solidarity Indirectly, the attention for a traditional value that transcends the boundaries between communities supports the affirmation of a Moluccan identity. That pela fosters the construction of a Moluccan consciousness, i.e. a local identity, is not something which is new. It has been known since long before the riots. In 1990, an Ambonese Malay song called ‘Gandonge’, sung by the group Kelompok Suara Basaudara, became a local hit. The song expresses a Moluccan identity without religious distinction: Gandong la mari gandong. Mari jua ale yo Beta mau bilang ale: katong dua satu gandong Hidup ade deng kaka sungguh manis lawang Ale rasa beta rasa. Katong dua satu gandong The womb, yes the womb. Come on you! I want to tell you: we two are of one womb The life of younger sibling and older sibling is very sweet What I feel, you feel too. That is because we are of one womb.41 This song stresses the ‘female’ values connected to the panas pela ritual. They are expressed in the words ‘sweet’ and ‘womb’, associating life and well-being. The song is very popular in Ambon. This popularity implies that the idea expressed in it appeals to people and with this, the positive response the four students got to their appeal becomes clear. Local authorities have also recognized the potential of pela. We saw that various leaders of local communities have been involved in traditional bikin panas pela

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ceremonies, from religious leaders to state officials. Therefore, it was not uncommon for the students to make a request to the local government to call for a bikin panas pela: If the local government already asked the villages to conduct this pela ceremony, automatically every village in Maluku, which has pela, conducts the ceremony. Then in the whole of Maluku there are ceremonies going on. So our objective is to make people aware that there is pela gandong.42 The students’ request implies a shift of the context of pela, i.e. a shift from the context of the village level to the context of broader society, which for the students encompasses the whole Moluccan province even though there is no evidence of pela outside the Central Moluccas: ‘But it is not only one village that participates [in the pela]. There are many more [villages], not only two villages. . . . [A]ll become one, in the whole of Maluku.’43 Thus, the encompassing potential of pela was drawn upon to create and strengthen pan-Moluccan identity. This happened precisely after a Moluccan soldier had killed a Moluccan student during demonstrations in November.44 In order to prevent the recurrence of such instances, a pela relationship was evoked in which all Moluccans would participate. Hence, this new application of the value of pela is not confined to exact geographical loci; rather it is geared to include all people sharing a Moluccan identity. The four students see pela as a Moluccan concept, without recognizing that this value is specific to a certain region of the Central Moluccas. Other Moluccan societies do not share this value system and would probably reject the idea as a hegemonic concept from Ambon. Convinced of the pacifying potential of pela, the students even offered it as a model for the entire Indonesian nation: If the government receives it [the suggestion to apply pela], this means to mobilize the whole of Indonesia for this pela gandong, so all of Indonesia comes together to become siblings, one village becomes related to another one. Maybe the people to the very west enter a relationship with the people in Kalimantan and so on. If they truly follow [the concept] there will be no rupture.45 Trying to promote pela as the foundation not only for pan-Moluccan solidarity but also for national solidarity, the students in fact suggest that a traditional, ethnic, or local value should be acknowledged as a ‘universal’ value and hence be embraced by all of modern Indonesian society.

Towards the creation of violence It would be wrong to overestimate the potential of pela as a peacemaker. On the contrary, it can be an instrument through which existing tensions are amplified.

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On the one hand, it can create solidarity, a shared identity between what is considered ‘Ambonese’, ‘Moluccan’, and ‘Indonesian’. On the other hand, however, this unity is conceptually based on opposition to a third party from ‘abroad’. Pela thus has also a potential for intensifying existing divisions. In contemporary Ambon, there is more than just one such third party from ‘abroad’, for instance, the immigrant Buginese and Butonese from South Sulawesi. With regard to them, one has to bear in mind that pela implies establishing a relation of violence towards an ‘outsider’ as a necessary pre-condition for achieving solidarity among the members of the pela in-group. Hence, the foundations for an ethnic conflict are created. Apart from the ethnic divide, there is also a divide along the lines of religious denomination, or agama. In the past, pela was often used to show that these differences could be overcome. We have argued that in the traditional pela model, agama was not an issue, but nowadays there are historical transformations that have taken place. In pre-colonial times, the balance between the two contrasting values of fertility and violence had always been precarious due to the structural limitations of the ecological system of the local societies. Only by defeating the enemy a group could secure natural resources. During colonial times, the Pax Hollandia had prohibited the outbreak of violence. After Suharto’s demise, however, with the hold of the central government on the outer provinces rapidly waning, the traditional pattern seems to re-emerge: again, it happens that as soon as an enemy has appeared, people try to enter a relationship of solidarity with as many people as possible, while lashing out against ‘outsiders’, burning mosques and killing Muslims in acts of retaliation. It can thus be argued that a reversion to the former behavioural pattern of forging solidarity on the basis of violence takes place. In the rhetoric of the four students, the traditional notion of pela has blended with Christianity. Their idea of pela as the basis for Moluccan or even national solidarity is reminiscent of brotherhood in a Christian sense. Since Christians define their ‘consanguinity’ by a common legacy from God, Jesus would take on the identity of the primordial ancestor of the pela community in a Christianized notion of pela. That this has indeed been the case is proved by the fact that bikin panas pela ceremonies have been transferred already some time ago from the baileu to the church. Yet, underlying this new notion of solidarity, the traditional potential for violence towards an ‘outside’ party still exists. Given the historical divide between Christians and Muslims, the latter can easily become this ‘outside’ party, as indeed they have. On 19 January 1999, Ambon Island was torn by riots. Muslim and Christian villages attacked each other; many houses and holy places were burned; and an unknown number of people died. It was started by a conflict between a Christian Ambonese and migrants from South Sulawesi.46 Various sources state that forces from the outside acted as agents provocateurs.47 Three months later, with the tensions still rising in Ambon and spreading to other Moluccan islands,48 we tried to find out what had happened concerning the implementation of pela. At the beginning of the riots, we received accounts of neighbour-

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ing villages of different religions that had quickly gathered for adat meetings resulting in the decision not to attack one another.49 Significantly, this has also happened between villages that were not previously engaged in a formal pela relationship. Rumours suggested that indigenous Ambonese people had remembered their tradition of pela and stopped fighting among themselves. Yet, they were still in open conflict with ‘outside’ Butonese and Buginese inhabitants of Ambon, who are not included in the traditional pela system.50 Based on the information available at that time, it thus seems adequate to say that it was not simply a conflict between Christians and Muslims since a sense of shared identity among the indigenous people in Ambon seems to have been successfully activated on the basis of pela, hampering the violent outbreak of inter-religious animosity among the native Moluccans. At the same time, a transformation of the idea of pela seems to have taken place. During the riots, Jesus was said to have appeared among the people living south of Ambon. He supposedly held a light in his arms and said that some Christians had to be sacrificed.51 With the increasing Christianization of the notion of pela, it is likely that the appearance of Jesus is equivalent to the appearance of the ancestors in traditional bikin panas pela of pela ceremonies. During the first phase of the riots, many local officials and politicians made use of the term pela. They made appeals to heed pela in order to motivate people to stop the violent clashes. Interestingly, the above-mentioned pop group produced a new version of their song ‘Gandonge’ after the worst riots. Shortly after it was made available in the shops, it was sold out. When there were riots again after several weeks, a helicopter flew over the city with a banner containing one of the lines of the song fluttering behind it. The traditional pela links were obviously not seriously threatened during the riots.52 Despite the ongoing religious and ethnic conflict, pela members of different religions were able to visit each other without being in danger. The value of pela survived in the minds of the indigenous population, excluding pela partners from the fighting. But as much as the pela value had survived and was even promoted by officials, the general violence increased. This could be explained by the fact that all the calls for pela resulted in the reactivation of its basic structural meaning: to create solidarity against another party (here immigrants on the one level, religious enemies on the other). Returning to the four students, one of them optimistically predicted that the riots would result in the establishment of new pela bonds, for that had always been the case after confrontation. If this statement turned out to be true, it would reaffirm the interpretation that in times of conflict, a strong bond with the pela partner is forged to fight the enemy. And indeed, four months after the riots started, the bikin panas pela season opened in Ambon. In former times, a traditional value configuration of Ambonese societies was effective in keeping a fragile ecological system in balance. There was no fertility without violence and vice versa. Both value categories were the basis of a wellfunctioning society. Under the conditions of modernity, however, this transformed value configuration is everything but a peacemaker.

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Notes 1 We thank the four students for taking the time to explain their initiative to us. For obvious reasons their names are not mentioned here. We also thank Pak Nikijuluw from Saparua, who told us about the Ulath–Oma–Boano pela relationship. We wish to express our gratitude to all those who have been helpful in providing critical comments on the content and form of this paper: Jos Platenkamp, Alex van der Leeden, Alice Turk and Dieter Bartels. We became aware of the students’ pela action while we were separately conducting research in the Central Moluccas. For both of us, the phenomenon reported here was outside our research objective. Still, we gratefully acknowledge our funding institutions, which made it possible for us to be in the Moluccas when these events took place. Tanja Hohe was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Akademische Austausch Dienst (DAAD), Bert Remijsen by a grant from the Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences (KNAW). This paper represents the status of how we saw the issue in the early period of the conflict that started in 1999. 2 See Cooley 1962. 3 See Bartels 1977. 4 See e.g. Cooley 1962; Bartels 1977; Huwaë 1995. 5 We are, of course, quite aware of the fact that within anthropology ‘animistic’ is a dated category, which has furthermore acquired a derogatory connotation. Within the official Indonesian discourse on religion, however, the term is still used for ethnic ‘belief systems’ not acknowledged as ‘religion’ by the Indonesian Ministry of Religion. In fact, even the adherents of such belief systems themselves apply this term to their respective religious tradition. We have therefore used it here in order to represent an indigenous statement. 6 See also Patricia Spyer (1996) ‘Serial Conversion/Conversion to Seriality: Religion, State, and Number in Aru, Eastern Indonesia’, in Peter van der Veer (ed.) Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity, London, New York: Routledge, p. 175; Patricia Spyer (2000) The Memory of Trade: Modernity’s Entanglements on an Eastern Indonesian Island, Durham and London: Duke University Press, p. 235. 7 cf. Cooley 1962:74–5. 8 Bartels 1977:320. 9 Bartels 1977:321. 10 cf. Cooley 1962:171. 11 Cooley 1962:71f. 12 cf. Cooley 1962:76. 13 Cooley 1962:77. 14 Huwaë 1995:89. 15 cf. Huwaë 1995:91. 16 cf. Cooley 1962:27f. 17 Except for Huwaë 1995:89, no other source mentions the idiom of being ‘sisters’ in terms of a pela relationship. This would be analogous with the fact that most of the involved groups are patrilineal. Besides, the Malay or Indonesian terms adik and kakak (‘younger sibling’ and ‘elder sibling’) do not express the sex of the persons involved. 18 cf. Cooley 1962:74; Bartels 1977:185. 19 cf. Bartels 1977:172f. 20 Interstingly, in another version of the myth, as it was told to us by one of the adat leaders from Ulath, the brothers start off in Malaka. The starting point is situated ‘abroad’ according to the value category that is assigned to ‘immigrants’. 21 cf. Cooley 1962:72; Bartels 1977:181. 22 Bartels 1977:42. 23 Bartels 1977:181 24 cf. Cooley 1962:72; Bartels 1977:186. 25 Bartels 1977:188. 26 cf. Bartels 1977:186. 27 cf. Bartels 1977:242.

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28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

cf. Bartels 1977: 240ff. Some villages even hold the bikin panas pela in the church nowadays. cf. Cooley 1962:75. cf. Bartels 1977:236. Bartels 1977:38. cf. Cooley 1962:74; Bartels 1977:198ff. All information presented in this section is an account of the students’ point of view as related in an interview that took place on 12 December 1998. Among the four participants were three students who had set up the leaflet distribution (see further down in the text). Interpretation and discussion are postponed until the following section. Quotations from the interview are translated here by the authors. Bartels 1977:325. Interview with one of the students, December 1998. Cooley 1962:76. Interview with one of the students, December 1998. cf. Cooley 1962:77. cf. Huwaë 1995:81. Kelompok Suara Basaudara 1990: ‘Gandonge’; translation by the authors. Interview with one of the students, December 1998. Interview with one of the students, December 1998. According to the students, the armed forces were deployed from Waipo (Seram). Interview with one of the students, December 1998. cf. Human Rights Watch 1999:11. See e.g. DR 8–13 Maret (March) 1999:48ff. In early April, nearly 300 people had been killed, and the conflict had spread to other Moluccan islands such as Lease, Kei, and Seram (CNN News 1999). e.g. two villages near Laha. Butonese and Buginese migrants have lived in Ambon for several generations, but in most cases they are hardly integrated into traditional social systems. M.N., personal information 1999. During a trip to Saparua in March 1999, we found out that the village of Haria (Christian) never intended to attack its pela partner Siri-Sore (Muslim), despite the conflict between Siri-Sore and neighbouring Ouw (Christian). Also the pela between Ouw and Seith (Muslim) is still strong.

Bibliography Bartels, D. (1977) Guarding the Invisible Mountain: Intervillage Alliances, Religious Syncretism and Ethnic Identity among Ambonese Christians and Moslems in the Moluccas, Ithaca NY: Ph.D. diss., Cornell University. Cooley, F.L. (1962) Ambonese Adat: A General Description, New Haven: Yale University Press (Yale University Cultural Report Series 10). CNN News (1999) ‘Four Said Killed in Indonesian Moluccas’ (10 April). Djalil, Rusli (1999) ‘Ambon Tanah Tumpah Darah’, in: DR (Maret [March]), pp. 8–13. Human Rights Watch World Report 1999: Indonesia. The Violence in Ambon. A Human Rights Watch Report (March 1999), New York: Human Rights Watch. Huwaë, S. (1995) ‘Divided Opinions about Adat Pela: A Study of the Pela Tamilou–SiriSori–Hutumuri’, in: Cakalele 6, Honolulu: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, pp. 77–92. Spyer, Patricia (1996) ‘Serial Conversion/Conversion to Seriality: Religion, State, and Number in Aru, Eastern Indonesia’, in: Peter van der Verr (ed.) Conversion to Modernities: the Globalization of Christianity, London, New York: Routledge, p.175. Spyer, Patricia (2000) The Memory of Trade: Modernity’s Entanglement on an Eastern Indonesian Island, Durham and London: Duke University Press, p. 325.

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10 RELIGION AND ETHNIC IDENTITY OF THE MENTAWAIANS ON SIBERUT (WEST SUMATRA) Gerard A. Persoon

A couple of years ago, Siberut Island began to feature on the tourists’ maps of West Sumatra. Although it is well known for its endemic wildlife, it is in particular the indigenous population that is the focal point of tourist attraction. The island is a place, according to the brochure, where ‘stone age culture still survives’ and if you are lucky, you can ‘witness colourful magicians performing their curing ceremonies’. This appeal has come a long way since the forceful attack on the traditional religion that took place twenty years ago. ‘Medicine men’ (kerei) were forced to hand in all their religious paraphernalia, and drums as well as skulls of animals kept for ritual reasons were publicly destroyed. The kerei also had to sign a letter in which they promised that they would refrain from any activity related to their traditional religion. This attested to the contemporary policy of the Indonesian government to eradicate once and for all the traditional beliefs of the ‘isolated, primitive tribes’ (suku terasing) of Indonesia that were considered not to belong to ‘religion’ (agama) anyway. The history of the religious life of the people of Siberut is turbulent. Within fifty years, the traditional religion, which was still dominant until the late 1940s, has been replaced by world religions introduced in waves through missionary activities and political repression, often backed by physical force. The religious landscape on Siberut is now officially shaped by Islam, Roman Catholicism, and various Protestant Churches, among which the Mentawaian Protestant Church is the most prominent. At the local level, however, it becomes clear that for a substantial part of the population adherence to these world religions is no more than a façade. There is also a small but hard-core number of Bahais, while the traditional religion (arat sabulungan) has been gaining more importance again in recent times. It is the ethnic religion that is crucial in connection with the growing awareness of ethnic identity among the Mentawaian people, both among those living on the island and among those living on the mainland of Sumatra. In this chapter, I would like to give an overview of the religious situation on the island and relate it to various development processes that have taken place in the last few decades. The situation on Siberut can be seen as one case among many in which the traditional religion of a small ethnic group in Indonesia does

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not have the political means, or the relevant external support, to strive for recognition as a minority religion – as has been the case with a number of other ethnic religions under the banner of Hindu Dharma Indonesia. Although in the early 1980s, some preliminary research had been undertaken by the Directorate for Hindu Affairs within the Department of Religion to assess whether the traditional religion on Siberut would qualify for integration into the ‘Hindu’ fold, the efforts were never pursued; and to my knowledge, there has never been any serious effort to raise the status of the local religion above that of officially condemned ‘paganism’. At best, it has been classified as kepercayaan (‘belief ’).1

The island Siberut is the largest of the Mentawaian Islands off the west coast of Sumatra. It is inhabited by about 23,000 Mentawaians and a small number of migrants, predominantly of Minangkabau origin. In relation to its total land mass of about 4,090 km2, the island is sparsely populated. About sixty village settlements are scattered over the island, though administratively, there are only twenty desa (villages) divided into two kecamatan (districts), i.e. North and South Siberut. Siberut has been an oceanic island for at least 500,000 years and its fauna and flora have evolved in isolation from the dynamic evolutionary events on the Sunda Shelf. Hills rise steeply, though the highest peak on the island is less than 400 metres high. Many rivers cut through the thick primary and secondary rainforest. The Mentawaians are traditionally organized in patrilinear groups of approximately thirty to eighty people living in small settlements around a communal house, called uma, along the banks of the rivers. These groups of people were autonomous political units. Members of different uma living in the valley of the same river frequently married each other, but political units were never formed at that level. The size and density of the population must have been rather stable for a long period of time. Hunting, fishing, and gathering provided most of the daily food. Sago starch, obtained from the sago palm (Metroxylon sagu) was and still is the staple. Clumps of wild and planted sago grow in the swampy areas and along the riverbanks. There is also some domestication of pigs and chickens, which are allowed to roam freely around the settlements. In addition to these food resources, people cultivate root crops, bananas, and other fruit trees. Yet the cultivation of crops like rice and maize, which serve as staples on other Indonesian islands, is absent on Siberut. Gender-based division of labour was traditionally limited to some specific tasks. Each family was, and to a large extent still is, economically self-sufficient, but friends and relatives were always willing to assist in the construction of a house, a dugout, or in clearing the forest for fruit trees. The only specialist in the village was the traditional healer-cum-priest, the kerei, responsible for communication with the spirits and souls that play a very important role in the ethnic religion of the Mentawaians. Differences in wealth were limited, being a consequence of differences in ability and diligence. The Mentawaians never allowed substantial economic inequality to develop among themselves due to the deeply ingrained norms for dividing and distributing individual benefits.2

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The tropical rainforest on Siberut is well known for its rich endemic wildlife, especially its four primate species. Endemic birds as well as other animals and plants are numerous, which makes Siberut an important island for the natural heritage of Indonesia as well as for the whole world.3

Religious history The recent religious history of Siberut largely consists of the efforts to eradicate the traditional religion (arat sabulungan) and to replace it with certain world religions, introduced to the island through missionary activities. The local reactions to these interventions from the outside have formed an integral part in this process of religious change. The general attitude of Indonesian civil servants towards the arat sabulungan has always been negative. They never considered it to be ‘religion’ (agama) in the first place. They thought it to be only a kind of belief in the supernatural, full of superstition and strange customs. They designated it by the terms kepercayaan (belief) and kebiasaan (custom) because of the numerous cultural elements connected to it. The traditional religion was indeed a kind of encompassing system covering all aspects of human life within traditional Mentawaian society. Arat sabulungan has always been condemned by outsiders as a primitive and backward lifestyle. During colonial times, Christian missionaries had called the extensive system of taboos ‘an excuse for extreme laziness’. The government officials of the Indonesian nation-state have basically kept the same attitude. The traditional beliefs and all the rules of behaviour that are connected to arat sabulungan have been accused of keeping the people in a primitive, backward, and ignorant condition.4 In particular the ‘medicine men’, or kerei, have been blamed for the lack of progress among the Mentawaians. They have been said to frustrate any effort to uplift the people and develop them into modern Indonesian citizens. Moreover, there have been insinuations that they have benefited personally from their position since they are paid for the healing and ceremonial services they provide. That is why the kerei in particular have become the focal point of attention in all the efforts to eradicate the arat sabutungan. These efforts in fact started with the German Protestant Mission.

The advent of Protestantism For a long time the Dutch did not take a great interest in the Mentawaian islands and people. There was little to be gained from the area, and the people were thought to be not ‘suitable for development’. Only their custom of headhunting was abolished and the local system of dispute settlement suppressed. Besides, the colonial government invited missionary organizations to start the conversion of the Mentawaians. It was the Rheinische Mission that ‘showed religious courage’ to take on the important task of bringing civilization to the Mentawaians. The mission started in the south of the Mentawaian Archipelago and was initially not very successful. In 1909, Lett, the first missionary, was even killed by the local people when he tried to interfere in a conflict between the colonial government and the local people. It was only after a few years that the first convert was baptized.

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On Siberut, missionary activities did not start until a few decades later. The complex of the colonial government in Muara Siberut – which consisted of a few offices and houses for officials including those of a doctor, barracks for the KNIL soldiers, and an open prison for criminals from Java and Sumatra – was extended with a Protestant church and a school. Batak religious teachers were brought in to assist the German missionary. In an effort to change the local religious practices, which were dominated by an extensive taboo system requiring long periods of non-productive time, the missionary tried to introduce rice cultivation. He thought that the growing of rice would contribute to a more sedate lifestyle, connect people to the village, and discourage these long periods of ‘idleness’. His effort, however, was not successful. The Mentawaians were not eager to start rice cultivation, and only a few children actually went to school. With the onset of the Japanese occupation, all foreigners left Siberut, and the Batak teachers were not able to continue their work without external support. After the Japanese capitulation, the situation on Siberut was unstable. Minangkabau migrants, who had served both under the Dutch and the Japanese, took over the leading positions in the local government. Furthermore, there were some educated Mentawaian Protestants from the southern islands who had come to Siberut as policemen or religious teachers. They joined forces with the Muslim Minangkabau to eradicate the local religion. It was the first district head, a Minangkabau, in particular who formulated a kind of development and civilization programme that was designed to bring the people of Siberut closer to the culture and lifestyle of his own people. This policy was to be continued and expanded during many years to come. In later years, the Mentawaian Protestant Church (Gereja Kristen Protestan Mentawai, GKPM) continued to receive substantial support from the Rheinische Mission. German ministers and healthcare workers supported the religious organization in many ways. From 1954 onwards, the Mentawaian Church also started to receive help from the large HKBP (Huria Kristen Batak Protestan) Church in North Sumatra. Churches were built in the major settlements, and in the main harbour villages more extensive complexes were constructed.5 In 1954, a major event in the religious history of Siberut took place in Muara Siberut, the capital of the island: a meeting between representatives of the Indonesian government, representatives of Islam, and representatives of the Protestant Church. Similar meetings, by the way, were also held on the other Mentawaian islands. During these gatherings it was decided that the traditional religion, arat sabulungan, was to be abolished with the help of the police. It was also decided that within three months everybody would have to choose a ‘proper’ religion (agama), the choice being either Islam or Protestantism. Moreover, all the paraphernalia connected to the old religion were to be burned or destroyed otherwise. If people did not choose one of the accepted religions, they would be punished. In the months that followed, a police force went from settlement to settlement to make people opt for one of the two religions. In every village, the religious instruments (drums, beads, and gongs) were destroyed, and other trappings of the ethnic religion, such as the skulls of hunted animals, were taken from the houses and publicly burned. In most of the villages, people succumbed to the pressure and outwardly

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embraced either Protestantism or Islam. Because of the importance of the pigs in the culture and lifestyle of the Mentawaians, Islam was a less attractive alternative to most. Hence, the majority opted for Protestantism. Interestingly, the methods used during this purge of ‘animism’ were identical to the ones used by the German missionaries before the Second World War. Conversion needed to be fast and without a long period of transition. Protestantism was thought to be an apt civilizing medium since it did not in any way compromise with the old Mentawaian religion.6 Thus a complete break with ‘paganism’ was hoped for, not the least on the part of the central government. Total eradication of the old religion, however, did not take place. There were a few groups who did not want to comply and abandon their traditional beliefs and practices, although there was never any open resistance. Those unwilling to comply left their old settlement and disappeared in the jungle. They went to another watershed in the interior, out of reach of the police, the government, and the missionaries, at least for some time.

The introduction of Catholicism Italian Catholics arrived in Siberut in the mid-1950s. Due to a major conflict between the Protestant Church as an organization and some of its teachers, the Catholics succeeded in getting new converts rather quickly in 1955. In fact, more than 1,000 people – together with a Batak teacher – abandoned the Protestant Church in favour of the Catholic Church. It has also been insinuated that the Catholic Church made use of its immense wealth not only in directing its missionary activities towards the people still considered to be ‘pagans’, but towards Protestants as well.7 Having successfully established their mission, the Catholics were able to set up schools and polyclinics. A large complex with a church, a polyclinic, schools, and boarding houses was erected. Churches were built in various settlements. Soon the Italian missionaries had more than 2,000 converts. This success led to serious conflicts between these newcomers and the German Protestants. The local government hardly intervened, since its influence was rather limited at that time. Both Christian organizations had permission to work on the island without many restrictions. Hence, their rivalry went on for a very long time. It has, in fact, continued until today with Catholicism now having far more adherents than Protestantism. The local institutions of the Catholic Church are still heavily dependent on the Italian missionaries working in Siberut. Italian sisters run the polyclinics with the help of only a few priests and sisters from other islands and regions in Indonesia, such as Flores, Tapanuli, or Java. Over the years, the Italians have established a well-functioning educational system on the island. There are primary schools in all major settlements and secondary schools in the two main harbour villages. Teachers in the primary schools are local Mentawaians for the most part. Yet there is also a number of Javanese and Batak teachers. Most of the Mentawaian teachers return to their original village after graduating from the teacher-training course. Most of the Javanese and Batak teachers have lived on the island already for a long time and no longer intend to return home, having invested in their houses

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and fields. The Muslim Minangkabau teachers in the government schools, however, often feel seriously disadvantaged in having to accept an assignment in isolated places like Siberut. Many of them had to leave their families behind and long for the day they can leave the island for good. In many villages, the Catholics have done the pioneering educational work. However, once the provincial government decides to establish a government school, the Catholic school is forced to close down. The Catholic missionaries have always been much more tolerant towards the traditional Mentawaian religion and culture, at least with respect to certain aspects, than the official representatives of Islam and the Mentawaian Protestant Church. Many of the Italian priests have even taken a serious intellectual interest in the local tradition. They have studied as well as published books and articles about various aspects of the local culture, one of the most interesting being a book about the resemblance between Catholic liturgy and Mentawaian rituals.8

The influence of Bahaism When the first Roman Catholics established themselves in Siberut, Muhadji Rachmatullah, a medical doctor from Iran, arrived on the island too. While pursuing his activities related to local health care, he also disseminated the teachings of his religion, Bahaism, and within a few years he had inspired thousands to convert. A number of teachers from East Java and Tapanuli helped him in his religious mission. One of the reasons why the Bahai missionaries were so successful was because they were all young men who were prepared to live the same life as the local people. Furthermore, they lived together with the Mentawaians for a long time. This stood in sharp contrast to the behaviour of the Christian missionaries who lived in isolated complexes, leading an altogether alien kind of life. Eventually, many of the Bahai teachers also married local girls and became fully integrated into Mentawaian society. Bahaism formed a very attractive alternative to Islam and Protestantism also because its teachers did not pressure the Mentawaians to dramatically change their lifestyle. They did not forbid the raising of pigs, nor did they want to prevent the performance of all kinds of traditional ceremonies. They also did not object to Mentawaian men having long hair or tattooing their bodies. The relaxed attitude of the Bahai teachers towards the ‘primitive way of life’ of the Mentawaians, so condemned by the Indonesian state, brought about serious conflicts with the local government. Besides, the fact that thousands of people converted to this religion caused jealousy and frustration among the leaders of the other religions. There was, however, not much that could be done. Bahaism was at that time still officially recognized as a religion related to Islam. In Muara Siberut, the Bahai adherents were able to build a large centre for mass gatherings and instruction, thanks to external support. The trip made by a fully tattooed Mentawaian man to the Bahai World Congress in London in the early 1960s was no doubt sensational. It gave him a reputation on the island that he enjoyed for the rest of his life. The number of Bahais continued to increase until 1962–3 when their creed was officially declared a forbidden sect on the island. This was the final stage of a

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process that had already begun in 1959, when the government had come to believe that Bahaism exerted a ‘negative’ influence on the population. So once more, thousands of Mentawaians were forced to choose a new religion. There was again hardly any resistance to nominally giving up Bahaism. A small number of its staunchest adherents, however, who were closely associated with the Javanese Bahai teachers, refused to convert to another religion. In spite of the thorough purge of the forbidden creed, they continued to hang on to it. Even when they had to spend months in a prison in Padang on the mainland of West Sumatra, they could not be forced to change their minds. Those who had held official positions as teachers or village heads were dismissed from their jobs. Nowadays, they make a living as traders, farmers, or boat operators. Particularly in the village of Mongan Poula, there is still a cohesive group of Bahais. Officially, however, they are no longer recognized as a distinct religious group to avoid problems at the higher levels of Indonesian administration. Hence, Bahaism does not appear in the census data any more.

The impact of Islam When talking about the impact of Islam on the Mentawaians in Siberut, it is necessary to differentiate between a number of waves of influence. The first wave occurred when early Minangkabau sailors and traders arrived in Siberut long before the Dutch claimed the island. They, however, had not come to make converts. They had come to trade forest and marine products in exchange for tobacco, cloth, and ironware. They soon realized that with the importance of pigs in the life of the local people, Islam would never be an option attractive to them. At that time, the Minangkabau had not yet tried to claim the land for agricultural purposes either. It was only when the colonial government had established itself in the main harbour village around 1910 that the Minangkabau also started to set up small trading posts. Besides, they engaged in coastal fishing and some subsistence agriculture.9 The second wave of influence reached Siberut through its integration into the Indonesian nation-state. As part of the predominantly Muslim province of West Sumatra, and as part of kabupaten (‘regency’) Padang/Pariaman, Siberut has received its share of government attention. Thereby, Siberut has been the target of a large number of government programmes, all of which have been implemented through Muslim Minangkabau government officials.10 Since the introduction of government schools in many villages, Minangkabau teachers have been the agents of both government and Muslim influence. Over the years, numerous resettlement projects of the Department of Social Affairs and, in an earlier stage, also of the Department of Forestry have been implemented, and the civilizational mission of these projects was partly in the hands of religious, i.e. Muslim, civil servants. In all official resettlement villages, for instance, a mosque was part of the village infrastructure, irrespective of whether there were Muslims in the village. Apart from that, Muslim Minangkabau dominate the general administration, the institution of the district head (camat) and his staff, the position of the village head, the police force, and even the healthcare workers. Through their

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dominance, which is boosted by a general feeling of cultural superiority, they have a strong influence on the local people, presenting to them the Minangkabau version of kemajuan (‘progress’), of which Islam is an integral part.11 An interesting event occurred during the implementation of the 1979 village government law, which in Siberut actually took place a few years after the law had been issued. Candidates had to fulfil all kinds of requirements, and having a proper religion was one of them. In the village of Matotonan in the Rereiket area, the old village head was a former Bahai teacher and he was still the leader of a substantial group of Bahai adherents. The local government put pressure on him and the other villagers to convert to another religion, Islam being offered as the main option by the government officials. Missionaries from the Dewan Dakwah Islamlyah Indonesia (DDII, Indonesian Council for Muslim Mission) were mobilized to facilitate the process of conversion. The Bahai community did not put up resistance, and the mass conversion to Islam of a few hundred people in 1982 and 1983 was widely publicized. The village head, however, had refused to convert and was consequently removed from his position. The third wave of Muslim influence reached the island in the form of explicit Islamic mission (dakwah). Many Islamic organizations in Padang, local branches of either national or provincial organizations, have looked upon the Mentawaian islands as a target area for missionary activities. Over the years they have been trying to persuade the Mentawaians to give up their traditional religion. They have done so in a variety of ways: they have sent missionaries to most of the villages; throughout the island mosques were erected; and boarding houses for pupils were built in the main harbour villages. Moreover, there has been a movement among the Minangkabau living in Siberut to take in Mentawaian foster children, whom they would raise in the same way as their own children. After they finished primary school, some of these children were even sent to Padang to continue their studies at a secondary school or another educational institution. By now, there are at least a few hundred of them. They generally qualify more easily for government positions or jobs as teachers. Yet in many cases, ethnic Minangkabau are still preferred for these positions.12 Support for Muslim missionary work in Siberut has not only come from the Department of Religion, but also from the private sector. Some big Padang-based companies like PT Padang Semen (cement factory) as well as some provincial banks have contributed financially to the missionary work. And there have also been contributions from abroad. The Embassy of Saudi Arabia in particular has donated substantial amounts of money. Most of it has been channelled through the provincial branch of the DDII. The money has been spent on mosques, Islamic schools and boarding houses. It is particularly during the initial phase of conversion that people have to be persuaded to give up some of their habits that are incompatible with Islam. In the field of subsistence economy, for instance, they have to give up the raising of pigs and are encouraged to employ modern agricultural practices, like the cultivation of rice and cash crops. In order to facilitate this transition, people receive alternative livestock such as goats and cows. Moreover, they are provided with seedlings of crops as well as the necessary agricultural equipment. In addition, they receive

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products like sarong or oil lamps. A local leader might even be provided with an outboard motor. Successful conversion is usually documented in the Padang-based newspapers, particularly if it concerns a substantial number of people or someone in an elevated position.13 Interesting questions are, of course, to what extent this conversion really changes the religious beliefs and practices of the people involved, and to what extent is it permanent. It is hard to generalize since there is a lot of variation. The answer to this question also depends on the circumstances under which the conversion took place. In some cases conversion was part of a general process of assimilation and modernization guided by the contemporary Minangkabau lifestyle. Conversion to Islam has been an important aspect of this process. Some people make this cultural transition almost completely. They embrace modernization, or kemajuan, in terms of livelihood, education, and religion as a decision to orient themselves towards the future. For others, changing religion is just an opportunity to be for a little while on the receiving end of the conversion process, but this does not always have profound consequences on their lifestyle in the long run.

Recent developments Apart from conversion to the various world religions introduced to Siberut during the last hundred years, there are also a few syncretistic tendencies on the island. The above-mentioned religions as well as the arat sabulungan tend to co-exist in rather separate domains of life, with the Mentawaians practising traditional religious elements, in one domain, and Christian, Bahai, or Muslim elements, in another. Moreover, some elements of the arat sabulungan have been integrated into the religious service of the Catholic Church, a point to which I will return shortly. A major process of change in the history of Siberut, which was also to have consequences for the religious developments on the island, was set in motion in the period 1986–7 when tourism began to make a major impact. In earlier years, tourists had come to Siberut only occasionally, having had a hard time getting the necessary permission to find their way to the island. However, once boat connections were improved, young enterprising Minangkabau operating from Bukittinggi started to bring more and more tourists over to the island. The young Western tourists were mainly interested in the traditional culture, which was so different from what they had observed on the mainland of Sumatra. For the Mentawaians this was quite a new experience too. For the first time in their history outsiders came to the island to enjoy the traditional religion instead of trying to eradicate it or to forcefully replace it with something new. Moreover, the Mentawaians could make some money merely by looking ‘authentic’. And gradually, the tourists started to come in greater numbers. It took a few years before the Indonesian authorities started to see this development as a new opportunity. Instead of being forcefully suppressed, Siberut’s ‘stone age culture’ was now seen as an asset to the development of tourism in the region and was hence officially promoted. At the same time, government officials with a much more relaxed attitude towards the various expressions of the old culture were appointed. In the early 1990s, President Suharto cancelled all the logging conces-

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sions on the island and declared approximately half of Siberut a national park. This change in government policy was stimulated by the potential alternative income from eco- and ethno-tourism. The Asian Development Bank had identified Siberut as one of the priority sites for its Indonesia Bio-Diversity Conservation Project, tourism being one of the key elements in the management plan.14 As a consequence there have been no major efforts to eradicate the remaining elements of the old religion in the past ten years. On the contrary, tourism now contributes to the revival of the old religion with the kerei increasingly being exposed to the outside world. Groups of kerei have, for instance, been invited to come to Padang and even to Jakarta to perform their dances and rituals in front of officials. Young kerei are initiated again, without fear for punishment by the local government. It is also worth mentioning that this revival is not just a means to attract tourists. As yet there is still no separation of a public domain dedicated to tourism and a private domain for the local people performing their traditional rituals. New kerei have to endure the same kind of initiation as in previous times. They have to learn the rituals, the medicinal plants, the songs, and the dances as well as all the other tasks that a kerei should be able to perform. Only after they have mastered all these traditional arts are they seen to be fit for initiation. But nowadays they can do so without fear of persecution by the police or other government officials. It will not come as a surprise to hear that the missionary organizations and also some of the governmental officials are averse to this new development. Years of hard missionary and ‘civilizational’ work no longer yield results. It is becoming more and more difficult to motivate local workers and maintain the infrastructure that was built in the past. As one of the officials said, ‘[t]his tourism is like a spreading disease’. In some areas there is even a revival of old uma settlements.15 It is in particular the Protestant Church that suffers from this new development. Apart from having internal problems, it can no longer exert any external pressure on the traditional religion. On the contrary, people are taking pride in and making money by performing their colourful traditional rituals. The Church seeks recourse in condemning in various ways any participation of its members in this new development, which is not a popular message under the present circumstances. At the local level, the GKPM has a hard time maintaining its infrastructure as there is decreasing leadership, less frequent visits from ministers and no external support at all in social or educational matters. The German mission is no longer providing the same kind of assistance as before. As a result the Protestant Church lost many of its adherents to the Catholic Church or to Islam, while others gave up membership in the GKMP to ‘fall back’ to traditional religious practices. In recent years, the Mentawaian Protestant Church also has had to face the competition of other Protestant Churches, such as the Penta Kosta Church, that send young and energetic missionaries to Siberut to establish new Christian communities. They largely operate in the same villages where the Mentawaian Church has its members, and it seems that it is very difficult for them to reach any mutual understanding. It is no coincidence that the areas that are visually attractive for the tourists, i.e. the most traditional or ‘re-traditionalized’ villages, are the ones which used to be predominantly Catholic. These villages have more kerei, and their inhabitants

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Figure 10.1 A church painting of Jesus Christ celebrating the Eucharist with disciples who are represented as fully decorated Mentawaians. The flowers and glass beads, and drums and gongs hanging on the wall, usually connected to the ‘traditional religion’, are now incorporated in the Catholic celebration. Source: Photo by Gerard A. Persoon

have retained more of their traditional lifestyle. On the occasion of important events like weddings or the construction and official inauguration of a new uma, poles embellished with flowers are erected and other kinds of decoration are lavishly displayed. Many pigs and chickens are slaughtered, and during the night there is abundant dancing. In Protestant settlements, however, a lot of the visual aspects of the traditional culture, like tattoos, loincloths, decorations with flowers and glass beads, dances, and ceremonial rituals have long vanished. The tolerant attitude of the Catholic Church is also evident from the fact that on particular occasions its churches can be used for non-Catholic gatherings, during which there might also be dances and singing in traditional dress, accompanied with traditional instruments. This is totally unheard of in Protestant environments. The Catholic Church has also a strong hold in Padang. There are boarding schools and associations to support the Mentawaians in the provincial capital. These institutions publish a small journal in the Mentawaian language, called Laggai Simaeru, that keeps its readers informed about what goes on in the archipelago. Critical issues like oil palm plantation and transmigration are also discussed. The present bishop of Padang, a Batak, takes a strong interest in the fate of the Mentawaian people. He learned the Mentawaian language and visits the island regularly. Through its strong organizational structure, the Catholic Church plays an important role in supporting the identity of the Mentawaians.

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When we try to investigate the impact of Islam, we find a very different situation. Most conversions to Islam on the part of the Mentawaians have never been very profound (except for the Sakarebou group in the village of Bose) since they were more or less imposed. Few of the converts have actually lived according to the rules of their new religion, and in areas like Matotonan, which is one of the villages attracting substantial numbers of tourists, people have easily found their way back to the traditional life and the sabulungan rituals. The fact that Islam did not really take root among the Mentawaians can also be attributed to the rigour of the Muslim leaders who have not tolerated even the slightest deviation from the orthodox Islamic rules. This again is partly due to their lack of interest in tourism, which does not come as much of a surprise since many of them have professions outside the tourist business. But given the importance of tourism, which is promoted by a lot of Minangkabau civil servants and in which quite a few policemen have financial stakes, it is hard for the Minangkabau religious leaders to put great pressure on the local people in this respect. An interesting example of conversion is that of the Sakaliou, a group of rather obstinate Mentawaians who had refused to give up their communal house (uma) in order to move into the resettlement houses prepared for them in the nearby village of Madobak. Hoping to reduce the pressure exerted on them by the local government officials, they accepted conversion to Islam. As a result, they were not pushed anymore to move to the resettlement village, and they could retain their big uma on the other side of the river. Due to the recent tourist boom in the Rereiket area, they have become one of the most accessible traditional groups who live an independent life away from the government villages. Obeying the Islamic rules is of no concern to them. Most of the adult men have become kerei. They take great pride in their large herds of pigs and have built a number of uma-like buildings, some of which are very big and offer everything that the tourists are looking for. They have become excellent hosts and have consequently succeeded in making tourists feel that they have made real friends in the jungle. The Sakaliou have also performed in a number of ‘ethnographic’ films that portray the ‘traditional life’ of the Mentawaians. A few members of the Sakaliou have even been taken to Japan as partial payment for their hospitality and willingness to ‘act’ in a documentary.16 In recent years, the Development Office of West Sumatra and its local subbranches have taken a more relaxed attitude towards Siberut, at least with respect to the cultural aspects of Mentawaian life. There are no more attacks on the traditional religion and no more attacks on the institution of the kerei. The Department of Social Affairs, however, continues its resettlement policy, but it is less aggressive in its implementation.17 It is also less demanding in the promotion of other kinds of development activities. The compulsory cultivation of rice, for instance, has been dropped from the list of agricultural development activities, although it was one of the core elements of the development policy in the 1970s and 1980s. At the moment, various kinds of seedlings as well as goats, cows, and water buffaloes are still distributed among the Mentawaians. Over the past few decades, the economy of the Mentawaians has thus gone through quite a number of fashions. Some have been initiated by the government (like the promotion of the cultivation of cloves in the 1970s) and others by foreign traders or entrepreneurs (the gaharu boom in the late

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1980s, for instance, or the tourist business that was started in the same decade). Nowadays, it is the nilam cultivation that is promoted with great effort. Other new enterprises that allow for some cash-generating activities are the sago factories set up by Chinese from Riau and the catching of live coral fish for the Hong Kong markets. Catching lobsters has also become big business. These new sources of income have increased in importance since the logging industry has finally pulled out of the area. However, all these money-making activities take place in an environment in which a subsistence economy is still crucial. Sago extraction, domestication of pigs and chickens, fishing, and the cultivation of root crops as well as fruit trees in the village gardens are still of extreme importance for the daily food requirements of the Mentawaians. Traditional cash-earning activities like the collection of rattan and the production of copra continue to provide an alternative cash income once another fashion of making money has faded.

Discussion In the recent international discussion about the rights of indigenous peoples, there is a strong tendency to include the local religion as part of the cultural heritage and as a core element of the ethnic identity. Indigenous people should be allowed to adhere to their own religion, and no pressure, let alone force, should be used to replace local religions with majority or world religions. In Indonesia, this discussion is only just starting. So far, the issue of indigenous peoples has been declared a non-issue since every Indonesian is considered to be indigenous. The Indonesian government has until recently classified ethnic groups, who have been declared as ‘Indigenous Peoples’ by the outside world, as ‘isolated and primitive tribes’ (suku terasing) in urgent need of development. The direction of development leads towards the mainstream ‘national’ culture, which entails adherence to one of the officially recognized world religions. Those who do not belong to one of the recognized religious communities are still defined as ‘people yet without religion’, or orang yang belum beragama.18 Through international discourses, debates, and official declarations as initiated, disseminated, and issued by organizations like the United Nations, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Union, or the WWF, it will become more and more difficult for any Indonesian government to maintain the position that the small minority groups are only ‘isolated primitive tribes’. They have already become more outspoken during the ongoing process of democratization and have started to claim more freedom to express their cultural identity. Besides, they have begun to defend their right to the land and its natural resources. The players on the international scene are willing to support this process as is evident from comparable cases elsewhere. Early in 1999, a first meeting took place in Jakarta where all the self-declared indigenous peoples in the country were filing complaints about how they were treated in the past decades, having lost land and resources and having been deprived of their cultural identity. It is most likely that this movement will become stronger in years to come and, as is evident from other countries in the region (the Philippines in particular), this will also imply a revaluation of their own cultural tradition, of which religion is a very crucial part. Since conver-

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sion to one of the world religions is in many cases only very recent and sometimes only partial or superficial, the revival may be stronger than in some other cases where processes of change have been more profound and long lasting.19 As I stated in the beginning, the religious situation on Siberut is complex with the existence of at least four major different orientations and competing external agencies and institutions. These different orientations also reflect to a certain extent differences in how ethnic identity is perceived. In other words, there is a lot of internal variation concerning what is usually called ‘the local or indigenous people of Siberut’. For some Mentawaians, this identity mainly consists of the local religion, the uma structure, and numerous other elements of the traditional or re-traditionalized culture. This orientation, however, has not drawn much outside attention since there is little internal coherence among those who adhere to it. Even within Indonesia, it does not have strong support. It also lacks exponents who could take on a co-ordinating role in mobilizing support. The loose and amorphous nature of the group of people with this kind of orientation has contributed a lot to the difficulties in eradicating the traditional religion through repressive action. Because the local people never openly resisted outside pressure and because decisions to continue or to give up the traditional lifestyle have never been taken at the collective level, it was in fact very difficult to achieve more than superficial compliance with the imposed rules. This is also the reason why there is almost no discourse on the status of arat sabulungan comparable to the discourses on the situation of other minority religions.20 The support that the ‘traditional’ people receive is mainly based on their relevance for tourism and the concerns with bio-diversity.21 Other Mentawaians do not like to see their ethnic identity being defined by such aspects. According to them, Mentawaian identity should be based largely on territorial and ethnic relations. They claim that Siberut and the other Mentawaian islands should be protected from being taken over by Minangkabau migrants or transmigrants from Java. The area should also be protected against large-scale oil palm plantations. In this case, identity does not have a strong cultural content. It is based on a claim for territorial integrity, and this is very much supported by the international agencies dealing with indigenous peoples. Rights to land and natural resources form the basis for cultural survival. This is also the position taken by a number of newly founded Mentawaian NGOs. Unfortunately, they have a hard time agreeing on common policies and strategies. Often they are in competition with each other. The Catholic Church on its part is trying to unite and support them. The Protestant organizations also feel that there is a need for boosting Mentawaian identity and unity, but at the moment they do not play a major role in promoting this kind of ethnic awareness. Their focus is primarily on religion and not on education or social and political issues. The organizations that aim to develop Mentawai under a Muslim banner, like some of the newly founded NGOs, face serious problems because they would first of all have to do away with many of the elements that constitute Mentawaian culture. Moreover, they also try to incorporate the interests of the Minangkabau, many of whom look upon themselves as locals since they have lived on the islands already for decades. The mixed nature of this group and its limited size do not allow for an easy or organic growth.

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Notes 1 See the Introduction to this volume. 2 There are extensive ethnographic writings on Siberut (cf. e.g. Schefold 1988; Persoon 1994). 3 See World Wildlife Fund 1980. 4 See Mas’oed Abidin 1997. 5 See GKPM 1983. 6 See Sihombing 1979. 7 See Cannizzaro 1964. 8 See e.g. Spina 1981; Coronese 1986. 9 See Kato 1980. 10 See Damhoeri 1965; Aneka Minang 1972. 11 See Persoon 1991. 12 See Departemen Agama 1978, 1981. 13 See Mas’oed Abidin 1997. 14 See MOF/ADB:1996. 15 See Persoon and Heuveling van Beek 1998. 16 See also Bakker 1999. 17 See Jakarta Post 1996; Departemen Sosial 1998. 18 See Departemen Agama 1981. 19 See e.g. Mercado 1994; Mansford n.d. 20 See e.g. Atkinson 1987. 21 See Linsay 1992.

Bibliography Aneka Minang (1972) ‘Mentawai: Alah taawai, alun tagemai’, Aneka Minang 4, pp. 4–5, 15. Atkinson, J.A. (1987) ‘Religions in Dialogue: The Construction of an Indonesian Minority Religion’, in: R. Smith Kipp and S.R. Siregar (eds) Indonesian Religions in Transition, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, pp. 171–86. Bakker, L. (1999) Tiele! Turis! The Social and Ethnic Impact of Tourism in Siberut (Mentawai), Leiden (ms.). Cannizzaro, A. (1964) Und die Seinen nahmen ihn auf. Bei der Urbevölkerung der Mentawai-lnseln, Wien: Verlag Herold. Coronese, S. (1986) Kebudayaan suku Mentawai, Jakarta: Penerbit Grafidian Jaya. Damhoeri, A. (1965) Depok, anak Pagai, Bukittinggi–Djakarta: N.V. Nusantara. Departemen Agama (1978/79) Risalah metodologi dakwah kepada suku terasing. Proyek penerangan – bimbingan dan dakwah khutbah Agama Islam, Jakarta: Departemen Agama. –––– (1981) Pembinaan suku-suku terasing dan tunas bangsa dalam pembangunan, Jakarta: Departemen Agama. Departemen Kehutanan (1992) Kajian terhadap pembangunan dan pengembangan pulau Siberut (Propinsi Sumatera Barat) di bidang kehutanan, Jakarta: Departemen Kehutanan. Departemen Sosial (1998) Data dan Informasi Pembinaan Masyarakat Terasing, Jakarta: Departemen Sosial. GKPM (1983) Tentang permulaan GKPM (disusun dan diterjemahkan oleh H.L. Baute), Wuppertal (ms.). Jakarta Post (1996) ‘Siberut Island Likely to Have New Settlement Areas’, 2 February. Kato, T. (1980) ‘Rantau Pariaman: The World of Minangkabau Merchants in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Asian Studies 39/4, pp. 729–52. Linsay, C. (1992) Mentawai Shaman: Keeper of the Rain Forest, New York: Aperture. Mansford, J. (n.d.) Towards a New Evangelization among the Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Indonesia. Mas’oed Abidin, M. (1997) Islam dalam pelukan muhtadin Mentawai. 30 tahun perjalanan da’wah ila’llah Mentawai menggapai cahaya iman, Padang: Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia.

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Mercado, L. (ed.) (1994) Working with Indigenous Peoples: A Philippine Source Book, Manila: Divine World Publications. Ministry of Forestry RI and Asian Development Bank (MOF/ADB) (1996) Siberut National Park Integrated Conservation and Development Management Plan (three volumes), Jakarta: Ministry of Forestry RI. Persoon, G.A. (1991) ‘Minangkabau Migrants on Siberut’, in: H.J.M. Claessen, M. van den Engel, and D. Plantenga (eds) Het Kweekbed Ontkiemd: Opstellen aangeboden aan Els Postel, Delft: Eburon, pp. 197–210. –––– (1994) Vluchten of Veranderen. Processen van Verandering en Ontwikkeling bij Tribale Groepen in Indonesi’, Leiden: Ph.D. thesis Leiden University. –––– and H. Heuveling van Beek (1998) ‘Uninvited Guests: Tourists and Environment on Siberut’, in: V. King (ed.) Environmental Issues in Southeast Asia, London: Curzon. Schefold, R. (1988) Lia, das grosse Ritual auf den Mentawai-lnseln (Indonesien), Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. Sihombing, H. (1979) Mentawai, Jakarta: Pradnya Paramita. Sinar Harapan (1976) ‘Bertamu ke suku terasing Mentawai: memang untung berdagang disini’, Sinar Harapan, 9 September. Spina, B. (1981) Mitos dan legenda suku Mentawai, Jakarta: PN Balai Pustaka. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) (1980) Saving Siberut: A Conservation Master Plan, Bogor: WWF.

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11 FROM ‘GROOTER TORADJA’ TO ‘TORAJA RAYA’ Emergent ethnic identity, expansionism, and political struggle in Tana Toraja and Luwu, South Sulawesi Dik Roth

Rantepao, Makale and Poso Rongkong, Mamasa and Galumpang All will be united into one The Toraja people will be unified Let us all become one Create a Greater Toraja All agreeing, all becoming one To build a Greater Toraja (‘Toraja Raya’ song)1

This chapter deals with processes concerning the formation of ‘Toraja’ identity and the creation of a special ‘Toraja’ district, i.e. Tana Toraja, in South Sulawesi.2 It thus discusses a process of socio-political construction of Toraja identity which differs widely from the identification of the traditional ‘religion’ of the Toraja with Hindu Dharma Indonesia, as discussed in the following chapter. The ethnic groups of Indonesia classified as ‘Toraja’ are among those best represented in the anthropological literature. While earlier work focused on their traditional mythology and rituals,3 recent work has shifted the focus to socio-cultural and political change in connection with processes of identity formation.4 However, as far as ‘Toraja’ identity is concerned, approaches to this issue have often been essentialist in perspective. One example of reifying or essentializing ‘Toraja identity’ was the classification of the customary beliefs and practices in Tana Toraja and Mamasa as local variants of the ‘Hindu religion’. Even in critical accounts of the ethnic and religious politics of the New Order regime,5 ‘the Toraja’ are more or less seen as a discrete ethnic group or ‘tribal minority’ living in a distinct geographical space, the boundaries of which are implicitly assumed to neatly coincide with those of the administrative space granted to it by the national state. Such approaches tend to determine Toraja identity in isolation from its dynamic socio-

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Map 11.1 Greater Toraja. Source: Map by Dik Roth

political context rather than to inquire into its contingent emergence. These approaches suffer from a static notion of identity, which attributes an almost primordial quality to it. Yet, processes of identity formation are, in fact, linked to processes of making meaning within specific contexts. Within such contexts, different identities are not mutually exclusive. Identities – whether ethnic, religious, or otherwise – may be layered, shifting, and context-dependent resources used by individuals or groups to mark off identity not only in connection with external but also with internal issues and conflicts. We should also be aware of the time dimension of identity. In the recent history of the region and population nowadays known as ‘Tana Toraja’ and ‘Toraja’ respectively, many periods and socio-political processes relevant to the process of formation of different ‘Toraja’ identities can be discerned. The emergence of Toraja identity as an ‘ethnic’ identity is often associated with post-colonial developments: the fact that the Toraja were granted the status of an administrative district since the 1950s; the recognition of Aluk to Dolo6 as a variant of Hindu Dharma in 1969;7 and the ‘discovery’ of the Toraja by international

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tourism in the 1970s.8 However, going back to the colonial period, Bigalke has stressed the importance of the expansion of Christianity and the introduction of formal education during the short period of colonial domination of the highlands from 1905 onwards. Whoever takes the trouble to look at the map of South and Central Sulawesi and compare the names mentioned in the text of the song above with the boundaries of current Tana Toraja district will be robbed of any certainty about the meaning of ‘Toraja’. So rather than ending up with all kinds of essentialist classifications concerning ‘the Toraja’, we should pay more attention to identity in its social-political, processual dimensions, analysing it from a social-constructivist perspective rather than taking the classifications involved at face value. I will, therefore, discuss the emergence and reinforcement of Toraja identity during the transition from colonial times to a period of rapid socio-political change, political instability, and power struggle in the years after Indonesia had gained its independence. As I will show, this identity, as it came to be defined especially among educated Christians, was restricted neither (geographically) to the current district of Tana Toraja nor (demographically) to its inhabitants. Starting with the emergence of Toraja identity during the colonial period, I will then discuss its articulations in post-colonial regional politics, especially in connection with the migration to lowland Luwu9 and attempts at establishing a separate administrative division at the provincial level. As I will show, the formulation of a ‘Toraja’ identity was linked to an ambitious expansionism, the roots of which can be traced back to colonial times, when missionaries and colonial administrators wanted to create a ‘Grooter Toradja’ (‘Greater Toraja’)10 uniting all Christianized highland peoples not only in a cultural-religious sense but ultimately also in a political-administrative sense. With independence, the idea to create a ‘Greater Toraja’ did not disappear. Rather, under the influence of changing socio-political conditions in the region between the 1940s and the 1950s, it was imbued with a new meaning and urgency, thus finding its way into regional politics. Now called ‘Toraja Raya’, the idea continued to reflect the newly born ‘Toraja’ ethnic identity. Under the specific social, political, and demographic conditions of the early post-colonial period, Toraja Raya could become the ideological foundation of an expansive Toraja Lebensraum movement, as some elderly Toraja, formerly engaged in regional politics, called it in a queer combination of German and Bahasa Indonesia.11 I will first go back to the colonial period to trace the roots of the ‘Greater Toraja’ idea to Dutch attempts at socio-political and religious ‘engineering’ in the region. I will then turn to the post-colonial period focusing on migration from Tana Toraja to lowland Luwu and its embeddedness in political strategies related to the emergence of a Toraja ethnic identity. Subsequently, I will explore the impact of the emergence of a Toraja identity on regional politics, especially with regard to the political-administrative sphere. I will end this chapter with short concluding remarks.

The colonial period Until the beginning of the twentieth century, in large parts of the so-called ‘outer regions’ of current Indonesia including Sulawesi, Dutch rule had almost been

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absent.12 Only in North Sulawesi (the Minahasa, Gorontalo) as well as in the southwest (the region around Makassar), had the Dutch been present already for quite some time. The highland regions of South and Central Sulawesi, however, had remained a white spot on the maps of the colonial administrators until well into the nineteenth century. Yet finally, at the end of the nineteenth century, both the colonial administration and the Christian mission grew interested in such peripheral places.13 In 1892, a missionary post was established in Poso, Central Sulawesi; two years later the first Dutch controleur arrived there.14 Admission of missionary activities to the colony had long been restricted and strictly regulated by the colonial administration, for fear of politically dangerous competition between Islam and the Christian mission. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century this began to change. Against the backdrop of the protracted resistance in Aceh (North Sumatra), colonial policy turned from relative abstention into active intervention, bent on restricting the influence of Islam and preventing it from expanding into ‘pagan’ territories with weak colonial presence. One way of reaching these objectives was through promoting Christian missionary activities. South of the Poso region in the Sa’dan area, more or less identical with the current Tana Toraja district, more permanent missionary activities started well after the establishment of colonial rule in Luwu and the (Sa’dan) Toraja highlands. Initially, i.e. between 1911 and 1913, missionary work was done for a short period by the Church of the Indies (Dutch: Indische Kerk). This Church took a rather target-oriented approach to conversion primarily aimed at deterring Islam, using a war-derived idiom of ‘conquering’ areas through rapid and superficial conversion, to protect them against ‘advancing Islam’.15 Shortly after the 1906 military occupation of the Sa’dan region, the colonial government had stimulated these missionary activities in the Sa’dan highlands. The choice for this location was largely inspired by fear of Islam. Events in Aceh and Java had made the government aware of the possibility of Islamic influence penetrating from the Bugis lowland into the highlands, a process that had already begun in the nineteenth century.16 This gradual penetration and growing influence of Islam was seen as a major threat to stability; in the words of Bigalke Islam was perceived as an advancing tide that could only be stopped by building a buffer or bulwark in the highlands. Isolation was the only way to preserve the heathens from Islamic conversion and to save them for later conversion to Christianity.17 Therefore, the establishment of Christian missionaries in both Central and South Sulawesi was part of a colonial political agenda: isolating the ‘pagan’ highlands from the Islamic lowland and concentrating Christian missionary efforts on the former.18 One of the candidates for starting more permanent missionary activities in the highlands was the Dutch Reformed Mission (Dutch: Gereformeerde Zendingsbond, GZB), which had been established in the Netherlands in 1901 and had its own funds to contribute to missionary work. In 1912, it was decided that GZB would engage in missionary activities in the Sa’dan highlands. Within the GZB, there was a view

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of the relationship between government and the Church that was more or less similar to the one that was prevailing within the Poso mission. While sometimes criticizing aspects of the colonial policy, ‘colonial rule was taken for granted. Mission and government were generally considered natural allies in the struggle against the common enemy, Islam’.19 In 1914, after a short period of competition over access to the highlands between the GZB and the Church of the Indies,20 the colonial government granted the GZB access to the western part of the afdeling (division) Luwu, which encompassed the onderafdelingen (subdivisions) Makale and Rantepao in current Tana Toraja, and the onderafdelingen Palopo and Masamba in the current district of Luwu. The coastal parts had long since been under Islamic influence while the highlands had a mainly animist population.21 In the following decades, much missionary effort was directed to the boundary areas between highland and lowland, where Christian and Islamic missionaries were involved in an increasingly fierce competition for conversion of the population. It was here that the ‘buffer’ against Islam was to be established.22 The creation of a buffer against Islam was, as I have said, an important objective for allowing the mission into the Sa’dan highlands. However, colonial and missionary ambitions did not stop at this pre-emptive strategy of Christianization against the expansion of Islam. This policy, it was hoped by the mission and the colonial government alike, would ultimately result in the creation of a united Christian highland Sulawesi from which Islam would have been completely banned.23 In the correspondence between missionaries working in the region reference was sometimes made to such ambitions of forging Christian highland unity. To take an example, the following is from a letter written in 1916 by A.A. van de Loosdrecht, the first GZB missionary in the Sa’dan highlands, to the missionarycum-ethnologist A.C. Kruijt in Poso: You will have to admit that for the Church of Poso it will also be very important if this [Sa’dan Toraja] region is Christianized. What a beautiful region will it be: the whole of Central Celebes for the mission.24 Much later, in 1933, the issue of ‘Greater Toraja’ is most clearly voiced in an article in Alle den Volcke, the monthly of the GZB, by the fiercely anti-Islamic missionary and teacher D. Saathof: For centuries the Mohammedan coastal population has looted and murdered in the Toraja lands. Nothing and nobody was safe from the Bugis. . . . However, the Dutch government recognized Luwu’s claims to the Toraja lands. The old hunting ground was formally incorporated into Luwu.25 This seems unreasonable. It would have been more rational if the Dutch government had radically put an end to Luwu’s domination and placed the Toraja lands under direct Dutch administration, i.e. the Toraja of the Sa’dan valley together with those from Mamasa and those from the Poso area. In that case, the Toraja tribes could have developed into a Toraja people under Dutch guidance: a Toraja people that would

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find its ultimate unity in a commonly professed Christianity. It would still not be too late to move into this direction, not too late and certainly worthwhile. Undoubtedly, the gratefulness of the Toraja could be counted on. For the Toraja, Bugis is still synonymous with oppressor.26 Here, we have arrived at the missionary and colonial roots of the concept of a ‘Greater Toraja’. What the fragment of the ‘Toraja Raya’ song above shows is that at least in and around the Sa’dan highlands ‘Greater Toraja’, as imagined by the GZB and its supporting colonial officials, became more than a vague ideal of cultural-religious unification alive only in missionary circles. It was the statement of a political-administrative programme, a symbol of emergent Sa’dan Toraja ‘ethnic’ identity that deserved an accompanying anthem.27 In order to be able to understand what this political ideal of ‘Toraja Raya’ was actually based on, it is necessary first to trace the development of the term ‘Toraja’ from a Bugis overall designation for ‘mountain people’ to a symbol of ethnic unity, which would include not only the population of the Sa’dan region but the people of the whole highlands stretching from South Sulawesi far into Central Sulawesi. The term ‘Toraja’ is generally said to have derived from the Bugis expression to ri-aja, meaning something like ‘people from above’ or ‘highland people’, in contrast to the to luu or to lau, that is, the ‘coastal people’, the population of Luwu.28 It was thus a general designation used by lowland Bugis people to denote a variety of mountain peoples throughout South and Central Sulawesi. Most importantly, ‘Toraja’ was probably never used by those peoples themselves before the 1930s.29 However, after 1892 it came to be used by A.C. Kruijt and N. Adriani, the first missionaries of the Poso mission in Central Sulawesi, who have been well known also for their ethnological and linguistic research in the region. New meanings came to be attached to ‘Toraja’. Kruijt as an ethnographer and Adriani as a linguist started using it as a basis for classifying the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the mountain people of South and Central Sulawesi. ‘Toraja’ came to replace the pejorative term alfuru, used for all non-Christianized or non-Islamized peoples in Eastern Indonesia.30 However, the order that especially Kruijt had created to replace it, being based on a mix of religious affiliation and cultural traits, was rather arbitrary.31 Moreover, the manner in which Kruijt and Adriani classified was decisively influenced by the fact that they were not only scientific researchers, but also – even in the first place – missionaries with a religious and a political agenda.32 In Kruijt’s system, the ‘Toraja’ were classified into the West Toraja (or Parigi-Kaili), the East Toraja (or Poso-Tojo), and the South Toraja (or Sa’dan).33 Linguistic classifications were used as well. Thus, Adriani (who did not use ‘Toraja’ but preferred ‘Sa’dan’ for the southern group) used the term ‘Bare’e Toraja’ for the East Toraja, according to the word used for ‘no’ or ‘not’ in the language of this group, while Van der Veen, using the same criterion and following the classification by Kruijt, called the South Toraja ‘Tae Toraja’.34 The concept of ‘Greater Toraja’, consisting of all Christianized ‘Toraja’ mountain peoples of the Sa’dan, Mamasa, and Poso area, originated from the Poso mission.35 However, it seems to have had its greatest impact in the Sa’dan highlands. While in the Poso area the name ‘Bare’e Toraja’ was rejected and replaced

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with Pamona, in the Sa’dan area the idea of ‘Greater Toraja’ gained acceptance. It became a major symbol of a supposedly common identity of the inhabitants of this region from the 1930s onwards and was increasingly politicized under the influence of processes of socio-political change in the course of the twentieth century.36 From the 1920s onwards, a number of social organizations emerged with the objective of either improving the socio-economic position of the Toraja, raising their ethnic consciousness, or both at the same time.37 In view of the emergence of a largely Java-based Indonesian nationalism, the emergence of a ‘Toraja’ identity came in handy to the colonial administration.38 From 1932 onwards, the monthly paper Soelo (Torch) was issued under the rather strict control of the GZB. While expressions of nationalism were banned from this paper, it did provide some opportunity for venting feelings concerning the emergent Toraja identity: ‘For the most part the GZB was able to anticipate the development of a political consciousness in Makale-Rantepao and to channel it in a (for them) harmless direction’.39 In Soelo, recurrent allusions to the emergent ‘Toraja’ identity can be found: Awaken and stand up, fellow nationals (sebangsakoe); welcome that progress . . . the love of God. . . . Those who are still in the dark, welcome it, so that the name Toraja will not remain contemptible and abject, but will become one of praise and happiness instead. Let shame disappear, and let praise be there. Aren’t our Toraja lands the most extensive, if compared with the lands of the Bugis and Makassarese?40 Therefore, all members of my Toraja people, especially the heads and those of noble origin, be unanimous and united, mutually supportive, helping one another, and living like brothers, so that in the end your name will be heard in Celebes as well.41 In the 1930s, the Perhimpoenan Boenga’ Lalan (PBL) was the first organization to openly state the objectives of its work in terms of the advancement of a ‘Toraja people’ and ‘Toraja land’ (Indonesian: tanah Toraja).42 Another, in this respect even more important organization, was the Perserikatan Toraja Christen (PTC), one of the – according to Bigalke – ‘social uplift organizations’.43 It was established in 1936 by a group of young Toraja with various educational backgrounds.44 Its objective was to strengthen the ethnic identity among Christian Toraja both within and outside what was now called ‘tanah Toraja’. In combination with modern education, the PTC was one of the early sources of growth of ethnic identity among young Toraja.45 One of the issues on the political agenda of the PTC was the growing demand on the part of the Toraja for autonomy from Luwu. This issue had the sometimes hidden, sometimes more open support of the mission but was generally opposed by the colonial administration, which was afraid of running into conflict with the datu (the traditional ruler of Luwu). Stimulated by the strong anti-Bugis sentiment in the highlands, the call for separation of tanah Toraja from Luwu can be seen as a first step in a protracted process of political-administrative re-arrangements envisioned by the mission, some members of the colonial administration, and last but not least the new, Dutch-educated, Christian elite.46 In its most extreme form, this

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involved the ultimate incorporation of all highland groups in Central and South Sulawesi into a new administrative unit called Grooter Toradja (Greater Toraja).47 Movements like the PTC were instrumental not only in creating a basis for internal (Sa’dan) Toraja unity, but also in propagating the more comprehensive ideal of Greater Toraja and passing it on to new generations of politically and administratively active Toraja.48 It can be concluded then that, in the 1930s, the ideal of Greater Toraja, initiated by the Christian mission and the colonial administration, was having an impact – at least in the Sa’dan highlands – with regard to the formation of a Toraja ethnic identity.

Lebensraum in Luwu: Toraja migration to lowland Luwu As far as the colonial period is concerned, the origins and development of the concept of ‘Greater Toraja’, from its early missionary sources to the period when it started to play a role in the emergence of a Toraja identity, are more or less known. However, it is less clear what became of it after decolonization. In this section, I will therefore concentrate on its influence in post-colonial times showing that, to some extent, it had caught on and became a significant element in the regional ethno-political ideology. I will furthermore trace the roots of massive migration to lowland Luwu and analyse it in the context of the rapidly changing socio-political conditions under which it emerged and then became increasingly important. There is evidence for a relationship that seems to have existed between an ambitious expansionism as well as outward migration on the one hand and an increasingly assertive Toraja ethnic identity on the other hand. A strong sense of Toraja identity had initially been developed only in the Sa’dan highlands. However, the ideal of Greater Toraja incorporating large parts of southern and central Sulawesi had not disappeared. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a marked demographic contrast existed between lowland Luwu and the Sa’dan highlands. The former was sparsely populated and largely covered with forests and marshes; the latter was densely populated, and expansion of agriculture was running to its limits in the central valleys. In view of the major characteristics of its socio-political system – a hierarchical social order and the pervading influence of competing elites – the socio-economic consequences of the highlands’ demographic picture were even more dramatic: widespread conflicts between the elites, rising land prices, increasing poverty, landlessness, and deteriorating conditions of tenure for those with limited access to land.49 Since time immemorial there had been political, social, economic, and cultural-ritual relationships between the two areas, i.e. Luwu and the Sa’dan highlands. Even in the Luwu plain, let alone in the hills and mountains that had long since belonged to the sphere of influence of the kingdom of Luwu, the population spoke a highland language rather than Buginese, and traced their descent to the highlands. In the course of the nineteenth century, as Bigalke has shown, the transfer of people between the highlands and the lowlands of South Sulawesi was closely connected to networks of trade in arms, coffee, and slaves through which the ruling elites of the Sa’dan highlands were entertaining relations with the Bugis

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lowlands.50 However, migration from the highlands was a rare phenomenon until the early twentieth century. The large majority of the highland population remained basically inward oriented, tied to its locality of origin by ties of kinship and ritual. It was only from the 1920s – and especially the 1930s – onward that emigration gradually increased under the influence of, among others, oppressive tax payment obligations imposed by the Dutch, aggravated by the years of crisis. The Luwu plain became a major destination for migrants from the highlands. However, migration often had a temporary character, while its destinations remained restricted to a few sites of ‘frontier’ economic activity, especially in North Luwu.51 Some decades later, the picture had radically changed. Emigration from the Tana Toraja district had become a regular phenomenon; destinations nowadays vary from Luwu to distant places like Irian Jaya, Kalimantan, and even Malaysia.52 Especially since the 1960s, migration from Tana Toraja to lowland Luwu has taken place in the form of massive agricultural settlement in lowland Luwu. The changed sociopolitical conditions under which this migration has occurred, has made it an extremely sensitive issue in regional politics until today. There are important differences between the conditions under which early migration from the highlands to lowland Luwu took place and the more recent waves of mass migration and settlement by Toraja farmers. These seem to have had much to do with the process of ‘ethnicization’ of the relationships between the highland and the lowland population, in which religion (i.e. Christianity and Islam) has become a major boundary marker. As a one of my informants, a leading figure of the Christian community in Luwu, stated: Until this day, there exists great confusion in Luwu about which suku [ethnic group] actually lives here. I remember that in the beginning of the 1950s there was a discussion in the DPR [i.e. the District Representative Council] of Luwu, in which one of the spokesmen of the king of Luwu explained what elements made up the Luwu population. He answered: ‘Toraja and Bugis’. Indeed, the majority of the population must have a Toraja background; you can also see that from the language. Before the Dutch period, these people were largely animist and, in the Islamic lowlands, adapted to local conditions, including Islam. Having become to sallang (followers of Islam) they lost their Toraja identity. They would rarely call themselves ‘Bugis’, nor would they use ‘Toraja’. For the generation of migrants that came to Luwu from the 1950s onwards, things are different. Having become Christians before they left for Luwu, they had already taken on a strong identity mainly determined by their Christian religion. Therefore, if nowadays you ask these people about their affiliation, they will answer proudly ‘we are Christians, we are Toraja people’.53 In the 1940s, the Sa’dan highlands were seething with social conflict. These conflicts often originated in fights that had taken place between highland elites in the period before the Dutch presence in the highlands, but they had been further boosted by the processes of social change generated by the presence of the colonial administration and the Christian mission. The Dutch were aware of the high

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potential of social conflict related to land, status, and power in the highlands. The threats of increasing population pressure, lack of fertile land, stagnation of agricultural production, and the resulting impoverishment of a considerable part of the rural population were regularly mentioned in the official reports and other accounts by Dutch colonial administrators in Tana Toraja.54 However, to the east there was the lowland of Luwu, with its abundant natural resources and low population density, with its rivers and land suitable for intensive irrigated agriculture and large-scale settlement. It was in the late colonial period that plans for migration of a large number of inhabitants of the highlands to lowland Luwu were first considered as a solution to highland problems. According to Van Lijf, ‘the possibility of transmigration of some ten thousand Toraja was discussed’.55 Between 1950 and 1952, when Indonesia had already become a unitary nation-state, the plans for mass migration of Toraja farmers to Luwu re-emerged.56 Initially, post-colonial plans for mass migration resembled the Dutch plans in their analysis of socio-economic and demographic conditions and resource use in Luwu and Tana Toraja, as well as in their solution. In 1951, a Committee for Local Transmigration (Panitia Locale Transmigratie) was established consisting of representatives of the Luwu administration and the Luwu kingdom. However, not much later the plans for large-scale local transmigration came to a complete standstill as a consequence of the outbreak of the so-called Darul Islam rebellion (DI/TII) in Luwu, because the safety of large numbers of agricultural settlers in the Luwu plain could no longer be guaranteed.57 From 1952 onwards, the DI/TII guerrilla operations expanded to various regions in the highlands of Luwu. Between 1952 and 1959 even large parts of the Sa’dan highlands bordering on Luwu were regularly attacked, which set off large streams of refugees. The majority of them, mainly Christians from highland Luwu, ended up in Tana Toraja58 or in a limited number of towns in the Luwu plain, where they were sheltered and given army protection against the guerrillas. With the Darul Islam controlling the rural areas, a safe return of the refugees to their areas of origin was impossible. Therefore, plans were worked out for their resettlement in the Luwu plain. Negotiations between representatives of the Luwu nobility, the Luwu administration (consisting mainly of Toraja officials), the army, and the highland Luwu populations resulted in the selection of locations in the Luwu plain where these refugee groups could be resettled under the protection of the national army. Apart from colonial settlements of Javanese farmers, these settlements, established from 1953 onwards, became the first organized mass settlements in the Luwu plain, comprising hundreds of households originating from the various refugee camps. These events cannot be understood without taking into account socio-political processes in the wider region.59 Key factors were the politicization of highland– lowland relationships due to the emergent Toraja identity as well as the political ambitions arising from it and the rise of Islamic separatism associated with the DI/TII. Since the return of the Dutch in 1946, the political situation in the region had grown increasingly tense. Therefore, the position of the highlands and its population within the future administrative structure of South Sulawesi had become an issue of serious concern for the new generation of educated, usually Christian Toraja leaders. In Luwu, important socio-political changes were taking place as

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well. Though the datu of Luwu had been reinstalled after independence, the demise of the kingdom as a ‘self-governing territory’ (swapraja) had become only a matter of time. The impact of the struggle for independence, nationalist ideology, and the emergent party politics had made the restoration of the status quo very unlikely. As the DI/TII expanded, the Luwu nobility itself was torn between those in support of and those in opposition to it, thus laming the kingdom.60 The resulting vacuum of power was gradually occupied by other actors: first, the (Javanese) troops of the national army present in Luwu to establish and expand central control and, once the DI/TII had broken out, to protect the threatened population in Luwu; and second, the regional administrative apparatus in Luwu, heavily leaning on Dutcheducated personnel, mainly Christians of highland origin. The short period of colonial and missionary presence in the highlands had given its inhabitants an educational advantage over their Islamic lowland neighbours that was also reflected in the distribution of administrative functions. Thus, in the early 1950s, the three former Dutch onderafdelingen in Luwu were headed by three men from Tana Toraja who had acquired an educational background geared to service in the colonial administration: W.L. Tambing in Palopo, H.L. Lethe in Masamba, and Sampe Pongrante in Malili. W.L. Tambing took the initiative for the establishment of the Commission for Local Transmigration (of which he was then the vice-president). Together with Lethe and Sampe Pongrante, he was to play an important role again in the beginning of 1953, negotiating the refugee settlements in the Luwu plain described above. He also played a crucial role in various other political issues like organizing the 1953 Toraja action against the warlord Andi Sose from Luwu.61 In 1955, he became a representative in the national parliament in Jakarta where, together with J.K. Tumakaka from Central Sulawesi, he represented the ‘Toraja Raya’ ideal. Sampe Pongrante had been one of the foremen as well as first chairman of the PTC in Tana Toraja.62 Lethe had been the head of the Tana Toraja regional administration (Tongkonan Ada’) for a short period. All three were politically affiliated with the Parkindo (Partai Kristen Indonesia, i.e. the Indonesian Christian Party).63 This brings us to another point: from the late 1940s onwards, party politics had gradually emerged on the scene. In 1948, two PTC leaders had established the first branch of the Indonesian Christian Party (then called: Parki), which drew its basis of support from the membership of social organizations like the PTC in South Sulawesi.64 In 1950, the party changed its name into Parkindo. In the 1950s, the Parkindo grew rapidly due to the increasing politicization of the people. There was a close association between the political party and the Church, which expressed itself in the fact that most members of the Church membership supported the Parkindo.65 Hence, the Parkindo came to represent both Christianity and Toraja identity; the newly established Gereja Toraja (Toraja Church) and related organizations were, through their leadership and membership, closely intertwined with the Parkindo.66 In Luwu, like in Tana Toraja, support for the Parkindo was growing.67 Growth of the Parkindo was boosted by the violence against Christian settlements as well as by the success of increasingly assertive Toraja military actions like those against Andi Sose.68 The resettlement of highland refugees should be seen in the light of the developments in the region described above and the new constellation of power emerging

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from them. The fiercely anti-DI/TII, increasingly assertive, Toraja administrative apparatus found itself in a strong position to negotiate with the main political actors about the political situation in general and about solutions for the refugee problem in particular. Organized in the Parkindo, taking strategic administrative positions, and maintaining cordial relations with representatives of the nobility of the Luwu kingdom,69 the Toraja leaders had become important actors in the political arena of lowland Luwu. They pushed forward plans for large-scale refugee resettlement under army protection in Luwu.70 Such plans had their roots in views concerning Toraja identity, the relationships with lowland polities like Luwu, and the socioeconomic and political future of ‘the Toraja’ in South Sulawesi. Leading Toraja tended to refer to these views and the accompanying political agenda as a Toraja search for Lebensraum.71 What motivated this search was the low population density and under-utilization of abundant land resources in Luwu, which provided an opportunity for solving the socio-economic problems as well as other conflicts in the Sa’dan highlands. Migration to Luwu was, in fact, widely regarded as the only way to avert violent social conflict in the highlands. However, as will be discussed below, the search for Lebensraum was also intricately related to ideas that were the product of emergent Toraja identity. First of all, it was felt by Toraja leaders that in post-colonial Indonesia political-administrative relations between highland and lowland should be based on equality rather than on the inferiority of the Toraja population with regard to the mainly Islamic inhabitants of the lowland. Further Toraja expansion to Luwu through migration, which was supported by a growing sense of Toraja identity, was expected to increase the social and political influence of the Toraja in the lowland and redress old imbalances. Second, people wished to see this new identity reflected in the status of the highlands (and preferably Luwu as well) within future administrative arrangements in South and Central Sulawesi, which would separate the highlands and Luwu from the Bugis-Makassarese sphere of influence. This wish was indeed very much in conformity with the older colonial concept of ‘Greater Toraja’ and presupposed radical rearrangements of the political-administrative map of the region. It was the outbreak of the large-scale DI/TII violence in 1952 that gave such ideas a more prominent place in Toraja politics, resulting in a further politicization, radicalization, and ethnicization of highland–lowland relationships.

Toraja identity, regional politics, and changing administrative boundaries One of the clearest manifestations of Toraja assertiveness in the 1950s was the striving for administrative separation from Luwu on the part of the Toraja and attainment of the district status. Earlier, the status of the Sa’dan Toraja highlands (or Makale-Rantepao, as it was often referred to in colonial times) had been vacillating between incorporation into and separation from Luwu.72 From 1953 onwards, the call for Toraja autonomy from Luwu, supported by the majority of political parties, social organizations, and government administrative agencies in Luwu, reached a peak. The first resolution to that purpose had been passed by the Parkindo branch of Makale-Rantepao in May 1953, shortly after the first Andi Sose

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affair.73 The leaders of the movement were politicians like Tambing and Sarungallo. Finally, autonomy of Tana Toraja from Luwu was granted in 1957: the old Luwu was now divided into a considerably reduced new Luwu and Tana Toraja. In 1959, both areas formally gained the district status (Indonesian: Kabupaten Daerah Tk.II ).74 The attainment of Toraja autonomy was, of course, widely regarded as another victory of the people of Tana Toraja. The struggle for Toraja autonomy was symptomatic for the general political radicalization and the escalation of regional conflict along what were mainly religious lines, since most of the Toraja leaders wanted to become politically independent of the Islamic lowland. Only a small minority of Toraja leaders was against autonomy.75 When still struggling for autonomy, Toraja leaders took little time to think through the future consequences and see the possible disadvantages. They headed for a district with a name that reflected their Christian-Toraja identity.76 It was only later that many leading politicians realized that there were serious disadvantages to autonomy as well, that something had also been lost. For those envisioning the creation of Toraja Raya, separation from Luwu was considered as an important first step in that direction. Yet, separation was in fact moving away from the very definition of the ‘Toraja’ basis of the Toraja Raya ideal since part of the population of highland Luwu identified socio-culturally with Tana Toraja rather than with lowland Luwu. Let us take a look at the analysis of one of my informants, a former politician of highland Luwu origins, who supported the trend towards a more powerful political position of the Toraja, but was also aware of the arbitrariness of the new administrative boundaries which autonomy had brought: The idea of autonomy stemmed from an overpowering feeling that MakaleRantepao should be able to manage its own affairs. The Toraja were so preoccupied with the wish to split off that they did not think ahead. They did not consider the potential of lowland Luwu and see future Luwu–Toraja relationships in the light of such potential. There was little consistency in such a policy, which was most fanatically propagated by the same people who had in mind the administrative unification of an area much larger than Makale-Rantepao only. In discussions I used to say ‘there is a Toraja word diserekki [Tor.: lit. being torn away], meaning being excluded from a common bond. Seized by emotion, proponents of autonomy put their bets on Makale-Rantepao, which they called Tana Toraja. But the area that is thus being torn away from the common bond is much larger than Tana Toraja itself.’ I said: ‘I would have fully agreed if we had used the name Tana Toraja Tengah [Middle Tana Toraja], which would mean that the areas to the South, the North, the East and the West still belong to Tana Toraja.’ But Tana Toraja district, as it is called now, means that only this is their place, and the rest is migration. ‘Toraja’, when used in this manner, actually is a restrictive concept. Let me ask you: is there a Tana Bugis district, is there a Tana Jawa district? No! But still there are people who take pride in the existence of Tana Toraja district. They regard it as a victory, something worth defending, something ‘original’ that should

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never be changed again, whatever administrative changes may occur in the future.77 One of the people who did not support the strive for regional autonomy was J.K. Tumakaka, a republican from Central Sulawesi stationed at the Luwu court of justice in the early 1950s. Though a republican, he supported the creation of a larger administrative unit comprising all groups categorized in colonial ethnological classifications as ‘Toraja’. In the course of the 1950s, he became one of the few politicians from Sulawesi who entered the arena of national politics where he was one of the representatives of the political struggle for Toraja Raya.78 His opinion on Toraja autonomy was based on the following argumentation: Working in Luwu, I saw that a solution should be found to the problems of Tana Toraja. Yet, as a Christian I rejected the violent ‘social revolutionary’ course taken elsewhere in Indonesia. In my view, the problems should be solved through local transmigration, primarily to Luwu with its unutilized land, but if necessary also to Poso and Mori, rather than through land seizures and other violent actions. My support of Toraja Raya was based on the following: first, from an economic perspective, there were the mutually supportive conditions of a need for human labour power in Luwu and the other areas, and a need for land, for Lebensraum, in Tana Toraja. Second, from a political point of view, the Toraja region should become a stabilizing political factor. Especially in 1957, when the Permesta79 broke out, I was convinced that the Toraja population as a whole could play an important role in fighting the DI/TII as well as the Permesta and in instances of cooperation between these movements. Thirdly, the Toraja had been classified as one people, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally. Therefore, I agreed with the Toraja Raya concept as long as it would remain loyal to the republic. However, the name Toraja Raya sounded as a threat to other regions. There was a quite general agreement in those days that Sulawesi should be administratively subdivided into a number of provinces. One of the options of forming a new province was to join Central Sulawesi with Tana Toraja and Luwu into what became known as Toraja Raya. However, this idea was fiercely rejected by Bugis politicians from South Sulawesi, who regarded the loss of Tana Toraja and Luwu as a major threat to their interests. Returning to the issue of autonomy in 1953: in view of all these considerations, what was the use of it? I really could not see the point of the Toraja locking themselves up within the narrow confines of the Tana Toraja district, while in Luwu important governmental and administrative positions were in their hands, and land was still largely unused. This also explains why Luwu did not resist the Toraja movement for autonomy. With the presence of so many Toraja officials, people in Luwu felt overruled by Toraja. All offices and other government institutions in Palopo were filled with Toraja. So when the demand for autonomy was aired, it was seen as a good opportunity to get rid of the Toraja officials. And indeed, the outcome

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proved that the decision to separate from Luwu was a wrong one. In search of their Lebensraum, they ended up in isolation within their district. Opportunities became restricted both for the educated in search of administrative functions and for the poor in search of land.80 Thus, circumscribing Toraja identity in terms of the administrative boundaries of the current Tana Toraja district can be seen either as a political achievement or as a restrictive conception of such identity which not only went against the political ideology of Toraja Raya, but actually excluded many people who identified socio-culturally with the inhabitants of the Sa’dan region, such as the population of highland Luwu. The 1950s continued to be a turbulent period in the history of Luwu and Tana Toraja (and of Sulawesi as a whole, for that matter). In Luwu, the DI/TII remained a serious threat, since Luwu was a place of strategic interest for various groups that were bent on expanding their influence in a region torn by rebellion and crippled by the demise of the kingdom. If we shift our focus to Sulawesi as a whole, in 1957 the situation was complicated by the outbreak of the Permesta movement.81 The Permesta, proclaimed in Makassar and actually turning into an armed struggle in North Sulawesi in 1958, rapidly spread to Central Sulawesi. If, as it was generally feared, the Permesta would join up with the Darul Islam (DI/TII), regional separatism would tear Sulawesi apart. Under these circumstances, all kinds of local resistance movements emerged which were ready to fight the Darul Islam and/or the Permesta. Nevertheless, they pursued their own agendas concerning autonomy in their negotiations with the central government. In Central Sulawesi, one of these movements was the Gerakan Pemuda Sulawesi Tengah (GPST),82 established in 1957 by a group of local leaders in Poso. The GPST received material support for its struggle from the government in Jakarta. It had also been allowed by the military command in Sulawesi to plead for the formation of a separate province of Central Sulawesi, as long as such an administrative division did not include Tana Toraja and Luwu. In the same way, a variety of local defence groups from Tana Toraja were materially supported by the central government and the national army. Hence, in the course of the 1950s, the situation in Luwu was very unstable. Moreover, Javanese troops were accused of supporting Toraja military units operating in Luwu and Tana Toraja. From a letter written in October 1958 by the last datu of Luwu, Andi Jemma, who was then district head of Luwu, it becomes clear that operations by such Toraja defence groups, certainly not devoid of military adventurism, were seen as a first step towards a violent establishment of Toraja Raya: Luwu has become a refuge for the Toraja Raya movement, and actually the leadership of the Regional Command of Region III gives moral and material support to that movement. This is evidenced by the fact that Luwu society has witnessed members of the Toraja Raya movement running around with firearms, brutally intimidating the people of Luwu. We could, however, convince the people not to undertake anything that would worsen the situation.

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According to Andi Jemma’s letter, the Luwu administration had reported these incidents to the military command in Makassar through two of its officials. After these people had been threatened by the military, the District Representative Council finally decided to discharge them from their functions. It was this last move that was fiercely protested in the letter: It is, therefore, clear that this decision was taken solely to realize the plans of the Toraja Raya movement through the Parkindo fraction in the DPRDP Daerah [i.e. the regional parliament] of Luwu; for this, W.L. Tambing came to Palopo under the protection of [ Javanese] Brawijaya troops to arrange it all, dividing the Luwu leadership by using violence. This time Tambing, who holds the presidency ( presidium) of the movement for a Toraja Raya province, will not succeed in reaching his objectives through violence and dividing our leadership, as long as the Luwu leadership remains firm in place . . . [R]ecently the DPRDP Daerah Luwu has clearly become the channel for the wish to reach the objective of Toraja Raya, to which the majority of the people of Luwu is opposed, because it does not want to break away from the union of South Sulawesi.83 These incidents clearly reflect the general conditions prevailing in Luwu during this period. They also point to one of the major obsessions of Toraja politicians: breaking away from the Bugis lowland and dragging along Luwu as well in the process. Luwu society had become completely unsettled by the long struggle against the DI/TII and its social, political, and economic consequences. It was, moreover, completely dependent on outside military forces it could not control; it had, in fact, become a major bone of contention in the regional struggle for power and resources. The fragment of Andi Jemma’s letter clearly shows that Toraja Raya still played a role in regional politics, both as a political ideal and as an important dimension of the image of Toraja in the eyes of lowland politicians. What was the impact of the Toraja Raya movement upon the political situation in Jakarta, where the ideal was in the course of the 1950s represented by two leaders from Sulawesi? And, further, what was the impact of national politics on the Toraja Raya movement? The following account sheds more light on these aspects of the Toraja Raya issue as it was discussed in the second half of the 1950s, when it was felt to be a political and military threat: In 1957, when the Permesta had broken out, the presence of two resistance movements in Sulawesi was a major threat to the national government. Even in the international press, the impression was given that the whole island of Sulawesi had already fallen into the hands of the Permesta. I always denied such reports and pointed to the fact that the Toraja people in the central part of Sulawesi – in Makale and Rantepao, in Poso, in Mori – together formed the largest ethnic group in Sulawesi and, more important, were still loyal to the republic. In fact, Toraja military groups were then already fighting the Permesta and the DI/TII. If the Toraja forces could be united against the Permesta and the DI/TII, they would be a major support to the central government.

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In this period, the formation of a Toraja Raya province was something of an issue here. The plans to form such a province were fiercely resisted by the Bugis, who spread the rumour that they were part of just another separatist movement. However, in this case, the political strategies and objectives of the national government coincided with the regional interests favouring the formation of a Toraja Raya province. In many respects, these interests could be justified. Yet, perhaps because of my experiences in national politics, I looked at these political issues from another perspective: I did not want to solve regional problems regionally, I preferred to solve regional problems on a national level. In the same vein, I did not consider the local situation from a local perspective only. I did not only see a Toraja Lebensraum, Toraja autonomy, and the like. Rather, in the turbulent times of the 1950s, I saw the Toraja people as a whole. I saw them as an enormous human potential in the first place. I supported local resistance groups in the national interest to prevent Sulawesi from falling into the hands of the DI/TII in the South and the Permesta in the North. The Toraja were in between, and I happened to be here as their representative.84 Not much later, the ideal of Toraja Raya died because of internal distrust, power struggles, and conflicts. However, even in the 1960s, issues of identity, the complexity of historical ties and administrative boundaries as well as large-scale migration continued to play a role in regional politics, though no longer in the form of Toraja Raya. In the first half of the decade, a formal agreement between the district administrations of Luwu and Tana Toraja concerning migration from the latter to the former was achieved: the so-called Makula agreement. In fact, the agreement was not only about migration, it was also – and perhaps even in the first place – a statement about boundaries and identities. The sensitive issue of local migration was explicitly placed in the context of the – broken – relationship between Luwu and Tana Toraja, which was said to be like a family relationship. In the agreement, it was stressed that the areas have a common history as well as socio-economic and cultural ties that cannot be broken by the creation of new administrative boundaries. The agreement did not stop at such general statements, though: it actually set the agenda for new massive migration from Tana Toraja to the Luwu plain. Regional migration was actually implemented for a short period only. It came to an end due to attacks on the new settlements on the part of remaining DI/TII units.85 What is relevant here is the fact that the agreement showed a reinterpretation of Luwu–Toraja relationships. It was very different from the extreme positions of the 1950s calling for Toraja autonomy and Toraja Raya; it stressed instead the old ties between Luwu and Tana Toraja, ties that are recognized to transcend the arbitrariness of administrative boundaries. On the other hand, the political lobbying for the creation of a separate province, comprising at least the administrative districts of Luwu and Tana Toraja, continued until the mid-1960s. Attempts at creating such a province are known as the ‘Lutat affair’.86 With government control in Sulawesi almost restored, the position of regional leaders and paramilitary forces to negotiate their wishes for administrative

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re-arrangements had become much weaker than it had been in the 1950s. Therefore, people tried to realize their political ideals by other means: by lobbying in the national political arena rather than taking direct action in the regional arena. ‘Lutat’ was a concept developed among students and young intellectuals from Luwu and Tana Toraja, who were based in Java. They were supported in this by members of the political elites in Luwu and Tana Toraja. However, like Toraja Raya, Lutat did not materialize because of the fierce resistance from the political elite of lowland South Sulawesi who objected to the plans for separating Luwu and Tana Toraja from the province of South Sulawesi.

Conclusion In the field of studies of identity in general and ethnicity in particular, attention has shifted long ago from essentialist, static ‘primordial’ notions of identity towards more constructivist approaches.87 Hence, identity is nowadays conceived as basically being dynamic, socially constructed, ‘imagined’, and ‘invented’.88 It is situationally defined in processes of interaction with a significant ‘other’.89 The study of the Greater Toraja movement has shown how a Toraja identity emerged first in colonial times, taking on a new meaning in the 1950s in relation to specific socio-economic, political, and demographic conditions and processes. The Toraja identity – linked to a strong Christian identity – was largely the product of rapid socio-political change taking place from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards, with important formative roles played by the colonial state, religious missions, and colonial missionary anthropology. Toraja identity was defined in relation to the (mainly) Islamic Bugis-Makassarese ‘other’ of lowland Sulawesi. Religion had thus become an important boundary marker in the process of identity formation. The case of the Toraja, furthermore, shows that local identities and the way they are incorporated into the national state are far from neatly fitting, static, and tailor-made. Contrary to what is often implicitly assumed in approaches that confound administrative units with specific identities, the relations between local identities and the nation-state are basically problematic, infinitely causing socio-political tensions and conflicts. Equally problematic is the fact that even within a single local community there are very often contesting conceptualizations of local identity. With regard to the Toraja, I have focused on the development of those concepts of a Toraja identity that have linked it to Christianity as opposed to the Islamic Bugis-Makassare identities of the southern lowland. These conceptualizations of Toraja identity have proved to be the dominant ones. They thus form an important frame for the study of the Hinduization of Toraja identity, which took place among the official adherents of Aluk To Dolo.

Notes 1 ‘Toraja Raya’ means ‘Greater Toraja’ (in Dutch colonial sources: Grooter Toradja; Indonesian: Toraja Raya). This song was remembered by an inhabitant of lowland Luwu who migrated from the highlands. He, like other people interviewed on this issue, preferred not to be mentioned by name.

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2 Tana Toraja district (Kabupaten Tana Toraja), covering more than 3,000 square kilometres, is situated in the mountainous northern part of South Sulawesi. In 1997, Tana Toraja had a population of about 400,000 people. Many Toraja (referring to those Toraja originating from the administrative district of Tana Toraja) live outside the Tana Toraja district (especially in the neighbouring Luwu district). It is further estimated that between 250,000 and 300,000 Toraja now reside outside South Sulawesi (cf. Kompas, 2 January 1997). The core of Tana Toraja is the valley of the river Sa’dan. Hence, the region now known as Tana Toraja is often also referred to as the Sa’dan region, Sa’dan highlands, etc. The main ethnic groups generally distinguished in South Sulawesi are the Bugis, the Makassarese, the Mandarese, and the Toraja. Following Bigalke 1981, I have tried to avoid using the terms ‘Toraja’ (for the highland population at large) or ‘Tana Toraja’ (for the area) in contexts referring to the pre-1930s, when these terms were not yet used in what is now Tana Toraja district. 3 See e.g. Nooy-Palm 1979, 1986. 4 See Bigalke 1981; Volkman 1985; Adams 1995, 1997. 5 See e.g. Persoon 1994. 6 Aluk to Dolo means ‘the way of the ancestors’, i.e. the traditional complex of beliefs and practices of the Toraja. 7 See Chapter 10 of this volume. 8 See Nooy-Palm 1979; Volkman 1990; Persoon 1994; Adams 1997. 9 The Luwu district is situated east of the district of Tana Toraja, spread around the northern part of the Gulf of Bone. Before its administrative division into two new districts (Luwu and Luwu Utara) at the beginning of 1999, Luwu covered an area of 17,791 square kilometres and had a population of 800,000 people. Under Dutch colonial rule, the area covered currently by the district of Tana Toraja was administratively incorporated as a subdivision (Dutch: onderafdeling) into the division (afdeling) of Luwu. Until the late 1950s, Luwu was a kingdom. Hence, the Dutch gave it the status of a zelfbesturend landschap (selfgoverning territory). 10 See Note 57. 11 They used the German term ‘Lebensraum’ in combination with the Indonesian word for movement, gerakan, i.e. Gerakan Lebensraum. Sometimes, they substituted Lebensraum with its translation into Bahasa Indonesia, i.e. ruang hidup. See also note 71. 12 See Locher-Scholten 1994; Fasseur 1995. 13 See Arts 1986; Locher-Scholten 1991, 1994; Schrauwers 1995; Coté 1996. 14 See Arts 1986; Schrauwers 1995; Coté 1996. 15 See Plaisier 1994. 16 See Bigalke 1981. 17 Bigalke 1981:138. 18 See Bigalke 1981. See also Arts 1986; Plaisier 1994; Schrauwers 1995. 19 Van den End 1985:45; my translation. Van den End stated that: [t]he allocation of this area by the government of the Netherlands Indies was the result of the combined influences of the government, which wanted to see the Toraja area occupied by the mission before Islam would gain a firm foothold there, leading persons from the Cooperating Missionary Corporations . . . who wanted to secure a Christian Central Celebes by occupying the Poso area but did not have the financial resources and manpower to occupy the southern part, and the GZB [Dutch Reformed Mission], which had asked the Cooperating Missionary Corporations for advice about the choice of a missionary station. (Van den End 1985:18; my translation) 20 This competition had, above all, a financial background. ‘Important in this controversy was that the government appreciated the Indische Kerk in its capacity to form a buffer against penetrating Islam as long as the mission was not able to do so on its own account; but it did not want the government-financed IK to perform missionary work on a permanent basis’ (Van den End 1985:106, Note 1; see also Plaisier 1994).

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21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28

29 30 31

32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44

45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52

See Pakan 1977; Van den End 1985:18–19. See Bigalke 1981; Van den End 1985; Plaisier 1994; Kobong 1989. Interview with Th. Kobong, Jakarta. cf. Van den End 1985:133; my translation. What is meant here is the fact that, after the conquest of Luwu and the Sa’dan highlands, the Dutch colonial administration incorporated the Sa’dan region into the sphere of influence of the ‘self-governing territory’ of the kingdom of Luwu. See above. See Saathof 1933b:59; my translation. See also Bigalke 1981. Plaisier 1994 used the term ‘regional nationalism’. This way of naming the mountain and the coastal population fits in with a more general habit among Indonesian peoples to use classifications based on dichotomies like ‘land’ and ‘sea’, ‘up’ and ‘down’ (Pakan 1977). See also Nooy-Palm 1979:6–8; Bigalke 1981:13–16. Alternative explanations were given by Kobong 1989. See Bigalke 1981; Schrauwers 1995. See Pakan 1977; Bigalke 1981; Schrauwers 1995. Especially the criterion of religion used in this classification revealed the hidden agendas of the Christian mission and the colonial administration, for which the basic distinction to be made was that between the lowland Islamized groups and the (usually highlandbased) non-Islamized groups, whatever other cultural traits were shared by these groups. See Schrauwers 1995, 1998; for Luwu and the Sa’dan highlands, see Bigalke 1981. See also Schrauwers 1995. This latter group included the inhabitants of the current districts of Tana Toraja and Polmas, the areas of Galumpang and Makki’ in the Mamuju district, the Enrekang area in the Pinrang district, and the Pantilang, Rongkong, and Seko areas in Luwu; cf. Pakan 1977. For a classification of the Toraja into four groups, see also Sarira 1975. See Pakan 1977; Bigalke 1981; Schrauwers 1995. cf. Saathoff 1933a and 1933b:55; see also Bigalke 1981; Van den End 1985, 1991. See Pakan 1977; Bigalke 1981; Kobong 1989; Schrauwers 1995, 1998. See also Bigalke 1981. See also Bigalke 1981; Plaisier 1994. Bigalke 1981:293. F.D. Tandjong, in Soelo 21. Makassar: Celebes Drukkerij, 1933; my translation. F.D. Tandjong, in Soelo 22. Makassar: Celebes Drukkerij, 1933; my translation. See Bigalke 1981. Its members and leadership consisted of people who had received a formal Dutch education (schakelschool, vervolgschool). The leaders were teachers or members of the ‘native’ administrative corps; cf. Bigalke 1981:297. Among them Sampe Pongrante, the first chairman of the PTC. In 1937, the Pemuda PTC, the youth organization of the PTC, was established in Luwu by Taula’bi. Probably both organizations have played a key role in laying the foundation of active rejection of, and mobilizing resistance against the inferior position of the Toraja in the lowland areas (interview with Th. Kobong, Jakarta). Interview with Th. Kobong, Jakarta. See also Bigalke 1981. cf. Bigalke 1981:302–8; Plaisier 1994:610; see also Van den End 1985, 1991. Especially J. Linting, F.K. Sarungallo, and Sampe Pongrante, who belonged to the first generation but remained active when the second generation of politically active Toraja, comprising such people as H.L. Lethe and W.L. Tambing, emerged (interview with Th. Kobong, Jakarta; L. Sombolinggi, Madandan; and S.D. Tallulembang, Rantepao). See also Bigalke 1981. Luwu was a trading place and port of embarkation for highland people sold as slaves (cf. Bigalke 1981). See Van Lijf 1952; Bigalke 1981; Volkman 1985. cf. Volkman 1985; Makmur 1988.

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53 54 55 56

57

58

59 60

61

62 63

64 65

66 67

68

69 70 71

Personal information. cf. Van Lijf 1947, 1951, 1952; see also Bigalke 1981. Van Lijf 1952:274. See Bigalke 1981:393. It is important here to point to the accompanying colonial discourse of ‘efficient’ use of natural resources. Basic to the colonial development plans were strongly normative conceptions of local populations and their relationship to natural resources. Central in colonial descriptions of the lowland Luwu population sources of livelihood was the image of the ‘lazy native’, spoiled by the blessings of nature, subsisting on sago and fish. After the breakdown of the federal state structure in 1950, conflicts arose in South Sulawesi about the character of centre–periphery relations in the new unitary republic as well as about the terms of incorporation of guerrilla units, which had fought against the Dutch, into the national army (Tentara Nasional Indonesia, TNI). One of the strongholds of the movement was Luwu; the leader of the movement, Kahar Muzakkar, was born in Luwu. Bigalke 1981 mentioned the presence of about 20,000 refugees in the towns of Makale and Rantepao by the end of 1953. According to a survey report from July 1955, there were still about 17,000 refugees from diverse regions of origin in refugee camps in Tana Toraja in that month. Some of these refugees were enlisted for resettlement in the Luwu plain (ANUP APS-244). The analysis of the socio-political context in the beginning of the 1950s is based on discussions with and accounts by, among others, L. Sombolinggi, Madandan. The political–administrative structure of the kingdom, including its four ‘ministers’, continued to exist. During this period, in matters of regional politics and administration the datu was mainly represented by the opu pa’bicara, Andi Pangerang (interview Andi Antong Pangerang, Palopo). Andi Sose had collaborated with the DI/TII before running over with his troops to the national army. Sose and his troops were stationed in Tana Toraja. His expansionist and oppressive way of dealing with the population led to the expulsion of Sose from Tana Toraja by Toraja defence units in 1953 and 1958. See above. Apart from the administrative apparatus, the majority of government agencies and institutions in Luwu were also headed by people of highland origins (e.g. the Land Registry Agency, Forestry, Agriculture, the Information Service, and the regional court). See Bigalke 1981. The association between the Church and the party went so far that sometimes members of the Toraja Church not affiliated to the Parkindo were regarded with suspicion, as ‘not real Christians’ (interview with Th. Kobong, Jakarta). The Toraja Church, established in 1947, emerged from the GZB. See Van den End 1985; Sarira 1975. This regional popularity of the Parkindo was reflected in the results of the 1955 elections. Harvey 1977 gave the following vote percentages in Luwu (still including current Tana Toraja) for the major parties in the 1955 elections: Parkindo 56.49 per cent, Masyumi 17.55 per cent, PSII 6.32 per cent, and PNI 5.44 per cent. See also Bigalke 1981:432. Conversion to Christianity in the boundary areas of Luwu and Tana Toraja showed a similar trend, reaching a peak during the DI-TII period (cf. Sarira 1975; Bigalke 1981; Van den End 1985; Plaisier 1993). Such as, for instance, with Andi Pangerang, opu pa’bicara of the Luwu kingdom (interview with Andi Antong Pangerang, Palopo). Interviews with L. Sombolinggi, Madandan; P.S. Gasong, Seriti; S.D. Tallulembang, Rantepao; and others. Usually the German term was used; sometimes also the Indonesian term (ruang hidup) (interviews with F. Lande, Rantepao; J. Sarira, Rantepao; L. Sombolinggi, Madandan; and S.D. Tallulembang, Rantepao). Possibly people like Tambing, Lethe, and Sampe began using it.

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72 After their conquest in 1905–6, the Dutch had incorporated the Sa’dan highlands into the Luwu kingdom, under severe protests especially of the rulers (puang) in the southern highlands. In May 1946, after the defeat of Japan and the restoration of Dutch rule, Tana Toraja had been given autonomy as a self-governing territory within the afdeling Luwu, governed by the Tongkonan Ada’. Between December 1949 and March 1950, this body was replaced by the Dewan Pemerintahan Sendiri (Self-Governing Council). In 1950 it had lost that status again as a consequence of the breakdown of the federal state structure imposed by the Dutch in 1949. After the period of emergency administration (pemerintah darurat, 1950–2) and the recognition of the Luwu kingdom (including Makale-Rantepao) as a self-governing territory (swapraja), Tana Toraja lost its autonomous status again. 73 Letter from KPN negeri Toraja Ambo Tjatja to Kepala Daerah Luwu, dated 23 July 1953 (ANUP-Tator 587). 74 ANUP-Tator 587, 590; ANUP-APS no. 244. 75 Interview with L. Sombolinggi, Madandan, and S.D. Tallulembang, Rantepao. 76 Interview with Latanna, Jakarta. 77 A distinction is sometimes made between Tana Toraja, which refers to the current district, and Tanah Toraja, which refers to ‘the areas inhabitated by the Toraja people, in particular the districts of Tana Toraja and Luwu’; see Sarira 1975; Kobong 1989. 78 Together with W.L. Tambing; see also Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan 1984. 79 The Permesta (Perjuangan Semesta Alam; Inclusive Struggle) began with issuing a Charter on 2 March 1957 in Makassar. The main demands of the movement against the central government concerned provincial autonomy for Sulawesi, a greater say in military and political-administrative affairs, development of Sulawesi, and a more equitable distribution of economic benefits. From 1958, in northern Sulawesi the movement developed into a full-fledged armed rebellion, associated with the PRRI (Pemerintah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia) rebellion proclaimed in West Sumatra in 1958; hence it is often referred to as PRRI/ Permesta. See Harvey 1977; Bigalke 1981. 80 Interview with J.K. Tumakaka, Jakarta. 81 See Harvey 1977; Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan 1984; Schrauwers 1995. 82 ‘Central Sulawesi Youth Movement’. 83 ANUP-APS, No. 198; my translation. 84 Interview with J.K. Tumakaka, Jakarta. 85 This issue seems to have generated new tensions in Luwu. As a consequence of the failure of Makula and the threats to the Toraja settlements, Toraja leaders shifted to ‘silent migration’ in the mid-1960s. From the 1970s to the 1990s, migration from Tana Toraja reached its peak with thousands of Toraja families settling in Luwu. Being uncontrollable and associated with the Toraja expansionism of the 1950s, migration has remained an extremely sensitive issue to this day. 86 Lutat (Luwu-Tator). Interview with Latanna, Jakarta; L. Sombolinggi, Madandan; and P. Sumbung, Jakarta. 87 See Smith Kipp and Rogers 1987; Hoben and Hefner 1991; Smith Kipp 1993; Bowen 1995. 88 See Anderson 1983; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983. 89 See Rew and Campbell 1999.

Bibliography Adams, K.M. (1995) ‘Making-up the Toraja? The Appropriation of Tourism, Anthropology, and Museums for Politics in Upland Sulawesi, Indonesia’, Ethnology 34:2, pp. 143–53. –––– (1997) ‘Touting Touristic “Primadonas”: Tourism, Ethnicity, and National Integration in Sulawesi, Indonesia’, in: M. Picard and R.E. Wood (eds) Tourism, Ethnicity, and the State in Asian and Pacific Societies, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pp. 155–80. Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities, London and New York: Verso.

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Arts, J.A. (1986) ‘Zending en Bestuur op Midden-Celebes tussen 1890 en 1920. Van Samenwerking naar Confrontatie en Eigen Verantwoordelijkheid’, in: J. van Goor (ed.) Imperialisme in de Marge. De Afronding van Nederlands-Indië, Utrecht: HES Uitgevers. Bigalke, Terance William (1981) A Social History of ‘Tana Toraja’ 1870–1965, Ann Arbor and London: University of Wisconsin, Madison. Bowen, J.R. (1995) ‘The Forms Culture Takes: A State-of-the-Field Essay on the Anthropology of Southeast Asia’, The Journal of Asian Studies 54:4, pp.1047–78. Coté, J. (1996) ‘Colonising Central Sulawesi. The “Ethical Policy” and Imperialist Expansion 1890–1910’, Itinerario XX:3. Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan (1984) Sejarah Daerah Sulawesi Tengah, Jakarta: Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, Proyek Inventarisasi dan Dokumentasi Kebudayaan Daerah. Dijk, C. van (1981) Rebellion Under the Banner of Islam: The Darul Islam in Indonesia, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff (Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Insituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 94). End, Th. van den (1985) De Gereformeerde Zendingsbond 1901–1961. Nederland-Tanah Toraja. Een bronnenpublicatie. Raad voor de Zending der Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk, de Zending der Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland, en de Gereformeerde Zendingsbond in de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk. –––– (1991) ‘Een Taalgeleerde onder de Zendeling-leraren. Dr. H. van der Veen in Tana Toraja’, in: H.A. Poeze and P. Schoorl (eds) Excursies in Celebes. Een bundel bijdragen bij het afscheid van J. Noorduyn als directeur-secretaris van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden: KITLV Uitgeverij (Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Insituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 147). Fasseur, C. (1995) De Weg naar het Paradijs en andere Indische Geschiedenissen, Amsterdam: Bert Bakker. Goor, J. van (1986) ‘Imperialisme in de marge’, in: J. van Goor (ed.) Imperialisme in de Marge. De Afronding van Nederlands-Indië, Utrecht: HES Uitgevers. Harvey, Barbara S. (1977) Permesta: Half a Rebellion, Ithaca, NY: Monograph Series Publication 57, Cornell University Press. –––– (1989) Pemberontakan Kahar Muzakkar. Dari Tradisi ke DI/TII, Jakarta: Grafiti Pers. Hoben, A. and R.W. Hefner (1991) ‘The Integrative Revolution Revisited’, World Development 19/1, pp. 17–30. Hobsbawm, E. and T. Ranger (eds) (1983) The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kobong, Th. (1989) Evangelium und Tongkonan. Eine Untersuchung über die Begegnung zwischen Christlicher Botschaft und der Kultur der Toraja, Hamburg: Verlag an der Lottbeck – Peter Jensen. Lijf, J.M. van (1947) ‘Kentrekken en Problemen van de Geschiedenis der Sa’dan Toradjalanden’, Indonesi 1e jaargang 1947–8, pp. 518–35. –––– (1951) ‘Tana-Toradja 1905–1950’, Indonesi’, 5e jaargang 1951–2, pp. 352–75. –––– (1952) ‘Tana-Toradja 1905–1950’, Indonesi’, 6e jaargang 1952–3, pp. 254–77. Locher-Scholten, E. (1991) ‘“Een Gebiedende Noodzakelijkheid”, Besluitvorming rond de BoniExpeditie 1903–1905’, in: H.A. Poeze and P. Schoorl (eds) Excursies in Celebes, Leiden: KITLV Uitgeverij. –––– (1994) ‘Dutch Expansion in the Indonesian Archipelago around 1900 and the Imperialism Debate’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 25/1, pp. 91–111. Makmur, Ahdi (1988) ‘Migran Toraja di Tombang. Studi mengenai Interaksi Migran dan Penduduk asli Desa Tombang, Kecamatan Walenrang, Kabupaten Luwu’, in: Ahmad Sahur, E. Leuwol, A. Fadjar, and A. Makmur (eds) Migrasi, kolonisasi, perubahan sosial, Jakarta: PT Pustaka Grafika Kita, pp. 199–254. Nooy-Palm, C.H.M. (1979) The Sa’dan Toraja: A Study of Their Social Life and Religion. I: Organization, Symbols and Beliefs, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. –––– (1986) The Sa’dan Toraja: A Study of Their Social Life and Religion. II: Rituals of the East and West, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

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Pakan, P. (1977) ‘Orang Toraja: Identifikasi, Klasifikasi dan Lokasi’, Berita Antropologi 9, pp. 21–40. Persoon, G. (1994) Vluchten of Veranderen. Processen van Verandering en Ontwikkeling bij Tribale Groepen in Indonesi’, Leiden: PhD thesis, Leiden University. Plaisier, B. (1994) Over Bruggen en Grenzen. De Communicatie van het Evangelie in het Torajagebied (1913–1942), Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Boekencentrum. Rew, Alan, and Campbell, John R. (1999) ‘The Political Economy of Identity and Affect’, in: John R. Campbell and Alan Rew (eds) Identity and Affect. Experiences of Identity in a Globalizing World, London and Sterling: Pluto Press. Saathof, D. (1933a) ‘Van het Arbeidsveld. Met Zendeling Pol op Tournee (II)’, in: Alle den Volcke 27/3. Maandblad van de Gereformeerde Zendingsbond in de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk. Utrecht: GZB, pp. 46–40. –––– (1933b) ‘Van het Arbeidsveld. Met Zendeling Pol op Tournee (II)’, in: Alle den Volcke 27/4. Maandblad van de Gereformeerde Zendingsbond in de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk. Utrecht: GZB, pp. 53–9. Sarira, J.A. (1975) Benih yang Tumbuh VI. Suatu Survey Mengenai Gereja Toraja Rantepao, Ende-Flores: Badan Pekerja Sinode Gereja Kristen Toraja Rantepao. Schrauwers, A. (1995) In Whose Image? Religious Rationalization and the Ethnic Identity of the To Pamona of Central Sulawesi, Toronto: unpublished PhD thesis, University of Toronto. –––– (1998) ‘Returning to the “Origin”. Church and State in the Ethnographies of the “To Pamona”’, in: Joel S. Kahn (ed.) Southeast Asian Identities. Culture and the Politics of Representation in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, London and New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers; Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Smith, Kipp, Rita (1993) Dissociated Identities. Ethnicity, Religion and Class in an Indonesian Society, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Smith, Kipp, Rita and Rogers, Susan (eds) (1987) Indonesian Religions in Transition, Tucson: Arizona Press. Volkman, Toby A. (1985) Feasts of Honor: Ritual and Change in the Toraja Highlands, Urbana et al.: University of Illinois Press. –––– (1990) ‘Visions and Revisions: Toraja Culture and the Tourist Gaze’, American Ethnologist 17/1, pp. 91–110.

Archival sources ANUP APS: Arsip Nasional Ujung Pandang (archives of the Province of Sulawesi). ANUP Tator: Arsip Nasional Ujung Pandang (Tana Toraja archives).

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12 THE HINDUIZATION OF LOCAL TRADITIONS IN SOUTH SULAWESI Martin Ramstedt

This chapter discusses some of the results of my research project ‘Negotiating Identities: Hinduism in Modern Indonesia’, which I conducted as a research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) between December 1997 and February 2001. My discussion is mainly based on the fieldwork I conducted between October 1998 and February 1999 in the province (propinsi) of South Sulawesi. This particular field trip was to complement the data I had already gathered or would yet have to accrue in other ‘Hindu’ regions in Indonesia. It was my first research in South Sulawesi, and I totally relied on the introductory letters of Professor Ngurah Nala, then director of the Indonesian Hindu University (Universitas Hindu Indonesia, UnHI) in Denpasar (Bali), and Dr I Ketut Subagiasta, at that time first assistant director of the State Academy for the Education of Teachers of the Hindu Religion (Akademi Pendidikan Guru Agama Hindu Negeri, APGAHN) in Denpasar, in entering the field. These letters were very well received by three influential Hindu officials, who in the course of a few days opened many doors for me: Dr I Wayan Budha, head of the branch office of the Directorate for the Guidance of the Hindu and Buddhist Community in Indonesia (Direktorat Jenderal Bimbingan Masyarakat Hindu dan Budha) in Ujung Pandang, the capital of South Sulawesi, which would soon after my sojourn have been renamed Makassar; Simon Samuel, head of the Hindu section of the branch office of the Ministry of Religion (Kantor Wilayah Departemen Agama, KanWil Depag) in Makale, the capital of Tana Toraja; and Sellek, head of the Indonesian Hindu Youth Organization (Perhimpunan Pemuda Hindu Indonesia, Peradah) in the village of Messawa, the centre of Hindu activities in the district of Polewali-Mamasa (Polmas). I Wayan Budha had graduated from the Institut Hindu Dharma, the precursor of the Unversitas Hindu Indonesia (UnHI),1 in the 1970s. Since then, he has worked in various capacities for the Directorate of Hindu Affairs in Kalimantan Tengah, Sumatra Utara, Jawa Tengah, Jawa Timur, and now in Sulawesi Selatan. Budha’s rich experience as an official representative of Hindu Dharma outside of Bali – a function that entails teaching the Hindu religion to local students of often very different age groups, cultural backgrounds, and walks of life – expresses itself in his very open, tolerant, and humane religious thinking. I have learned a great deal

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from him concerning the possibilities of interpreting the tenets of Hindu Dharma in different contexts. Simon Samuel attended the School for the Education of Teachers of the Hindu Religion (Pendidikan Guru Agama Hindu, PGAH) in Bali2 from 1976 to 1981. He had recently also obtained a degree from UnHI. This degree had made him an unrivalled candidate for his current position in his native area. Simon Samuel is a member of an old lineage of Aluk To Dolo priests (tominaa). Aluk To Dolo (Way of Life of the Ancestors)3 is the current name of the traditional ‘religion’ or ‘belief system’ of the Sa’dan-Toraja. Sometimes it is also called Alukta (Way of Life of Men). Simon Samuel’s parents had temporarily forsaken the old ways and had converted to Christianity, a fact that accounts for his Christian name. They eventually returned, however, to their ancestral tradition – now recognized as a local variety of Hindu Dharma – and sent him to Bali. Since his return to Tana Toraja, he has been studying with a tominaa in order to continue eventually the tradition of his family. Also Sellek stems from a lineage of traditional priests (tomamang). The traditional cosmology-cum-ritual system of the Mamasa-Toraja is nowadays called Ada’ Mappurondo,4 which is the local equivalent of the Aluk To Dolo of the Sa’danToraja. Before Sellek went to Bali to study for two years at APGAHN, he had already been an apprentice of a tomaqkada, a member of a certain category of priests whose knowledge encompasses the sacred lore and ritual system of Ada’ Mappurondo in its entirety. Since his return to Polmas a couple of years prior to my research trip to South Sulawesi, Sellek has helped to establish a Hindu infrastructure, which has been able to attract a considerable number of adherents of Ada’ Mappurondo. He has, for instance, been voluntarily teaching the Hindu religion in some of the schools in the area. In spite of the fact that he recently revisited Bali to fulfil the requirements for becoming a pinandita,5 he has not yet received an official assignment to teach Hindu Dharma at the local schools. Apart from his teaching and organizing activities, he has started to practise as a traditional healer. When I introduced myself to I Wayan Budha, I told him I had heard that the traditional religion of the Toraja, Aluk To Dolo, was recognized as a local variant of Hinduism (sekta Hindu) in 1969. Since I had been studying the Balinese version of Hinduism for many years, I was now interested in learning more about the practice of Hindu Dharma outside of Bali. Convinced of the legitimacy of my proposal, it was actually Budha who enlightened me about the fact that there are altogether three groups of non-Balinese Hindus in South Sulawesi: (1) the adherents of Hindu Dharma among the Sa’dan-Toraja living in the district (kabupaten) of Tana Toraja (Tator), (2) the adherents of Hindu Dharma among the MamasaToraja living in the district of Polewali-Mamasa (Polmas), and (3) the To Wani To Lotang, a non-Islamic Bugis community living in the district of Sidenreng-Rappang (Sidrap). Apart from these three groups of non-Balinese Hindus, there is also quite a large community of Balinese transmigrants in the district of Luwu living mostly in and around the district town of Palopo. But since I professed interest in nonBalinese versions of Hindu Dharma, he abstained from directing me to the Balinese transmigrant community and generously provided the necessary help for me to reach the non-Balinese Hindu communities in Tator, Polmas, and Sidrap.

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Very useful in that respect were the interviews he allowed me to conduct with some of the Hindu students, who congregated each Friday morning in Budha’s office at the KanWil in Ujung Pandang. All these students originated from Tator, Polmas, and Sidrap. They had come to Ujung Pandang to study various subjects at the different universities in the city. Because religious education is part of every university curriculum in Indonesia, these students were required to follow classes on Hindu Dharma. Since these classes were not taught at their respective universities, they had to come to the KanWil to attend the required lessons. Wayan Budha had chosen the Friday mornings for these classes, because students were not likely to miss out on other lessons due to the fact that nothing much happens at Ujung Pandang’s universities on Friday mornings, as the Muslim majority attends service at the various mosques. Moreover, any radical Muslim who resents Hinduism because of its supposedly ‘animist’ and ‘polytheistic’ practices is not likely to disturb the classes at the KanWil since they are safely occupied otherwise. There has always been a considerable degree of Muslim – and Christian – hostility towards Hindu Dharma in most areas outside of Bali. This has particularly been the case in South Sulawesi, where the post-independence Darul Islam rebellion had entailed violent inter-religious clashes between the Darul Islam supporters and the Christian Toraja,6 enhancing people’s awareness of the boundaries that separate the different faiths and denominations from one another. Mangku I Dewa Made Sutji, the temple priest (pemangku) at the Pura Girinatha, the only Hindu temple in Ujung Pandang, located at Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan in close proximity to the barracks of a regiment of the Indonesian army (at the time still called ABRI), and Kadek Wardika, the head of the PHDI of the province of Sulsel (Sulawesi Selatan), were willing to tell me more about the precarious situation of Hindus in the predominantly Muslim areas of South Sulawesi. Mangku Sutji had migrated to Ujung Pandang in the late 1960s, shortly after Suharto ascended to power. Kadek Wardika was transferred to Ujung Pandang on his assignment as head of the PHDI of Sulsel. When Mangku Sutji arrived in South Sulawesi, Ujung Pandang – indeed the whole province – was still suffering from a hangover after the turbulent events of the 1950s and the 1960s that had infringed deeply ingrained bonds of solidarity more than once: the above-mentioned Darul Islam rebellion, the eclipse of the Sukarno era, and the dawn of the New Order with its persecution of Communists and its courting of ‘traditionalists’. Balinese had actually started to transmigrate to Sulsel soon after the Darul Islam rebellion had been effectively subdued, Kahar Muzakkar having been killed in February 1965.7 The majority of transmigrant Balinese moved on from Ujung Pandang to the area around Palopo in ethnically diversified, yet predominantly Muslim Luwu,8 taking advantage of the scarcely populated yet extremely fertile land of that area. Adapting to their new surroundings did not come easily to the Balinese. There were several violent clashes between them and the Bugis due to culture-bound ‘misunderstandings’. Divergent religious practices consisting of ritual pageantry with abundant animal sacrifices and culinary predilections such as pork on the part of the Balinese made fitting in rather difficult for them in the beginning. However, owing to the fact that the local government was prepared to enforce ‘religious tolerance’, the Balinese were eventually to integrate with the wider population of Luwu. Mangku Sutji’s account

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actually corroborated the information I had already obtained from Putu Sridana, a Balinese born in Palopo, whom I had interviewed at UnHI, where he was studying the year before. In the beginning of the 1970s, the Balinese community in Ujung Pandang eventually began to erect a temple, the Pura Girinatha, due to the joint initiative of a Balinese officer of the regiment of the Indonesian army stationed in Ujung Pandang and a Balinese member of the local police force. The temple was officially put into operation in 1973. It was protected by its proximity to the barracks of the armed forces, known for their strong inclination to safeguard ‘religious tolerance’. When the power of the Indonesian military to prevent people from openly infringing upon ‘religious tolerance’ started to wane in the course of the delegitimation of the Indonesian military after Suharto’s fall in May 1998, Ujung Pandang’s Hindu community began to feel unsafe again. That is why, in October 1998, none of its members had openly supported the demonstrations of Hindus in Bali and Java against A.M. Saefuddin, which had taken place shortly before I arrived in South Sulawesi. These demonstrations against Saefuddin, Habibie’s minister of horticulture and nutrition, had been triggered by his allegation that Megawati would stand no chance to win the presidency in the up-coming general elections in November, because she was a woman and a Hindu. According to Saefuddin, the Indonesian Muslim majority would neither accept a woman nor a Hindu as president.9 Apparently some members of the Muslim community in Ujung Pandang got agitated over the Hindu demonstrations against Saefuddin, an important member of the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia, ICMI). This association had been established in 1990 and presided over by B.J. Habibie until he succeeded Suharto as president.10 Since Habibie, who originates from the Bugis town of Pare-Pare, was enjoying a great popularity in Muslim South Sulawesi, common sentiment in Ujung Pandang sided with Saefuddin and did not endorse the Hindu uprising in Bali and Java. Dr Wayan Budha even got an anonymous phone call, threatening him with murder should the demonstrations not stop soon. With the general climate being rather hostile to Hinduism, I was especially grateful for the support of Wayan Budha, Simon Samuel, and Selek, which set my investigation of the development of Hindu Dharma in South Sulawesi on the right footing. I was eventually able to have long and repeated interviews with quite a number of people in all the three districts mentioned above. I am most grateful for the ample help of Nek Sando, a sando, i.e. a traditional healer, and a todadena, i.e. a member of a lineage of tomenani priests,11 who is also a member of the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI) in Tator. In the 1970s, Nek Sando had received a four-week religious training course in Bali and was then consecrated (Bal.: mawinten) as a pinandita. His youngest son was then studying at APGAHN in Denpasar. Nek Sando introduced me to Puang Ketua Ranteallo, a member of the traditional ‘Southern’12 nobility, who lives in the village of Tengan in the subdistrict (kecamatan) of Mengkendek. Like most members of the puang-ramage,13 Puang Ketua Ranteallo eventually converted to Christianity when the ever-growing influence of Christian Churches in the highlands had convinced him that Aluk To Dolo was a thing of the past. Yet, he has retained strong sympathies for Aluk

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To Dolo. Nek Sando has been associated with the family of Puang Ketua Ranteallo by tradition. The father of Puang Ketua Ranteallo had remained an adherent of Aluk To Dolo throughout his whole life. He had actually consecrated Nek Sando as a sando, or traditional healer. Nek Sando on his part has continued to serve the puang’s family – as his father had done before him – by giving advice in matters concerning tradition (aluk) and officiating as a priest at those ceremonies of the puang’s family that have retained elements of Aluk To Dolo and hence require the presence of a traditional priest. Through Nek Sando, I also became acquainted with Pong Minda, who often assists Nek Sando in officiating at traditional rituals. Pong Minda has been a member of the PHDI in Sangalla since the 1970s. Simon Samuel, on his part, kindly introduced me to Kamben Palinoan, a traditional priest (tominaa) and head of the PHDI in Mengkendek. He also facilitated a meeting with Dumaq Mangwali, head of the PHDI in Tator and a teacher of history at a secondary school (SMP) in Makale. Moreover, he took me on an excursion to a remote village, Desa Taqaba (Dusun Pengkarowan Manuq), in the sub-district (kecamatan) of Rindingallo in the rather inaccessible mountainous area north of Pangala, where I had the chance to speak with Karel Kambu Katik. Like Samuel, Katik is a member of an old lineage of tominaa and will himself become a priest in a few years’ time. Besides, he is the only government-employed schoolteacher in the entire district of Tator who teaches Hindu Dharma to children from Aluk To Dolo families. He underwent a three-month training course at the KanWil in Ujung Pandang a few years earlier, which qualified him for this function. He subsequently returned to his native village, teaching several subjects, including Hindu Dharma, at the local elementary school. Like Simon Samuel’s parents, Katik’s parents had converted to Christianity during the colonial period. But Katik himself had reconverted to ‘Hinduism’ as soon as he had the chance to do so. Whereas the travel to Tator and finding Simon Samuel in Makale had been comparatively easy owing to the fairly good infrastructure providing for the needs of the tourist industry, my prospects of going to Messawa and to locate Sellek seemed at first to be considerably feeble. At the Pura Girinatha in Ujung Pandang, however, I was lucky to meet Lissak, a close relative of Sellek. At the time, Lissak was studying economics at the Universitas 45 in Ujung Pandang. Besides, he was a member of the PHDI in Ujung Pandang and one of the leaders of the Indonesian Hindu Youth Association (Perhimpunan Pemuda Hindu Indonesia, Peradah)14 in Polmas. It turned out that his grandfather, An. T. Kakang, was head of the PHDI in Polmas and his uncle, Massolla, a traditional priest (tomamang) and the secretary of the PHDI in Polmas. His cousin, Kallote, was a member of both the PHDI and the Peradah in Polmas, and an honorary teacher of the Hindu religion in the sub-district (kecamatan) Sumarorong. Lissak agreed to accompany me to Polmas and to introduce me to his family, with whom I would also find accommodation since there were no hotels, however small, such as the so-called losmen, in Messawa. An introductory letter of Dr Wayan Budha facilitated my search for Uwaq Sandy Tonang, a traditional leader and member of the nobility (uatta) of the To Wani To Lotang as well as head of the PHDI in Sidrap. He had studied engineering in Ujung Pandang in the 1970s and has thus been able to draw on both traditional and modern sources of authority. I knew that the traditional centre of the To Wani To Lotang

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is the village of Amparita, which belongs to the sub-district (kecamatan) of Tellu Limpoe and is situated at an approximate distance of 8 to 10 km from Pangkajene, the capital of the district (kabupaten) of Sidrap.15 After I had checked into a small guesthouse in Pangkajene, I finally located Uwaq Sandy Tonang in his residence in the village of Kanyuwara, having to take a detour via Amparita where he also owns a house. Both villages are exclusively populated by To Wani To Lotang. In the neighbouring villages, they live next to Muslim Bugis. Through Uwaq Sandy Tonang, I was fortunate to make the acquaintance of his cousin Uwaq Laungga Setti, the only representative of the To Wani To Lotang in the People’s Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah, DPRD) of Sidrap in Pangkajene at the time, who himself lives in Amparita. Apart from my introductory letter, my contact with Tonang and Setti profited from the excellent reputation of my friend and colleague Sirtjo Koolhof,16 who has done extensive fieldwork on the I La Galigo, the traditional Bugis epic, among the To Wani To Lotang. My research in South Sulawesi consisted not only of interviews; I was also invited to several ceremonies as a participant observer. In Tator, I first accompanied Nek Sando and Pong Minda to a wedding ceremony, which was held by Christians but also contained an Aluk To Dolo part requiring the presence of an Aluk To Dolo priest. Later, the two men also asked me to accompany them to two purely Aluk To Dolo ceremonies. These were both mantaqda, i.e. ceremonies conducted periodically after a funeral has taken place. The main purpose of a mantaqda is to ask for the blessings or the advice of the ancestors who have been divinified through successfully performed funeral rites. In previous years, during which I had visited Tator more than twenty times as a leader of commercial study tours, I had attended quite a number of funerals and a couple of house consecrations carried out by both Christian Torajas and adherents of Aluk To Dolo. In Polmas, I was taken to a ‘Hindu’ wedding, which was essentially a traditional Ada’ Mappurondo event with a representative of the PHDI and a Christian representative of the state present. The former was in fact Massolla, who was to deliver a sort of religious sermon to teach the young couple the virtues of marriage. The latter was the lurah, the village head, who himself is a Christian. His part was to lecture the bride and bridegroom about good Indonesian citizenship. When talking to me, he assumed a rather patronizing attitude towards the ‘Hindus’. While he was proud to be able to explain some of their customs to me, he simultaneously made sure to let me know that he considers these customs as rather peculiar, in fact as outright ‘primitive’. When I arrived in Sidrap, I had unwittingly come at the time of the annual sipulung ceremony17 and was able to witness parts of it. The sipulung (coming together), which more often than not takes place in January, seems to be the most important ceremony of the To Wani To Lotang. When the day of the sacred event finally arrives after a few days of preparation, every member of the community is obliged to congregate at the Perrinyameng, a cemetery where important ancestors are buried. It is situated 3 kilometres away from Amparita. There, the whole To Wani To Lotang community commemorates certain ancestors with everybody being dressed in his or her finest traditional garb, the boys and men playing pencak silat (local martial arts), while members of both sexes keep chatting and arranging future

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Figure 12.1 The Perrinyameng at Amparita. Source: Photo by Martin Ramstedt

marriages the whole day long. The following days are spent on a pilgrimage to certain ancestral graves at different sacred locations outside of Amparita. The preparations for this important festivity are quite arduous, because the local government has refused to allot money for the construction of a road that would make access to the Perrinyameng considerably easier. The path, frequently flooded by the heavy seasonal rains, has to be cleared from mud and weeds in collective labour shifts. Participation in this arduous task is mandatory for every adult man of the To Wani To Lotang community. Uwaq Laungga Setti also told me that since several years, the local government has prohibited the participation of adult men in the informal pencak silat contests, allegedly for fear of the possibility of ensuing unrest among the contestants. The real fear of the local government, consisting mainly of Muslim Bugis, he said, was the fact that the Muslims are afraid of the magic (ilmu gaib) for which the To Wani To Lotang are so renowned among their neighbours. And their knowledge of magic is said to result from their practice of pencak silat.

The issues for debate Given the overall framework of my research on Hinduism in Modern Indonesia, which led me to South Sulawesi in addition to other locations in Indonesia, my

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Figure 12.2 Preparations for the sipulung in January 1999. Source: Photo by Martin Ramstedt

research questions were definitely formed from a comparative perspective. It was only in the second instance that questions arising out of the specific ethnographical contexts were given special attention. Hence, it was most imperative for me to know why adherents of local traditions in South Sulawesi had opted for Hindu Dharma instead of Christianity or Islam, since neither the Aluk To Dolo, nor the Ada’ Mappurondo, nor the To Wani To Lotang tradition has been known to show any significant traces of early Indic influence like the Javanese and Balinese culture definitely have. Who had been the people requesting the recognition of Aluk To Dolo, Ada’ Mappurondo, and the To Wani To Lotang tradition as local varieties of Hinduism? Why was this request granted on the part of the Directorate of Hindu Affairs? Has there been any local resistance against the request and its being granted? If so, how has it been expressed? How have the tenets of Hindu Dharma Indonesia been reinterpreted in the local context and by whom? To what extent has Hindu Dharma transformed the respective local traditions in South Sulawesi? It is with regard to these questions that I have used the term ‘Hinduization’ in the title of this chapter. As I have mentioned in my introduction to this volume, the term has actually been coined within the framework of the long discussion on the dissemination of Brahmanic/Sanskrit influence throughout South and Southeast Asia.18 In the introduction, I have also argued that it can be usefully applied to

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many of the issues discussed in this book. In this chapter, however, I will use the term ‘Hinduization’ only with regard to the issues raised by the questions listed above. In the following, I will concentrate on answering these questions. Since the scope of my fieldwork in South Sulawesi was restricted to a specific research interest, and since the space available here is limited, I have to refrain from describing in detail the traditional local beliefs and practices as they have been existing when and where they have not been exposed to the reinterpretation on the part of the Hindu officials. I will thus first explain why Hinduism became an option for religious affiliation in a region without a history of Indic kingdoms as had been the case in certain parts of Kalimantan, Sumatra, Java, and Bali. I will then describe the institutional development and the interpretation of Hindu Dharma among the Sa’dan- and Mamasa-Toraja as well as the To Wani To Lotang. This will prepare the ground for assessing the degree of Hinduization that the respective local traditions have been exposed to so far. To a certain extent, this chapter builds upon Dik Roth’s elaboration in the previous chapter on how, from 1905 onwards, the heterogeneous population of the highlands of South and Central Sulawesi developed a new ethnic consciousness linked to a strong Christian faith of some sort19 under the combined influence of the Protestant Mission and the modernizing Dutch colonial administration. As he has shown, the emergent ‘Toraja identity’ was then conceptualized in geo-political terms, spurring the call for a new administrative unit called ‘Greater Toraja’, which was eventually realized on a much smaller scale. The creation of a ‘Toraja homeland’ in the form of Tana Toraja (Tator) was the final outcome of a process that not only drew artificial boundaries between the highlanders living in Tator and those living in adjacent regions, but also severed the close links that had existed between the highlands and the coastal Bugis kingdom of Luwu.20 This process was in fact paralleled by a reconceptualization of Bugis identity under the impact of modernist Islam and the democratization instigated by both the Darul Islam movement and the Indonesian government. The cultural similarities and ties that had existed between the adat communities of highland and lowland South and Central Sulawesi were consequently cut out of most people’s perception.21 The process of conceptualizing clear-cut ethnic identities became even more complex as traditionalists among both highlanders and lowlanders decided to embrace Hinduism when they were eventually forced to opt for a recognized religion by Suharto’s purging of Communism – and hence ‘atheism’ – from late 1965 onwards.

The setting According to the most recent officially released statistics of the Indonesian government available to me,22 the total population of the province of South Sulawesi amounted to 7,558,000 people in 1995. By consulting the 1997 statistics of the Directorate General for the Guidance of the Hindu and Buddhist Community (Direktorat Jenderal Bimbingan Masyarakat Hindu dan Budha Dirjen Bimas),23 we are informed that 110,288 (or 1.5 per cent) of them were registered as Hindus. The statistics of the Dirjen Bimas are not wholly reliable, though, because – at

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least according to my informants – a large number of Hindu Dharma sympathizers have not registered themselves as ‘Hindu’ for fear of alienating their Christian family members, neighbours, employers, teachers, etc. On the other hand, as PHDI members in Ujung Pandang and the three districts of Tator, Polmas, and Sidrap have pointed out to me, there are many staunch ‘traditionalists’ among the officially registered Hindus who have not welcomed what they have described as the interference of the Dirjen Bimas and the PHDI with their ritual tradition. Consequently, they have not taken over any of the theological and ritual ‘recommendations’ of the latter. The official statistics of neither of the directorates within the Ministry of Religion discriminate according to ethnic origin.24 This has made determining the exact number of Hindus in each district even more difficult. As Dik Roth has mentioned in the previous chapter, there were approximately 400,000 people living in Tator in 1997. According to two Christian officials in the Branch Office of the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kantor Wilayah Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan) in Rantepao, around 5 per cent of the whole population are still adherents of Hindu Aluk To Dolo, living mostly in the remote, mountainous part of the district, far off the main roads. According to Simon Samuel, however, the percentage of ‘Hindus’ in Tator is much higher, i.e. about 16 per cent. In the fairly remote sub-districts (kecamatan) of Saluputih and Bonggakareng, the percentage reaches 40 per cent in the case of the former and 70 per cent in the case of the latter sub-district. In Polmas, Christianization – or Islamization for that matter – has been less thorough than in Tator. According to Massolla, the secretary of the PHDI of Polmas, 30 per cent of the Mamasa-Toraja still adhere to Hindu Ada’ Mappurondo. Unfortunately, I was unable to get hold of any statistics bearing information about the demography of the district of Polmas. I was only told that the district is divided into the lowland population, consisting largely of ethnic Mandar, who are nowadays predominantly Muslim, and the highland population, consisting for the most part of Mamasa-Toraja. The latter actually inhabit four of the nine sub-districts (kecamatan) of Polmas:25 Sumarorong (with approximately 40 per cent Hindus), Pena (with some 70 per cent Hindus), and Mambi and Mamasa (both with considerably lower percentages of Hindus than those of the two former kecamatan). These percentages, however, are not to be trusted for the reasons I have already mentioned. More exact numbers concerning the To Wani To Lotang are available from the district (kabupaten) of Sidrap, largely owing to the fact that they form a small, cohesive group, well presented by their leaders on the local political stage. According to Uwaq Sandy Tonang and Uwaq Laungga Setti, the majority of the To Wani To Lotang,26 that is approximately 35,000 people,27 live in the villages of Amparita, Kanyuwara, and Arawa. Some are living in not so distant towns such as Pangkajene, Pare-Pare, Wajo, Pinrang, Soppeng, and Sengkang, and a few have even ventured as far as Ujung Pandang and beyond. Ninety per cent of the To Wani To Lotang are officially registered as Hindus with the local as well as the provincial branch of the PHDI. Their Hindu status, however, is precarious, for reasons I will go into below. Whereas Tana Toraja and the culture of its inhabitants are relatively well researched, very few long-term ethnographical field studies have been carried out

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with regard to the culture of the Mamasa-Toraja in Polmas and the To Wani To Lotang in Sidrap. The ritual tradition of the two groups is almost unknown. Kenneth George’s important book on a head-hunting ritual of an Ada’ Mappurondo enclave at Bambang, Polmas, has lifted the veil a bit,28 but failed to convey a more comprehensive picture. To do just that was obviously the intention of a ChristianMamasa priest, Pendeta Makatonan, who had – already in 1985 – published a longer article on the distribution, the beliefs, and rituals of the adherents of Ada’ Mappurondo29 in the Indonesian language. Outside Sulawesi, still less is known about the ritual life of the rather reclusive To Wani To Lotang, in spite of the important work done by Christian Pelras on the Bugis in general, four short articles by Narifuma Maeda on the To Wani To Lotang, and Sirtjo Koolhof’s thesis30 in particular. Luckily, some of the questions that concern us here were taken up by Bugis researchers, doing mostly applied research for either the State Institute for Islamic Studies (Institut Agama Islam Negeri, IAIN) in Ujung Pandang, the provincial branch of the Ministry for Education and Culture (Kantor Wilayah Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan), or some other government office.31 This deficiency in ethnographical knowledge is paralleled by a noticeable lack of tourist activities in Polmas and Sidrap, both neighbouring on Tana Toraja, one of Indonesia’s major tourist areas. Only small groups of travellers, attracted to the ‘much less-exploited’ – in comparison with Tator – area of the Mamasa-Toraja32 have spent some nights in the small guest-houses in the town of Mamasa, since the road connecting Mamasa to Ujung Pandang was paved in 1987. The three young ‘Hindu activists’, Lissak, Sellek, and Kallote, have actually endeavoured to attract tourists to their village of Messawa, too, in order to help the local Hindus to ‘progress’ (kemajuan) as well. That was partly why Lissak was studying economics in Ujung Pandang. Alas, even he has hardly had any opportunity to attract the attention of potential investors who would be willing to finance even the construction of modest tourist accommodation. With the outbreak of the economic and political crisis in Indonesia, imminent development of tourism throughout Polmas has become highly unlikely. Hence, most Mamasa-Toraja, and especially the ‘Hindus’ among them, will continue to subsist largely from agriculture, occasionally earning modest salaries as government officials, schoolteachers, bus drivers, labourers in local coffee plantations, and the like. Sidrap has been attracting even fewer tourists than Mamasa. Yet, the To Wani To Lotang have been comparatively well off, even after the onset of the prolonged economic crisis, due to the fact that they live in a very fertile agricultural area, owning sufficiently large rice fields to yield a decent surplus that is used to cover the costs for various consumer needs.33 Now, under the present circumstances of widespread nutrition shortages and a high degree of inflation, this surplus is a greater asset than ever. Kadek Wardita and Lissak had, in fact, hinted to me that Uwaq Sandi Tonang has become quite wealthy as a successful agricultural entrepreneur, using his wealth to protect the culture of the To Wani To Lotang and to raise their educational standards. I had indeed encountered quite a few To Wani To Lotang among the students who were obliged to attend the Friday meetings at the KanWil in Ujung Pandang. The wish to protect the tradition of the To Wani To Lotang from the interference of outsiders had once prompted both Uwaq Sandi Tonang and Uwaq Launga Setti

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to turn down the offer of an investor who wanted to finance the building of a hotel in close proximity to the Perrinyameng for tourists to be able to watch the sipulung festivities. The two leaders had refused the offer arguing that the To Wani To Lotang were indeed capable of erecting such a hotel themselves but had refrained from doing so because the sipulung would not make a good tourist attraction. The tourist agencies would have to know the exact date of the ceremony well in advance, which would not be possible since the uatta would determine the exact date of the celebration only a few weeks before it would eventually take place. Apparently, the leaders of the To Wani To Lotang have so far intended to divert the attention of the tourist industry from their cultural activities. This forms a stark contrast to the endeavour of the Sa’dan- and Mamasa-Toraja to attract more and more tourists to their area.

The promise of Hindu Dharma Let us now take a closer look at when and why the adherents of Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo, as well as the To Wani To Lotang were officially recognized as Hindus. In late 1965, as a consequence of the abortive coup (GESTAPU) attributed to the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI), Suharto came to power and started his purge of Communists and atheists on the premise that atheism and Communism are innately related. In order not to be accused of atheism, and thereby Communism, adherents of ethnic religions, hitherto classified as ‘systems of belief’ (aliran kepercayaan) rather than ‘religion’ (agama), began to ‘convert’ in masses to the religions recognized by the Indonesian Ministry of Religion.34 In the case of the adherents of Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo as well as the To Wani To Lotang, ‘conversion’ was perhaps not the right term as these traditions were re-classified as variants of Hinduism. Let us first concern ourselves with the case of the Toraja because, compared to the case of the To Wani To Lotang, it is more straightforward. What happened is that in late 1965 prominent leaders of Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo actually filed a joint petition to the Ministry of Religion, requesting the recognition of their respective traditions as variants of Hindu Dharma. For several years, i.e. until 1969, they did not receive an answer, although in 1966 a governmental decree (Surat Keputusan No. 6/1966) had already been issued in Jakarta, permitting the development of Hinduism in South Sulawesi on the condition that it would adapt to local conditions and contexts (‘sesuai dengan situasi dan kondisi setempatnya’). This governmental decree, which was known to the To Wani To Lotang at the time, had apparently not reached the highlands. In the meantime, institutional changes concerning the development of Hinduism in Indonesia were taking place on a national level. In 1966, the so-called Directorate General for the Guidance of the Hindu and Buddhist Community (Direktorat Jenderal Bimbingan Masyarakat Hindu dan Buddha, abbreviated as Dirjen Bimas Hindu dan Buddha) and its subordinate Directorate of Hindu Affairs (Direktorat Urusan Agama Hindu) were established within the Ministry of Religion,35 and in 1968 the Parisada Hindu Dharma (PHD) affiliated itself with Golkar (acronym of Golongan Karya, or

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‘Functional Groups’), Suharto’s ‘government party’.36 From then onwards, the Dirjen Bimas Hindu dan Buddha – or, more specifically, the Directorate of Hindu Affairs – was to represent officially the Indonesian Hindus within the Ministry of Religion, while the PHD was to serve as the link between them and the Hindu community. It was the Dirjen Bimas Hindu dan Buddha that officially granted the request of the Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo leaders on 15 November 1969. Henceforth, Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo have been recognized as local ‘Hindu sects’ (sekta-sekta Hindu). When I asked my local informants about the grounds on which the traditional leaders had requested the recognition of Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo as local variants of Hindu Dharma, they referred to the similarities between their tradition, on the one hand, and Balinese adat, on the other. The Toraja leaders had learned about these similarities when observing and talking to Balinese who had stayed or worked in, or transmigrated to South Sulawesi at the time. Like the Balinese, the Toraja would also believe in deata, i.e. different deities that are ‘expressions of God Almighty’ (Tuhan Yang Maha Esa). And they would worship them or Him in a similar manner, i.e. with offerings consisting of the same ingredients as those of the Balinese: water (air), incense or rather aromatic leaves (dupa), fire (api), flowers (bunga), leaves (daun), and animals (binatang). Like the Balinese, they too would have dewa yajnya (rituals for the deities), pitra yajnya (rituals for the ancestors), resi yajnya (consecration rituals for priests), manusia yajnya (life cycle rites), and bhuta yajnya (rituals to appease the demons). And like the Balinese they would venerate certain trees and stones.37 Moreover, Toraja society would also consist of four ‘castes’ (catur warna). Whereas the Balinese would refer to them as brahmana, satria, wesia and sudra, the Sa’dan-Toraja would refer to them as the ‘golden stakes’ (tanaq bulawan), the ‘iron stakes’ (tanaq basi), the ‘wooden stakes’ (tanaq karurung) and the ‘reed stakes’ (tanaq kua-kua).38 Talking with Sellek, Kallote, and Lissak about the existence of the catur warna among the Mamasa-Toraja, they also used the expressions tanaq bulawan (comprising the so-called brahmana or different categories of Ada’ Mappurondo priests such as tomakakak, tomakadak, tomamang, and sando), tanaq basi (comprising the adat leaders), tanaq karurung (comprising the landowning farmers), and tanaq kua-kua (comprising the landless descendants of former slaves). The Mamasa-Torajan expression for warna would be kaladaq. The mutual dependency of the four castes, as it is expressed in Hindu-Balinese texts such as the Usana Jawa, the Purana Bali Dwipa, and others,39 is also emphasized by modern Hindu-Toraja intellectuals. Nek Sando, for instance, was underscoring this interdependency by relating the etymology of the name Toraja. According to him, ‘Toraja’ is an Indonesian mispronunciation of the original designation to raya (noble people). He then linked to raya to what he claimed to be the overall maxim of Aluk To Dolo, i.e. sipakarayaraya, or ‘to appreciate and honour each other in the (re-distributive) rituals of rambu soloq (death rituals) and rambu tukaq (rituals concerning the continuation of life)’.40 Apart from these similarities in adat, the most salient argument in favour of the Toraja’s request had been an ancient and sacred batik cloth bearing the image of Garuda (i.e. a mythical bird which is the vehicle of the Hindu god Wis.n.u). This batik cloth is a ‘sacred heirloom’ (pusaka) of the family of Puang Ketua Ranteallo,

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living in the village of Tengan, kecamatan Mengkendek, kabupaten Tana Toraja. Since the cloth is only shown to the public on the occasion of certain Aluk ceremonies, I did not have the opportunity to actually see it myself. However, Puang Ketua Ranteallo kindly gave me a photograph of the cloth, taken at the time when it was last displayed. On the photo, the red colour of the cloth and the image of Garuda in the centre of the fabric are clearly discernible. The batik is supposed to be some 700 years old. How it had come into the possession of the puang’s family, which belongs to the tanaq bulawan, the ‘golden people’, the traditional elite of the region of Tallu Lembangna in the south of Tana Toraja, is not known anymore. Both Nek Sando and Puang Ketua Ranteallo, however, told me that there are similar cloths in the possession of the royal families of the former Bugis kingdoms of Bone and Gowa. In Christian Pelras’s comprehensive volume The Bugis,41 I came across a sketch of a similar cloth described as a state banner of the former Bugis kingdom of Bone. Given the likeness between the Bone state banner, depicted in Pelras’s book, and the heirloom cloth of Puang Ketua Ranteallo, as well as in view of the close pre-colonial political contacts of the Bugis kingdoms of Luwu, Wajo, and Bone with the Sa’dan-Toraja,42 especially the puang ramage of Sangalla’, of which Puang Ketua Ranteallo’s family is a branch, it is very likely that the batik cloth had come to Tana Toraja from the Bugis region and was actually a state banner of Bone. It is thus conceivable that it has only recently been considered as a direct link between Toraja culture, on the one hand, and the civilization of the last Hindu-Javanese empire of Majapahit, conquered by Muslim forces around 1530 CE, on the other. To interpret the existence of the cloth as an indication for the ‘fact that Aluk To Dolo has always been Hindu’ is, in any case, a totally new or modern phenomenon. The cloth clearly acquired its new meaning due to the absence of any stronger indications of early Indianization in the highlands. Even the ultimately Sanskrit-derived word deata denoting ‘deity; deities; spirits’43 (from Sanskrit devata, meaning ‘deity’) most probably did not enter the Toraja cosmology through direct contact with either Indians or Hindu-Javanese. Deata, a local version of the homologue Old Javanese loanword from Sanskrit dewata (god, deity; having entered the divine state; deceased),44 was in all likelihood mediated by the Bugis, whose culture and language indeed bear traces of direct Hindu-Javanese influence.45 If we want to touch upon the deeper motivation that, in late 1965, drove the Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo leaders to resort to Hinduism on the rather flimsy grounds presented above, we have to take the wider socio-political context into account. This concerns especially the social, religious, and political transformations that had resulted from the Darul Islam rebellion ravaging South Sulawesi for more than ten years. This rebellion had been completely overcome only half a year prior to the abortive coup of 30 September 1965, i.e. in February 1965.46 The Darul Islam assaults on the Toraja had boosted the emergence of a ‘Christian Toraja’ identity as posed against ‘Muslim Luwu’ or the ‘Muslim lowlands of South Sulawesi’, to the growing detriment of Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo. The Islamist Darul Islam movement had started off in West Java, where S.M. Kartosuwirjo, the movement’s overall leader, proclaimed the ‘Islamic State of Indonesia’ (Negara Islam Indonesia) on 7 August 1949. In 1952, the movement

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firmly established itself also in South Sulawesi, when Kahar Muzakkar, a seasoned independence fighter originating from the kingdom of Luwu, joined forces with Kartosuwirjo. Kahar Muzakkar’s primary cause for rebellion against Sukarno’s government in Jakarta was the fact that he, as a distinguished freedom-fighter against the Dutch in Java, had been denied being appointed military commander of South Sulawesi. That he then decided upon an Islamist legitimation for his rebellion, after he had for some time also flirted with Communism,47 must have been due to his upbringing in modernist Muslim circles and the fact that among the vast majority of the lowland population of South Sulawesi, Islam had already long been strongly influencing people’s sense of identity.48 Born into the lowest echelon of the Luwu aristocracy, Kahar Muzakkar had attended an Islamic teachers’ school (the Mu’allimin Muhammadijah) in Surakarta, Central Java, as a youth. In 1941, he had returned to Luwu, now himself teaching at a local Muhammadiyah (Wahabite reformist Islamic) school. Moreover, he was active in the Islamic scouting movement Hizbulwathan. After having openly denounced the ‘feudal system’ of Luwu and having advocated its abolishment, Kahar Muzakkar was exiled from Luwu in 1943. He then decided to return to Surakarta, where he subsequently became a distinguished freedom-fighter.49 After his expectations of getting the territorial command in South Sulawesi had been disappointed, Kahar Muzakkar rallied a large following of former South Sulawesi Muslim freedom-fighters (pejuang) and directed them against local ‘feudalists’, ‘infidels’ and the representatives of the ‘outsiders’ from Jakarta in his assumed capacity as commander of the Fourth (Hasanuddin) Division of the Islamic Army of Indonesia.50 From his stronghold in the districts of Bone, Luwu, and Pare-Pare, his troops launched attacks against the Toraja. While the Islamists could not control the territory of the Sa’dan-Toraja, which at that time still officially belonged to Luwu,51 they kept a firm grip on the surrounding area. In the region of the MamasaToraja, for instance, they raided the villages, killed the pigs, burned most of the ceremonial houses (tongkonan) of the traditional nobility, and forced people to convert to Islam. Hence, the region of the Sa’dan-Toraja became the refuge for thousands of people from neighbouring districts. Villages of the Sa’dan-Toraja had been attacked too, but effective resistance had prevented the Darul Islam fighters from gaining ground there. The resistance of the Toraja, who remained loyal to Jakarta, was not only fuelled by the forceful attempts at Islamization on the part of the Darul Islam, but also by the widespread wish for independence from Muslim Luwu. The resistance was organized to a large extent by the local branch of the Indonesian Protestant Party (Partai Kristen Indonesia, Parkindo) which had won the majority of seats in the legislative assembly of the district during the national elections of 1955. This is quite surprising, given the fact that in 1950 still only 10 per cent of the Sa’dan-Toraja had converted to Christianity.52 The Gereformeerde Zendingsbond of the Dutch Reformed Church had inaugurated missionary work among the Sa’dan-Toraja in 1913, after the territory had come under Dutch rule in 1908.53 The comparatively small number of proselytes that Protestantism had made by 1950 increased rapidly through the mass conversions taking place between 1952 and 1965 as a reaction to the violent assaults by the Darul Islam. These conversions were also in keeping with the emergence of a

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new ‘Christian Toraja’ identity posed against ‘Muslim Luwu’, as related by Dik Roth in the previous chapter.54 The local victory of the Indonesian Protestant Party (Parkindo) at the national elections, its political victory over Luwu (in 1959 Tana Toraja and Luwu officially became two separate districts),55 the effective resistance rallied by the party, and the mass conversions to Protestantism were a serious setback for the adherents of Aluk To Dolo who had so confidently tried to reassert the authority of the traditional Aluk To Dolo elite during the Japanese occupation, after the Dutch colonial administrators and missionaries had ‘disappeared’.56 The increasing popularity of the Parkindo effectively challenged the power of the traditional nobility of the Sa’dan-Toraja, the puang families of Sangalla’, Mengkendek, and Makale, who were the most important traditional sponsors of Aluk To Dolo rituals in Tallu Lembangna. It was now the educated Protestants from the lesser ranks of Toraja society who were setting the trend for where society would have to go, i.e. embracing both modernity and Protestantism (Agama Kristen as distinct from Agama Katolik)57 as a ‘modern’ religion.58 With the onset of Suharto’s ‘New Order’ from late 1965 onwards, however, Golkar (already established in 1964 as a kind of umbrella party for various ‘functional groups’ – i.e. the armed forces, comprising both the military and the police, and the bureaucrats – as well as the party apparatus with its civilian following, which then became Suharto’s ‘government party’)59 eventually replaced Parkindo60 as the most influential party in the highlands. Consciously secular and ‘impartial’ in its effort to re-establish ‘social harmony’ in South Sulawesi (as elsewhere), Golkar enlisted support from all ‘anti-Communist’ factions of society. This presented a unique opportunity to the traditional elite for reasserting its authority. Although officially ‘still without religion’, adherents of Aluk To Dolo could now become high officials in the district administration if they were loyal members of Golkar. Yet, the purge of atheist-cum-communists increased the pressure on the adherents of Aluk To Dolo to do something about their affiliation with an officially recognized religious community, especially since socialist ideas had, in the past, exerted some influence among those Toraja suffering from the increasing demographic pressure on land and the sustained discrimination (‘slavery’) of the lowest ‘castes’.61 And it was the traditional, as yet un-Christianized clientele of the Aluk To Dolo elite, in particular, who belonged to this group with potentially ambiguous political loyalty. This situation led those traditional Aluk To Dolo leaders who had acquired a high position within the local administration because of their membership in Golkar, to request the recognition of Aluk To Dolo as a ‘Hindu sect’. They consciously tried to emulate the Balinese, who had succeeded in safeguarding their adat under the umbrella of Hindu Dharma. The Balinese case also provided some further guidelines for the safeguarding of adat. Accordingly, the respective Aluk To Dolo leaders not only requested the recognition of their traditional religion as a local variant of Hindu Dharma. Some of them also advocated the promotion of tourism in Tana Toraja, for which Aluk To Dolo would provide the ‘cultural capital’.62 Similar considerations must have influenced the decision of the leaders of Ada’ Mappurondo to join the course of the Aluk To Dolo leaders. Nothing much has been published as yet on the historical events taking place in the region of the

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Mamasa-Toraja since the colonization of the highlands by the Dutch, let alone on those in pre-colonial times. My own sojourn in the area of Messawa was too brief and my research interest too focused on the local development of Hindu Dharma as to help to close this gap in our knowledge. What we do know, though, is that the region was not included in Tana Toraja and has thus been placed under the supervision of the representatives of the Indonesian government residing in Polmas’ administrative centre of Polewali, situated in the area of the Muslim Mandar.63 This left the Mamasa-Toraja in a precarious dependency on the Muslim lowlands from where, just a few years earlier, Islamists had penetrated the highlands in order to burn tongkonan, kill pigs, and forcefully convert people to Islam. According to my informants in Messawa, the highlands were in fact still hassled by attempts at Islamization until 1966. Protestant missionaries had, however, already successfully targeted the surroundings of the town of Mamasa, bordering on Tana Toraja. Somewhat caught between Scylla and Charybdis, the Ada’ Mappurondo leaders had apparently taken the only available avenue for seeking protection for their religious tradition, that is, aligning themselves with the leaders of Aluk To Dolo to apply for recognition as a sect of Hindu Dharma, the official representatives of which were all members of Golkar. It is not so surprising, after all, that the New Order government eventually granted the request of the Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo leaders. Its economic policy was, indeed, to envisage the revitalization of local tradition as a means to spur the development of tourism throughout Indonesia. Apart from the economic argument, however, I would think that the political loyalty towards Golkar, shown by the Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo elite as well as the representatives of Hindu Dharma in Indonesia, was most decisive. The need of having reliable allies in the still unsafe region of South Sulawesi, had, I am sure, a major impact on the decision of the Ministry of Religion to legitimize Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo by letting its Directorate General for the Guidance of the Hindu and Buddhist Community declare them variants of ‘Indonesian Hinduism’. Let us, for a moment, reflect upon the background and the profile of the two men, who were consecutively appointed as Minister of Religion in the period which concerns us here, i.e. the years from 1965 to 1969. This will help to shed some further light on the ministry’s decisions pertinent not only to the subsequent development of Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo, but also to the ensuing conflict between different government agencies over the status of the To Wani To Lotang tradition. The 1966 governmental decree (Surat Keputusan No. 6/1966), permitting the development of Hinduism in South Sulawesi on the condition that it would adapt to local conditions and contexts, was issued while K.H. Saifuddin Zuhri held the position of Minister of Religion. Called to office by Sukarno in 1962, he stayed on until 11 October 1967, i.e. until shortly after Suharto had been appointed as acting president by the People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat, MPR) in March 1967. Being deeply rooted in the pesantren tradition of the NU (Nahdlatul Ulama), like all his predecessors, the non-fanatical Javanese Zuhri was expressly selected by Sukarno because of his firm loyalty to the Pancasila. This

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was probably also a major reason why he was able to stay in office for over a year after Sukarno had been effectively deposed by Suharto as a result of the so-called Supersemar from 11 March 1966.64 Zuhri was succeeded by the moderate, rationalistic, and open-minded NU ulama K.H. Mohammad Dachlan, who was from mixed Mandar, Makassarese, and East Javanese descent. In 1967, Muslims of all persuasions felt increasingly anxious about the missionary zeal of the Indonesian Protestants, who did missionary work and erected churches all over the country, including Muslim neighbourhoods. Incidents such as the demolition of a Protestant church in Ujung Pandang by local Muslims as a reaction to the derogatory statement concerning the Prophet Muhammad, which a leading Protestant had made, instigated Dahlan to organize a discussion seminar with representatives of Islam and Protestantism on 30 November 1967. There, he admonished all the participants not to engage in proselytizing adherents of other (recognized) religions.65 This precept was fully endorsed by Suharto, who was finally confirmed as president by the MPR in March 1968. Yet, Christian missionary activity did not cease to upset Muslims (and Hindus for that matter). Eventually, the Ministry of Religion issued some official decrees (Keputusan Menteri Agama No. 70/1978, Keputusan Menteri Agama No. 77/1978, Surat Keputusan Bersama No. 1/1979)66 to protect ‘religious’ people from being hassled by missionary activities of other denominations, which are furthermore often financed from abroad. These decrees were thus designed to strengthen inter-religious tolerance, called kerukunan antar-agama (inter-religious harmony) in official parlance. Against the backdrop of the continuous inter-religious ‘competition’, it seems likely that the decree of the Dirjen Bimas from 15 November 1969, recognizing Aluk To Dolo and Ada’ Mappurondo as ‘Hindu sects’, might have also been issued in order to forestall any further competitive missionary work in the highlands of South Sulawesi that would be detrimental to restoring peace and order in the troubled region. To impede Muslim proselytizing in their community was surely the main motivation for the uatta, i.e. the traditional leaders of the To Wani To Lotang, to address the Ministry of Religion in 1966 with the request to recognize their spiritual tradition as ‘religion’. They apparently hoped that their request would be granted on the same grounds as those that had led to the recognition of a number of Javanese kebatinan sects associated with an umbrella organization dedicated to the ‘Belief in God Almighty’ (Kepercayaan Terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa). This organization was represented by a special department within the Ministry of Religion until 1978. In 1978, however, it was to lose its status of ‘religion’. Henceforth acknowledged as ‘currents of belief’, the kebationan organization would then be represented by a special department within the Ministry of Education and Culture (Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, Depdikbud).67 In order to better understand the terms of the request put forward by To Wani To Lotang, one has to realize that the religious situation in South Sulawesi was actually quite similar to that of contemporary Java. In an article published in 1994,68 Robert Hefner has discriminated between two distinct cultural groups in Java: on one hand, the santri or Javanese Muslims, who ‘insist on strict conformity to Islamic ritual and legal prescriptions (shariah)’, and, on the other hand, the kejawen

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or ‘Javanists’, who believe ‘that even while embracing Islam one should qualify or neglect many of its formal strictures in favour of High Javanese tradition’. High Javanese tradition has been described by Hefner as being grounded in Javanese court etiquette, court ritual, court language, and court aesthetics, all of which are rooted in a kind of mysticism (kebatinan) that displays Hindu-Buddhist, Sufi-Islamic, and ‘animist’ features. Some of the ‘Javanists’ had obviously felt a closer attachment to High Javanese tradition rather than to Islam and had consequently refrained from declaring themselves to be Muslim. Instead, they had opted for becoming members of the above-mentioned kebatinan organization recognized by the Ministry of Religion as Kepercayaan Terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa. A cultural distinction similar to that prevailing among the Javanese people can also be made out among the Bugis (and the Makassar for that matter). The Darul Islam movement had recruited its followers from Bugis, who – like the Javanese santri – were endorsing strict conformity to Islamic rituals as well as observation of the shariah, whereas many of those who had not supported Kahar Muzakkar were only ‘superficially Islamized’, just like the followers of kejawen. They, too, were members of both the aristocracy and their traditional clientele. They had not only opposed the egalitarian trend of the Wahabite version of Islam preached by the Darul Islam, but also still valued the pre-Islamic bissu priests as ritual specialists and political advisers. They were, in fact, still partly what one – in analogy to kejawen – could call ke-Bugis-an, i.e. adhering to the pre-Islamic Bugis ‘La Galigo religion’ as it has been named by Christian Pelras.69 By presenting their spiritual heritage as a distinct Bugis sub-culture that is distantly related and bears traits similar to the ‘La Galigo religion’, showing only very few traces of Islamization, the To Wani To Lotang obviously hoped to obtain the same status as that of the ‘Javanist’ kebatinan sects. The latter had successfully pronounced their spiritual traditions as Kepercayaan Terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa, consequently being represented by a special department within the Ministry of Religion. The request that the To Wani To Lotang leaders forwarded to the Ministry of Religion included a summary70 (in the Indonesian language) of the history and the tenets of the community they represent. According to this summary, the ancestors of the To Wani To Lotang had originally been inhabitants of the village of Wani, which was situated in what is nowadays called the district (kabupaten) of Wajo. Wajo stretches along South Sulawesi’s east coast, which has always been easily accessible by ship; whereas Amparita lies about 60 kilometres further to the west, in the formerly much more remote interior of the island. The revered ancestors of the To Wani Tolotang had, therefore, originally populated an area much closer to the sea. They had been ‘people of Wani’, or To Wani.71 Yet, they had left their village for good when at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the arung (ruler) of Wajo, Petta Matoa, had converted to Islam, ordering all his subjects to embrace the new religion. Everyone seems to have accepted Islam, with the exception of the To Wani. As a consequence of their refusal to convert, they were forced into exile in 1666. The revered female ancestor I Pabbere was the leader of the group that eventually arrived in Amparita. The village was ruled by a local arung who assigned a certain area to the newcomers. This area was located south of Amparita. Hence, the

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newcomers acquired the name To Lotang (people of the South).72 The area itself became the village Perrinyameng,73 which is nowadays the location where the sipulung is celebrated. When I Pabbere died, she was buried here, just like those who had come with her, as well as their descendants. Today, the Perrinyameng is, in fact, a huge cemetery. I Pabbere was not only the worldly, but also the spiritual leader of the migrant To Wani group. She is regarded as the ancestor of the uatta, the noble class of the To Wani To Lotang, and is therefore especially revered during the annual sipulung at the Perrinyameng. As I have mentioned above, the days following the sipulung are spent on a pilgrimage to certain ancestral graves in different sacred locations outside of Amparita. These locations are Bacukiki in the vicinity of Pare-Pare, Otting (kecamatan Dua Pitue) in Sidrap, and Wani in Wajo. According to the summary, I Pabbere had two siblings: I Goliga, who, after his death, was buried in Bacukiki; and La Buluarod, who was buried in Otting. The three siblings I Pabbere, I Goliga, and La Buluarod had an older relative, La Panaungi. According to tradition, it was this La Panaungi who had one day received the revelation (wahyu) of the teachings of the To Wani To Lotang tradition through the voice of Dewata Seuwae, the Creator of the world.74 Reminiscent of the Prophet Muhammad receiving the Al-Quran, La Panaungi was told by Dewata Seuwae: ‘I am your God who created the world and its visible and invisible content. The faith (keyakinan) you have to keep always is called Toani. But before I will reveal this faith to you, you have to cleanse yourself ’. La Panaungi followed all the instructions of Dewata Seuwae and consequently received the revelation. He was then admonished to spread the faith among his children and grandchildren, aided in this by I Goliga, La Buluarod, and I Pabbere. La Panaungi did not join his ‘children’ in exile. He was buried in Wani.75 Apart from annually celebrating the sipulung and performing the subsequent pilgrimage to Bacukiki, Otting, and Wani in order to honour La Panaungi, I Goliga, and La Buluarod, the ‘religious’ duties of the To Wani To Lotang entail the performance of mappenre inanre (to offer boiled rice upward) after the birth of a child, on the occasion of a wedding, after the death of a person, and in anticipation of the final judgement on doomsday. When a commoner child is born, the family has to bring an offering of betel nut, sirih leaf, boiled rice, and all kinds of side-dishes, dedicated to Dewata Seuwae, to the house of an uwaq. The uwaq will then read a certain sacred text (lontaraq) on behalf of the commoner family to announce the birth of the child to Dewata Seuwae. The larger part of the offering will be eaten by the uwaq’s family, while the sirih leaf and a small leftover of the sacrificial dish will be returned to the commoner family as a sign that the offering was accepted by Dewata Seuwae. When a commoner man is to marry, his family as well as the family of the bride prepare the same kind of offering, which will then be brought to the house of an uwaq shortly before the actual wedding takes place. This is to announce the wedding to Dewata Seuwae and to ask His blessing for the couple. The uwaq will again read a certain text, this time on behalf of the couple, and will return a small part of the offering to the respective families. The actual wedding ceremony entails the bride and the bridegroom gathering at the house of the uwaq together with two witnesses. There, they have to crawl through a sarong together, a symbolic act that signifies the actual transition to the married

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state. A mappenre inanre is also offered to an uwaq before a commoner family can hold a death ritual. The death ritual itself consists of bathing the body twice, once in order to cleanse it from material impurities and once in order to cleanse it from spiritual impurities in anticipation of the final judgement. Then, the body is wrapped in a white cloth and finally interred. This ritual, too, involves the presence of the uwaq, who reads from a sacred text. What has become clear from this is that the uatta have not only inherited worldly leadership from their ancestor I Pabbere, but also spiritual and ritual leadership. The To Wani To Lotang in fact do not have special priests. Hence, the uatta ‘pray’ on behalf of the commoners as well as on their own behalf, which means that the families of the uatta perform mappenre inanre directly to Dewata Seuwae without any mediation by an ‘outsider’. It thus seems that the uatta have exclusive access to the traditional literature as well as the interpretative monopoly. Once a year, however, every family is obliged to offer mappenre inanre to all the other To Wani To Lotang families as a kind of preparation for the final judgement on doomsday. On the occasion of the celebration of the sipulung, the uatta have to report to Dewata Seuwae how many mappenre inanre they have received during the year.76 According to the summary presented to the Ministry of Religion, the To Wani To Lotang tradition observes certain taboos (pemmali), such as killing, gambling, eating pork, indulging in pleasure, stealing, denouncing another man’s religion or belief, being idle, etc., while recommending honesty, justice, uprightness, and the like. There are numerous other taboos in connection with pregnancy, rice cultivation, food, and time, which have not been mentioned in the official statement.77 The official presentation of the history of the To Wani To Lotang including the description of the tenets and taboos of their monotheistic ‘faith’ indeed matched the profile of the kebatinan organization recognized as Kepercayaan Terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa and thus as ‘religion’. The Ministry of Religion, however, did not grant the request of the To Wani To Lotang. What was happening is recounted in the following. Let us go back to the outbreak of the Darul Islam rebellion in South Sulawesi, to the year of 1952. The Islamist rebels soon attacked everything which they perceived as instances or signs of feudalism and infidelity. Their attempt at purging ‘feudalism’ and all remnants of ‘paganism’ roused opposition especially among the traditional Bugis aristocracy and particularly in Luwu, from where Kahar Muzakkar had been exiled in 1943 because he had turned against the traditional social order. The To Wani To Lotang were as ‘feudal’ as and even more ‘pagan’ than, for instance, the aristocracy of Luwu. Hence, it comes as no surprise that they, too, strongly resisted the onslaught of the Islamists by joining forces with the National Indonesian Army (Tentara Nasional Indonesia, TNI).78 The structure of the To Wani To Lotang community was feudal in the sense that it has been led – indeed until today – by the heads of different interrelated noble families, the uatta, whose common ancestor is believed to be I Pabbere. The uatta form a kind of oligarchy with one of them being the primus inter pares. Their families have kept a sort of patron–client relationship with the commoner families, i.e. the descendants of the followers of I Pabbere, who still highly respect the members of the nobility and usually obey their political and socio-cultural decisions. Amparita thus became a

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stronghold against the Darul Islam and attracted many non-Islamist Muslim Bugis seeking protection from the harassment of the Darul Islam rebels. After Jakarta’s victory over Kahar Muzakkar, these Muslim Bugis stayed on in Amparita.79 With the onset of the New Order, the Muslim inhabitants of Amparita as well as the larger Muslim population of the sub-district (kecamatan) Tellu Limpoe, to which Amparita belongs, began to use Suharto’s conceptual nexus between ‘atheism’ and ‘Communism’ against the ‘pagan’ and therefore ‘atheist’ To Wani To Lotang in order to ‘integrate’ them into the Muslim community. Their rhetoric resonated with government officials both in Sidrap and in Ujung Pandang, because prior to the advent of the New Order, the To Wani To Lotang had been predominantly supporters of the ‘secular’ National Indonesian Party (Partai Nasional Indonesia, PNI), the ‘leftist’ branch of which was now forbidden. More importantly, seventyfive members of the To Wani To Lotang community had just been accused of having supported the Communist putsch.80 A. Samad, the administrative head (camat) of Tellu Limpoe, a Muslim, started to put pressure on the To Wani To Lotang by issuing a decree, in February 1966, which denied recognition of the To Wani To Lotang tradition as agama, prohibiting the celebration of the annual sipulung as well as the performance of wedding ceremonies and death rituals according to the To Wani To Lotang prescriptions. He even succeeded in obtaining the support of the Indonesian army (ABRI)81 to reinforce his decree. The prohibition of the celebration of the sipulung as well as the To Wani To Lotang wedding ceremonies and death rituals was based on the Ade Mappurna Onrong Sidenreng, a kind of ‘letter of understanding’ that had originally been drawn up between Addatuang VII, the Arung of Sidenreng ruling over Amparita at the time, and the exiled To Wani under the leadership of I Pabbere. The Ade Mappurna Onrong Sidenreng had comprised five points of ‘understanding’, the most crucial among them being the demand to honour and practise Islam. This had, of course, been rejected by the To Wani newcomers. Hence, the demand was changed to the precept that the newcomers would be obliged to celebrate weddings and death rituals in accordance with the Muslim rites.82 This precept had apparently been abolished in 1944, during the Japanese occupation, when an assembly of local Muslim leaders (imam) had decided to deny the To Wani To Lotang the right to marry their children as well as bury their dead according to Muslim prescriptions, since they would not perform sholat, the five daily prayers. It was in an instant response to the camat’s decree, trying to revert the 1944 decision of the imam, that the leaders of the To Wani To Lotang filed the above-mentioned petition to the Indonesian government on 7 March 1966, requesting the recognition of their tradition as ‘religion’. If that would not be granted, they wrote, they would then choose to embrace one of the recognized religions. They furthermore secretly continued to bury their dead according to their own rites. In July 1966, however, Uwaq Tirang, a son of the highest uwaq of the To Wani To Lotang, Uwaq Batoa, died, and a secret burial was out of the question. When thousands of To Wani To Lotang visited the house of Uwaq Batoa, A. Samad, the camat himself, went there as well. Unable to shake Uwaq Batoa’s intention to go through with the To Wani To Lotang death ritual for his son, Samad assaulted one of the uwaq’s servants. This aroused widespread anger among the To Wani To Lotang who assembled at Uwaq

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Batoa’s house in order to await his orders concerning how to deal with the Muslims. Among them were also some To Wani To Lotang members of the Indonesian army. A massive conflict was eventually prevented because Uwaq Batoa finally succumbed to the decision of the camat. The course of the To Wani To Lotang was further weakened by a letter from the Ministry of Religion endorsing the decision of the camat. Islamic pressure83 to integrate the To Wani To Lotang into the Muslim community relentlessly continued, provoking two To Wani To Lotang youths, Makkatungeng and Tobo Tywu, to send a written complaint on behalf of their whole community to Jakarta on 21 August 1966. A similar letter written on 7 September 1966 was to reinforce their complaint. A last letter signed by the uatta was sent on 29 September 1966. A few days later, i.e. on 6 October 1966, an official reply from the Dirjen Bimas (Surat Keputusan Direktur Jenderal Bimbingan Masyarakat Beragama Hindu Bali/Budha No. 2/1966) arrived, granting the recognition of the ‘Toani’ tradition as a ‘Hindu sect’ and appointing Makkatungeng as the local representative of the Dirjen Bimas.84 The recognition was granted on the grounds that the To Wani To Lotang ‘faith’ displays clear traces of Indic influence. Traces of Indic influence in the Bugis ‘La Galigo religion’ have indeed been acknowledged by Christian Pelras and other Western scholars. In 1921, a seventh-century Amara¯ vatı¯-style statue of a standing Buddha had been found in the village of Sikendeng, situated on the west coast of Sulawesi, i.e. in the region of the Mandar, who form a sub-group of the Bugis.85 The colonial government then commissioned its linguist A.A. Cense to conduct an extensive investigation of the site. Yet, he was unable to locate any traces of a settlement supporting the existence of a contemporaneous Buddhist community, despite the fact that a South Indian Buddhist bronze bell with a vajra top had also been found in nearby Wulu. There, too, no remnants of a temple or a settlement have been discovered so far. Hence, some scholars have concluded that the bronzes had been imported, for instance, from Sri Lanka. Others have pointed to the fact that along the east coast of Kalimantan, on the other side of the Makassar Strait, i.e. opposite of Sulawesi’s west coast, a large number of Buddhist as well as Shivaite remains have been found.86 Pelras has interpreted the finds of Buddhist paraphernalia along Sulawesi’s west coast as instances pointing to early visits of Buddhists from Sriwijaya, the Sumatran Buddhist kingdom, which in the seventh century CE had emerged as a major economic and political regional power. He has seen the name and certain elements of the spiritual practices of the Bugis bissu priests as further indications for contacts between Sumatra Buddhists and the lowland population of Southwest Sulawesi. The designation bissu is probably derived from the Sanskrit word bhiks.u, denoting Buddhist monks. Taking a closer look at the spiritual practices of the bissu, we find they use ‘the technique of producing a continuous high and sharp noise to facilitate the trance state by rubbing a finger round the edge of a ceramic bowl called in Bugis gamaru, from Sanskrit damaru’.87 The same technique has since centuries been employed by Tibetan lama in order to facilitate certain kinds of meditation, only that instead of ceramic bowls they have been using bronze bowls. Sriwijayan – and Hindu-Javanese88 Vajrayana Buddhists for that matter – had, most probably, also known the technique, possibly transmitting

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it to South Sulawesi. There are even further indications of Indic influence in the La Galigo religion. In the Bugis epic I La Galigo, high-ranking bissu are mentioned, who bear the title dapunta. We encounter the same title, for example, in the Kedudukan Bukit inscription found in Palembang, giving evidence that it was also bestowed on Sriwijayan Buddhist dignitaries.89 Yet, we find not only instances pointing at contacts between the population of coastal Southwest Sulawesi and Sriwijayan Buddhists. In the I La Galigo, we also come across references to Majapahit (Mancapai), the last Hindu-Javanese empire, which had a distinct syncretic culture, influenced by various strands of what we now call Hinduism as well as Buddhism. The I La Galigo furthermore mentions Batara Guru as the founder of the Luwu dynasty.90 The deity Batara Guru of the I La Galigo displays characteristics strongly reminiscent of the Bhat.a¯ ra Guru in Old Javanese literature, who is sometimes identified with the Hindu god S´iwa and at other times transcending both the Hindu gods Brahma¯, Wis.n.u, S´iwa and the Buddha.91 Another case in point is the fact that in one of the I La Galigo stories, a rice deity named Sangiang Serri is mentioned, who is described as a young and beautiful woman, the daughter of Batara Guru.92 This corresponds to Old Javanese notions of both Dewı¯ S´rı¯, the spouse of Wis.n.u, and S´rı¯, the spouse of S´iwa, in their capacity as ‘rice goddess’.93 There are conflicting opinions between Christian Pelras and David Bulbeck concerning the relationship between pre-Islamic Luwu and the last Hindu-Javanese kingdom of Majapahit. Pelras has – in contrast to Bulbeck94 – not been of the opinion that Luwu had ever been a dependency of Majapahit, because the Bugis language shows almost no traces of Old Javanese influence.95 The transmission of culture, however, does not necessarily depend on political conquest or dependency. Regular commercial contacts have often proved sufficient for the dissemination of cultural elements.96 Hence, the existing commercial contacts between ancient Luwu and Majapahit might have sufficed to transmit Majapahit cultural and religious elements to South Sulawesi. The clear traces of Indic influence in the pre-Islamic Bugis culture, including the contemporary practice of the so-called La Galigo religion notwithstanding, the grounds on which the classification of the To Wani To Lotang as a ‘Hindu sect’ rested were actually not quite conclusive from an anthropological point of view. Although the uatta have repeatedly stated that they hold the ethical teachings of the I La Galigo in high regard, they have also stressed the fact that they do not regard themselves as followers of Sawerigading, the mythical cultural hero of the I La Galigo, emphasizing that the era of Batara Guru and Sawerigading has long passed, if it had not been completely mythical in the first place. They contend that it was definitely followed by the era of Dewata Seuwae and La Panaungi, who was in any case their real ancestor.97 Hence, the To Wani To Lotang have in fact distanced themselves from the mainstream Bugis La Galigo religion, which is further supported by the complete absence of bissu priests among the To Wani To Lotang. They nevertheless welcomed the decision of the Dirjen Bimas, which promised to alleviate the pressure on their community. Yet, the Muslim neighbours of the To Wani To Lotang soon challenged the decision of the Dirjen Bimas. On 29 November 1966, the local assembly (musyawarah daerah) of the Muhammadiyah filed a resolution demanding that the Dirjen Bimas reverse its decision. The same demand was

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put forward by the local conference of the Partai Islam Perti, which convened from 20 to 29 November. In similar resolutions, the local parliaments of Sidrap and Ujung Pandang (DPRD-GR Sidrap and DPRD-GR Propinsi Sulawesi Selatan) pressed the Minister of Religion, K.H. Saifuddin Zuhri, as well as the Indonesian Attorney General (Jaksa Agung) and the Minister of the Interior (Menteri Dalam Negeri) to annul the decision of the Dirjen Bimas, simultaneously recommending that the provincial government of South Sulawesi should be consulted in this matter. Moreover, they demanded the prohibition of the To Wani To Lotang tradition by again referring to the anti-Communist legislation. Muslim protest proved successful, although the Dirjen Bimas supported its original decision by a further decree (Surat Keputusan No. 6) on 16 December 1966, endorsing the development of Hindu Dharma in South Sulawesi on the condition that local conditions were to be respected. On 24 January 1967, however, Zuhri overrode the two decrees of the Dirjen Bimas. His action was supported by the decision of the Attorney General Ministry on 2 February 1967. Consequently, on 23 May 1967, the military authorities of South Sulawesi were given the tasks of (1) preventing any ritual activity on the part of the To Wani To Lotang; (2) intensifying Muslim missionary activity (dakwah) among the To Wani To Lotang; and (3) integrating the To Wani To Lotang in the Muslim community. Although a minority among the To Wani To Lotang succumbed to the Muslim pressure, the majority of the To Wani To Lotang kept up their resistance. In order to effectively counter the massive pressure, the uatta unanimously decided to become members of Golkar, a decision which was endorsed and followed by their traditional client families. On 4 November 1970, Golkar rewarded their loyalty by issuing a decree (Surat Keputusan No. 342/SBGK/XI/1970) that allowed the To Wani To Lotang to carry out their weddings and funerals according to their own tradition. Consequently, the Dirjen Bimas did not reverse its original recognition of the To Wani To Lotang community as a Hindu sect, in spite of the fact that the Indonesian Supreme Court (Kejaksaan Agung) reinforced its 1967 decree on 29 July 1971, and the Muslim head of the branch office of the Ministry of Religion in Ujung Pandang (Kanwil Depag Propinsi Sulsel) continued to regard the To Wani Tolotang tradition as one of the fifteen ‘currents of belief’ (aliran kepercayaan) forbidden in Indonesia.98 This legally ambiguous situation has prevailed until today. It has consequently placed the Dirjen Bimas Hindu dan Buddha in an awkward position vis-à-vis the Islamic department within the Ministry of Religion, boosting Muslim animosity against Hindus in South Sulawesi.

The development of Hindu Dharma institutions in South Sulawesi As a consequence of the classification of Aluk To Dolo, Ada’ Mappurondo, and the Toani tradition as ‘Hindu sects’ by the Dirjen Bimas Hindu dan Buddha, which was effectively supported by Golkar, Hindu Dharma was officially being developed in South Sulwesi from 1969 and 1970 onwards. It has to be borne in mind, though, that the whole socio-political situation in the province was still unstable. Inter-

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religious competition was fiercely going on, but now Hindu Dharma was one of the contesting players, albeit a very minor one in terms of numbers and money. Although the ‘Hindus’ could now rely on the protection by Golkar as well as the Indonesian armed forces,99 financial support from the Dirjen Bimas was painfully lacking. Within the Ministry of Religion, the budget was distributed among the various departments – each representing one of the recognized religions – in proportion to the percentage of the share each religious community had in the total population of the country. This proportional distribution of the budget prevailed until the late 1980s. After that, the lion’s share of the Muslim community rose unproportionally due to the fact that Suharto started to explicitly favour the Muslim community.100 Consequently, the shares of the small minority communities (especially Hinduism and Buddhism) dwindled away. In contrast to the generous endowments from foreign Christian and Muslim organizations at the disposal of the Indonesian Christian and Muslim communities, the Indonesian Hindus could never rely on similarly plentiful donations on the part of Indian Hindu organizations for various reasons. First of all, Indian Hindu organizations tend to be considerably poorer than Middle Eastern Muslim organizations or Dutch, German, American, or Australian Christian missionary societies. Second, India as a secular country does not officially boost transnational Hindu solidarity, and most Hindu organizations in India are not even aware of the tiny Hindu community in Indonesia. Third, a serious estrangement that had developed between India and Indonesia during the Sukarno era contributed for many decades to the relative isolation of the Indonesian Hindus. Last but not least, the official representatives of Hindu Dharma in Indonesia have always felt ambiguous about aligning themselves too closely with Indian Hindu organizations, because they have – rightly – feared cultural hegemonism on the part of the Indian Hindus. The scarcity of financial resources of the Dirjen Bimas has been felt even more intensely in the Hindu regions outside of Bali due to the fact that Balinese have held all key positions within the Indonesian Hindu bureaucracy. Corruption, nepotism, and collusion have always been a major trait of Indonesian public life, and the Balinese bureaucrats within the Hindu institutions have been no exception to the rule, allotting almost all the available resources to Balinese religious programmes and projects in Bali as well as in the transmigrant areas. Non-Balinese ‘Hindus’ have been the last in the line of distribution, a fact which has been felt even more keenly because of the more or less successful attempts at ‘Balinization’ of the non-Balinese Hindu traditions on the part of the Balinese Hindu officials. This tendency was described as penjajahan adat, i.e. ‘colonization of adat’, on the part of the non-Balinese Hindus. Although their protest has led to the concession on the part of the Balinese Hindu officials to localize Hindu Dharma Indonesia, curbing the trend towards Balinization, Balinese concepts and customs still continue to dominate official Hindu Dharma Indonesia.101 Among the Sa’dan-Toraja, all these tendencies have played out in the following way. In spite of the recognition of Aluk To Dolo as a ‘Hindu sect’ and the protection by Golkar, conversion to Christianity continued. Absence of sufficient financial means to compete with the Christian (Catholic as well as Protestant) Churches in

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the realm of formal and religious education, health care and other social services soon rendered Hindu Dharma far less attractive than its competitors. Balinese ignorance of the local tradition, aggravated by cultural chauvinism, exacerbated this downward trend. In order to spread the official version of Hindu Dharma, transmigrant Balinese from Palopo were initially invited to teach Hinduism at local schools. Their lack of familiarity with the local customs in addition to the language barrier – the teachers could not speak the local vernacular and the pupils were not able to speak the Indonesian language (Bahasa Indonesia) – prevented official Hindu Dharma from becoming a popular creed even among staunch followers of Aluk To Dolo, let alone making it a well-established subject at the local schools. By 1975, already 60 per cent of the inhabitants of Tana Toraja had converted to Christianity.102 Actually only a tiny minority among the largely nominal ‘Hindus’ actively embraced Hindu Dharma by setting up local PHDI branches, by seeking formal religious training in Bali or at the KanWil DepAg in Ujung Pandang in order to become pinandita or religious teachers at local schools and to apply the official teachings in their local practice. This minority almost exclusively consisted of members of lineages of traditional priests. Some of them were themselves consecrated priests who had, in a few cases, even attended secondary school. All of them turned to Hindu Dharma, fearing the complete deterioration of Aluk To Dolo, because the persisting conversion of masses of people also included large numbers of traditional adat leaders and members of priestly lineages. Traditionally there are various categories of Aluk To Dolo priests, e.g. sando (healers), tominaa (religious leaders of the people), tomenani (priests especially responsible for the death rituals (rambu soloq)) or to mebalun (priests exclusively responsible for the care of the corpses and the as yet impure souls (bombo) of the deceased), as well as temporary ritual functionaries.103 Each category of priests ‘owns’ certain orally transmitted knowledge (gelong).104 Since the gelong in their entirety comprise both ‘religious’, or ‘ritual’, and ‘worldly’ knowledge, the mass conversion of members of priestly lineages including traditional priests started to imperil not only Aluk To Dolo but the whole traditional culture of the Sa’dan-Toraja. In some locations, shortages of certain categories of priests were already beginning. One of the members of priestly lineages deciding to actively align themselves with Hindu Dharma in the mid-1970s for fear of cultural deterioration was Simon Samuel, who as head of the Hindu department within the KanWil DepAg in Makale, became most involved with the supra-local Hindu bureaucracy and its policies and programmes. Nek Sando, who was consecrated as tominaa and sando in 1976, likewise joined the course of Hindu Dharma in a consistent manner. In the late 1970s, he attended, as I have already mentioned on p. 187, a onemonth course on the Hindu religion in Bali and has sent one of his sons to study at APGAHN in order to acquire an academic degree. At the time of my fieldwork, his son was still in Bali. By the late 1970s, there were enough followers of Aluk To Dolo, sufficiently aware of the urgency to align themselves with the Hindu bureaucracy and to willingly form local branches of the PHDI in the subdistricts (kecamatan) of Sangalla’, Makale, Mengkendek, Rantepao, and Saluputih, the heads of which have exclusively been Aluk To Dolo priests. The function of

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these local PHDI branches has been to reconcile the Aluk To Dolo teachings and practices with those recommended by the Dirjen Bimas and the PHDI Pusat (Central PHDI Office). However, activities have not been very frequent and effective. The notorious lack of funding has made the writing, production, and distribution of books on Hindu Dharma and its relation to Aluk To Dolo impossible until now. There has not even been enough money for writing down the gelong to save them from oblivion, although both the Dirjen Bimas and the PHDI Pusat have explicitly encouraged Nek Sando to do so. Yet, nobody can afford to set aside the daily duties and concentrate on such a task without remuneration. Some gelong were written down, though, not only by the Dutch scholar H. van der Veen,105 but also by researchers of the Ujung Pandang branch office of the Indonesian Ministry for Education and Culture.106 Another major setback to the efficiency of the local PHDI has been the fact that a comparatively young, Ujung Pandang-educated Toraja schoolteacher was made head of the district PHDI office in Makale, who is now in charge of the whole Hindu community in Tana Toraja together with Simon Samuel. He has fulfilled all the necessary requirements for the position as put forward by the bureaucrats in Bali and Jakarta, such as having acquired a higher education and intimate knowledge of the tenets of Hindu Dharma as well as having proven commitment to the policies of the government. However, he lacks the religious authority and the legitimacy of the traditional priests, who have all been elected to their tasks by the local people. Furthermore, the Aluk To Dolo priests heading the sub-district PHDI branches are senior in age and do not recognize him as their superior. Hence, quarrels and miscommunication between him and these local PHDI

Figure 12.3 Pura Tambunalitaq. Source: Photo by Martin Ramstedt

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functionaries have been obstructing the already scarce and feeble programmes and activities designed to further the interest in Hindu Dharma among the Aluk To Dolo constituency in Tator. Still, the local representatives of Hindu Dharma were able to motivate a sufficient number of people to provide the raw material and the labour force necessary for building the Pura Tambunalitaq in the vicinity of both Simon Samuel’s and Nek Sando’s houses. This temple (they use the Balinese word pura for it) was built in tongkonan style107 some years ago in order to show to government delegations that the Hindu Aluk To Dolo community has proper tempat ibadah (places of worship).108 The Pura Tambunalitaq is hardly ever used for ‘Hindu services’ though. Only when a delegation of Hindu bureaucrats from Ujung Pandang, Bali, or Jakarta visits Tator, or when there is a meeting of all the heads of local PHDI branches does the ‘temple’ serve as a place of congregation where people also perform the tri sandya, the official prayer109 of Hindu Dharma Indonesia. Conversion to Christianity has continued relentlessly. Today, an overwhelming majority of around 84 to 95 per cent of the total population in Tana Toraja adheres to different Christian Churches, among which the Gereja Pentacosta (Pentecostal Church) has gained more and more popularity in the recent decades.110 The remaining 5 to 16 per cent of the Sa’dan-Toraja, who still adhere to Aluk To Dolo and officially profess themselves as Hindus, mostly – but not exclusively – belong to the illiterate older generation and tend to live in the remote areas of Tana Toraja, far off the main roads in the sub-districts (kecamatan) Rindingallo, Sesean, Mengkendek, Saluputih, Bungakaradeng, Sangalla’, and Sanggalangi. Hindu Dharma is bound to remain the denomination of the poor as long as people tend to convert to Christianity once they get and take the opportunity to move upward in modern Indonesian society. Such opportunities usually present themselves when ‘Hindus’ look for a job, or – most frequently – when they want to send their children to secondary school. Since Christian Torajas have monopolized all ranks in the local administration, no ‘Hindu’ has any chance nowadays of being appointed to even a minor position within the local government offices. This applies also to the very few people who did acquire an education as teacher of the Hindu religion at formal schools. They generally do not succeed in getting an appointment at an elementary or secondary school in Tator. There is at present only one Hindu Dharma teacher at an elementary school in a remote place in Tana Toraja, i.e. Karel Kambu Katik, a descendant of a lineage of tominaa. Although his parents had converted to Christianity, he converted ‘back to Hinduism’, acquired a formal Hindu education at the branch office of the Dirjen Bimas as well as at the Balinese-style temple Pura Girinatha in Ujung Pandang in the 1970s, and finally got himself a job at the elementary school of his village (Desa Taqaba, Dusun Pengkarowan Manuq, kecamatan Rindingallo), where his family seems to be very influential still. His case is the exception that confirms the rule. It has to be noted, though, that he got his teaching position not as a teacher of Hindu Dharma, but as a general teacher, teaching all kinds of subjects, among which he has included Hindu Dharma. Normally, children of Hindu Aluk To Dolo families, who do have the opportunity to enter a secondary school, are confronted with the problem that they have to attend the compulsory lessons on religion.

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While they were going to elementary school, this problem had not fully arisen, because parents with children at that educational level are still allowed to teach religion to their children themselves in case a qualified teacher is lacking at the respective elementary school attended by their children. This privilege, however, is taken away from them once their child enters secondary school. From there on the state completely takes over the task of forming children into modern Indonesian citizens, since a secondary school education is the entry into the white-collar job market as well as the bureaucracy and the military. Due to the total absence of Hindu Dharma teachers at secondary schools, the pupils of Aluk To Dolo background are usually forced to attend the Christian lessons, experiencing immense pressure to convert. Most pupils do succumb in the end. Similarly, Christian Torajas also dominate in the economic sector including the tourist industry. It is true that it is cultural tourism that is promoted in Tana Toraja, and that it is the traditional culture of the Toraja that – next to the ravishing landscape of the South Sulawesi highlands – serves as ‘cultural capital’ to keep the industry going. Yet, it is not the Hindus or adherents of Aluk To Dolo who really profit from the marketing of their culture, or rather those of its aspects most exotic to tourists, such as the tongkonan-style houses, the picturesque funeral sites, the killing of water buffaloes at the death rituals of high-born Toraja, or the handicrafts. It is Christian Torajas – or even Buginese or Chinese – who own most of the local hotels and provide the staff for those belonging to foreign investors; it is they – and Buginese as well Chinese – who own the travel agencies or at least provide the tour guides employed by larger agencies, the owners of which live in Ujung Pandang or Jakarta; and it is they – and Buginese and Chinese – who dominate the supply industry. The Hindus and adherents of Aluk To Dolo are cast for the minor roles in the mise en scène of local culture as ‘tourist objects’ (obyek pariwisata). Moreover, Christianity has undergone a process of localization as well, and many elements of Aluk To Dolo now form an intrinsic part of Christian Toraja culture, too, even if their meaning has shifted in the new cultural context.111 Today, there are no tomenani (priests specialized on the death rituals or rambu soloq) anymore in the sub-district of Tallu Lembangna, as Nek Sando has stated. And there are only few candidates now to carry on the tradition of the tominaa. The same holds true for Rindingallo, the area of Karel Kambu Katik. In other sub-districts many of the ‘7,777 aluk’ (referring to numerous rites, taboos, and prescriptions), which have originally constituted Aluk To Dolo, are now forgotten. Alarmed by the disastrous recession of Aluk To Dolo, the increasing Islamization of Indonesian society, and the ongoing discrimination against ‘Hindus’ on the part of the Christians, which has become even bolder since Suharto has stepped down as president,112 the local functionaries of Hindu Dharma have recently been more receptive to the advice of the central Hindu bureaucracy. The officials at the Ujung Pandang branch office of the PHDI and the Dirjen Bimas told me how well they are received when visiting Tator. Hardly any of the Ujung Pandang- or Jakarta-based Hindu bureaucrats have ever visited the Hindus in the region of the Mamasa-Toraja, though. This is largely due to the fact that there is as yet no branch office of the Dirjen Bimas in Polmas. As the region of the Mamasa-Toraja does not form a district (kabupaten) all by itself,

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such a branch office would have to be located in Polewali, the district capital lying in the region of the Mandar, a predominantly Muslim area. The town of Mamasa, however, has been since decades firmly in the hands of Christianity. The establishment of a local branch office of the Dirjen Bimas in such unfavourable environments would thus have required an immense local support for Hindu Dharma. Yet, due to the lack of financial support and the remoteness of the area, no Balinese teachers ever came to Polmas to teach Hindu Dharma to those among the Mamasa-Toraja who had aligned themselves with the Indonesian Hindu community. This, in the end, might have been a blessing in disguise, since consequently the local Hindus did not suffer from penjajahan adat, the colonization of their adat through the Balinese. But under these conditions, it took some time before a real connection with Hindu Dharma and the central Hindu bureaucracy could be established. Efforts on the part of the Hindu Mamasa-Toraja to effectively embrace Hindu Dharma became more pronounced only when more and more members of traditional priest lineages and adat elders had converted to Christianity, threatening Ada’ Mappurondo with extinction. It was thus only in 1979 that a local PHDI was established in Messawa, in the sub-district of Sumarorong. Staffed exclusively by members of one traditional priestly lineage, this PHDI has remained the only one in the region. Nevertheless, it seems to have been very active and efficient in winning a large number of adherents of Ada’ Mappurondo over to Hindu Dharma. The head of the PHDI, An T. Kakang, has been holding his office for many years now. He lives in one of the very few ceremonial houses (tongkonan) that had not been destroyed during the raids of the Darul Islam in the territory of the Mamasa-Toraja. It simultaneously functions as his office, since financial support from Ujung Pandang or Jakarta is totally lacking, and there is as yet no official building for the representatives of the local Hindu community. The scarce financial means notwithstanding, in 1991, An T. Kakang represented the Hindu MamasaToraja at the Great Assembly (Mahasabha) of the PHDI in Jakarta. Kakang’s son, M. Massolla, is the secretary of the local PHDI and a consecrated priest (tomamang). Despite the lack of funding, his many obligations to officiate at traditional Ada’ Mappurondo rituals, and the necessity of taking care of his rice fields, Massolla has been very much engaged in the process of reconciling Ada’ Mappurondo with Hindu Dharma Indonesia. In 1993, he has written a tract of nearly fifty pages entitled Sukaran Aluk Aluk To Dolo (The Difficult [Points] of the Traditional Rituals), which is now used as a text book in the classes on Hindu Dharma at local elementary and secondary schools. In order to fulfil this purpose, it was written in the Indonesian language. There are currently two people qualified to teach Hindu Dharma at local schools, who nevertheless have to work on an honorary basis as they have not yet been officially appointed. They apparently face a similar opposition from the Christian faction, predominating in the local bureaucracy, like Hindu teachers in Tana Toraja. These honorary teachers are younger relatives of Kakang and Massola. One of them is Mr Kallote, who studied Hindu Dharma at the KanWil DepAg and the Pura Girinatha in Ujung Pandang some years ago in order to become a teacher of Hinduism at elementary and secondary schools in Polmas. He can afford to

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teach on an honorary basis, because his estate yields enough to support him and his family. The other teacher is Mr Sellek, who studied for two years at APGAHN in Denpasar to become a teacher of the Hindu religion back home. In 1998, he returned to Bali for two months in order to be consecrated as a pinandita. Kallote and Sellek are about the same age as Lissak, another grandson of Kakang, and as I have mentioned above, a PHDI functionary in Ujung Pandang. Together these three form the leadership of the local Hindu youth organization Peradah. Comparatively well read in the tenets of Hindu Dharma, dedicated to striving for what they call the revitalization of Hindu Ada’ Mappurondo, and relatively young compared to the average Ada’ Mappurondo priest, they have been able to attract the attention of many young people, at least in the sub-district of Sumarorong. It is largely thanks to their endeavours that a number of Hindu Mamasa-Toraja are now studying in Ujung Pandang, attending the weekly Hindu classes at I Wayan Budha’s office. Sellek is currently working on a more comprehensive book to replace Massolla’s preliminary tract on Sukaran Aluk Aluk To Dolo. Lissak has been very active in finding ways – so far rather unsuccessfully – of attracting tourism to his home region in order to provide his fellow Hindus with access to cash income, while Kallote seems to sponsor the various activities from what surplus his large estate is yielding. They hope to be able to build a tongkonan-style pura (temple) in Messawa in the near future. The PHDI and Peradah in Polmas would also like to co-operate more closely with Uwaq Sandi Tonang, the head of the PHDI in Sidrap and one of the leaders of the To Wani To Lotang. Yet, until now, he seems to have been rather standoffish. Nonetheless, there have been frequent contacts between Uwaq Sandy Tonang and I Wayan Budha as well as the PHDI in Ujung Pandang. However, these contacts have been characterized by an endeavour on the part of Uwaq Sandi Tonang to rather shelter the To Wani To Lotang tradition from any serious interference on the part of the representatives of Hindu Dharma in Ujung Pandang, Bali, or Jakarta. He has, for instance, refused financial support to build a pura in Amparita,113 and hitherto no attempt has been made to compile a book that would reconcile the traditional beliefs and practices of the To Wani To Lotang with the tenets and practices of Hinduism. Hence, the influence of Hindu Dharma in Sidrap has hitherto been merely nominal, and any official Hindu gatherings and activities seem to have served solely as a protection against attempts at Islamization on the part of the Muslim neighbours of the To Wani To Lotang. Both Uwaq Sandy Tonang, who had studied engineering in Ujung Pandang in the 1970s, and Uwaq Launga Setti, who had also received a higher education in his youth, have acknowledged the necessity to comply with the major requirements issued by the Hindu bureaucracy in view of the fact that opposition would preclude any chances for young To Wani To Lotang to attend secondary school or university without having to convert to Islam. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the To Wani To Lotang have therefore accepted Balinese schoolteachers from Palopo teaching Hindu Dharma to their children at local elementary and secondary schools. In the meantime, there is even one honorary To Wani To Lotang teacher teaching Hinduism at an elementary school in the town of Pare-Pare.

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The Hinduization of religious doctrine and practice When it comes to the Hinduization of the religious concepts and practices of the adherents of Aluk To Dolo, Ada’ Mappurondo, and the Toani tradition, the actual influence of Hindu Dharma is perhaps even more cursory than the inconsistent representation of the Dirjen Bimas and the PHDI in the respective localities would suggest. Whereas nominal acceptance of the five tenets of the pañca s´raddha¯, the performance of the individual tri sandhya prayer in formal contexts like religious lessons at school or university or at meetings of Hindu officials and the like, as well as the observance of the national Hindu holidays in public suffices for official recognition as a Hindu,114 it would take a deeper commitment to Hindu Dharma to effectively transform the existing local beliefs and practices and really integrate them into the transcultural, let alone the transnational Hindu fold. However, this commitment is lacking, particularly among the adherents of Aluk To Dolo in Tator and the To Wani To Lotang in Sidrap. Hence, they continue to practise their traditional rites among themselves without any reference to Hindu Dharma, and they do not perform the tri sandhya at home. On a conceptual level, nothing much has been formulated beyond equating Puang Matua, the ‘high god’ of the Sa’dan-Toraja, and Dewata Seuwae, the creator god of the To Wani To Lotang, with Sanghyang Widhi Wasa, and pointing out the parallels between local and Balinese practices of worship (Ind.: sembahyang). Only in Polmas have the tenets of Indonesian Hinduism made a more profound impact on the sacred beliefs and notions of the Hindu community around the family of An T. Kakang. In Massolla’s tract mentioned above, for instance, we find the explicit blending of local concepts with the pa-ca s´raddha¯ as follows: • • • • •

belief belief belief belief belief

in in in in in

the existence of the dewata (Sanghyang Widhi Wasa); the existence of the ancestors (atman); the existence of pemali (taboos) (karmaphala); the existence of akera’ or lino tanda lako (moks.a); mabusung (sin).115

No further explications are offered, however, apart from an elaboration on the first belief (s´raddha¯), saying that the different deities summed up under the heading dewata exert different functions within the universe, which can be classified under the threefold aspects of the one God in His form as Trimurti: Jika dikelompokkan dewata atau dewa-dewa ini, maka Puang Batara Tua atau Puang Matua adalah Dewa Brahma. Dewata Litak, Dewata Wai, Dewata Nawang, Dewata Merandanan, Dewata Tomesalangga, Puang Pangngalak, kesemuanya termasuk Dewa Wisnu. Sedangkan Puang Tomasagala adalah Dewa Siwa.116 If the dewata or deities are classified [into the three categories of the Trimurti], then Puang Batara Tua is God Brahma¯. Dewata Litak117, Dewata Wai118, Dewata Nawang119, Dewata Merandanan,120 Dewata Tomesalangga, and Puang Pangngalak121 are integral parts of God Wis.n.u, while Puang Tomasalaga122 is God S´iwa. (My translation)

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Nonetheless, the key values of Ada’ Mappurondo as embodied by and applied in the adat community (pangngadaran) are linked to the Pancasila.123 It would exceed the scope of this chapter to list all these values as described by Massolla. Instead, I would like to briefly present Sellek’s version of blending the panca s´raddha with the tenets of Ada’ Mappurondo, since it displays a more advanced adaptation of the relevant Hindu concepts: • • • • •

widhi s´raddha = belief in the existence of puang matua or dewata, alias Sanghyang Widhi Wasa; atma s´raddha = belief in the existence of sumpaq;124 karma s´raddha = belief in sin or busung; . samsa¯ ra = ditappa sule or didadian sule125 (Tor. ‘coming into being again’ [my translation], i.e. reincarnation [according to Sellek]); moks.a = lenduq membali puang126 (Tor. ‘to be called to answer God’ [my translation], i.e. union of the atman with the parama¯ tman [according to Sellek]).

Apart from this synthesis between local and Hindu concepts, the Peradah leaders, Lissak, Sellek, and Kallote, have tried to introduce the regular practice of tri sandhya to the local Hindu youth. They even reflect upon topics such as vegetarianism and yoga, although they themselves have not started to practise either of the two. When asked what and how he would think about vegetarianism, Nek Sando replied immediately that ‘sharing meat’ is a crucial part of all Aluk To Dolo rituals. Vegetarianism would hence not be well received in Tator. I observed a similar reaction with Uwaq Sandi Tonang, who nevertheless conceded that pork would not be eaten by the To Wani To Lotang.127 This, however, is rather a sign of Islamization than any concession to Neo-Hindu forms of religious practice as can increasingly be witnessed among Balinese Hindus.

Conclusion It can thus be concluded that in South Sulawesi a thorough Hinduization, or real blending of local beliefs and practices with Hindu Dharma theology and worship, has not yet been achieved. Embracing Hindu Dharma in the first place seems to have been solely motivated by the assumption that it would serve as a perfect guise under which to continue one’s local tradition. Hindu Dharma has hardly ever been contemplated in its own right, partly due to the antagonistic attitude and action of the Balinese Hindu Dharma leaders, and partly due to their lack of financial means. There was, however, yet another reason why Hindu Dharma failed to captivate people’s imagination: its peculiar image. Since the traditionalists among the Toraja and the To Wani To Lotang were successful in co-opting Hinduism, it has been associated with tradition, backwardness, the past, something not quite appropriate in present-day society. The insufficient financial means of the Hindu Dharma bureaucracy has only reconfirmed this image. Modernity, however, has been associated with Christianity and Islam. Converting to either of them usually opens up a whole range of possibilities to acquire a higher education, for making a career in modern Indonesian society, while sticking to Hindu Dharma is likely to prolong exclusion from all the trappings of modernity.

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It remains to be seen whether the current Hindu Dharma leaders in Bali and Jakarta will eventually succeed in convincing the adherents of Aluk To Dolo, Ada’ Mappurondo, and the Toani tradition that a real blending or assimilation will serve their long-term interests. The future development of Hindu Dharma among the non-Balinese population of South Sulawesi is, of course, dependent on many factors, which the official leaders of Hindu Dharma cannot influence much, such as the possible development of more successful proselytizing strategies on the part of Christian and/or Muslim missionary groups; the possible liberalization of the Indonesian state, which would make it unnecessary for Indonesian citizens to profess adherence to an officially recognized religion; or even a possible radical Islamization of the country, which would impede any further possibilities for Hindu Dharma to develop outside Bali. What the future custodians of Hindu Dharma Indonesia would have to do, regardless of the conditions beyond their control, is to show how people at the fringe of the Hindu community can fulfil their spiritual, intellectual, social, political, educational, and perhaps economic needs and desires through their association with Indonesian Hinduism. This would entail a real concern on the part of the Hindu Dharma leaders, which would lead them not only to fairly redistribute the available financial means, but also to study thoroughly all the local conditions and traditions involved, and then to apply their teachings to the local contexts. Yet, the opening gap between the growing number of Balinese and Javanese Hindus, oriented towards universal Indian Neo-Hinduism with its rigid religious standards, and the highly heterogeneous group of traditionalists among the Balinese community alone renders reconcilement of all the different factions of the Indonesian Hindu community almost utopian.

Notes 1 See Ngurah Nala’s contribution to this volume. 2 Idem. 3 Aluk = ‘ritual’; to = ‘man, men, people’; dolo = ‘formerly’: Aluk To Dolo = ‘life regulating rituals of the forefathers’; cf. e.g. Nooy-Palm 1979:10. 4 Ada’ = Ind. adat = ‘sacred customs’; mappurondo = ‘transmitted from generation to generation, already in place’; Ada’ Mappurondo = ‘sacred tradition of the forefathers’; cf. e.g. Makatonan 1985:85. 5 There are two categories of Hindu priest that are officially recognized by the Directorate of Hindu Affairs (Departemen Urusan Agama Hindu) and the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI): the ‘high priests’, ‘twice born’ priests, or pandita; and the ‘once born’ priests, or pinandita, who still also pursue worldly activities; cf. Ngurah Nala’s article in this volume. 6 See previous chapter. 7 cf. Dijk 1981:217; Harvey 1974:423–9. 8 See Dik Roth’s elaboration on the integration of highlanders into the society of lowland Luwu in the previous chapter; cf. also Bigalke 1981:68–72, 82–3. 9 See Ramstedt 1999b. 10 See e.g. Ramage 1995:75–121. 11 cf. Nooy-Palm 1979:279. 12 The region I refer to here is traditionally called Tallu Lembangna. It is the collective name of the three former princedoms of Sangalla’, Mengkendek, and Ma’kale (in the

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27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37

south of contemporary Tator), which were traditionally governed by a puang, or ‘prince’; cf. Nooy-Palm 1979:79. A ramage is a cognatic descent group; cf. Nooy-Palm 1979:18, 54–6. The Peradah forms the youth organization of the PHDI. See also Koolhof 1992:47; Atho Mudzhar 1977:1. Since I have come back from fieldwork in South Sulawesi, Sirtjo has proved to be a stimulating partner in our many discussions on the culture and recent history of the To Wani To Lotang. Moreover, he has been very generous in sharing some of his primary sources on the religious developments in Sidrap with me. See e.g. Koolhof 1992:59–60. For details on this discussion please refer to my Weltbild, Heilspragmatik und Herrschaftslegitimation im vorkolonialen Bali – Eine Analyse des höfischen Diskurses, Frankfurt etc.: Peter Lang, 1998, pp. 50–63, 140–55. At least initially, the strong personal faith of Toraja Christians did not imply strict adherence to orthodox theology; cf. Schrauwers 1995:74, 97, 202–3, 236. See also Aragon 1992:111, 114–16; Bigalke 1981:13–15, 68–9, 118–19, 380; Schrauwers 1995:15–17, 34–6, 70–81. See also Aragon 1992:112–13; Bigalke 1981:209–11, 424; Harvey 1974:90–8, 182, 249; Schrauwers 1995:89. Statistik Indonesia 1997, Jakarta: Badan Pusat Statistik, p. 46. Data Statistik Tahun 1997, Jakarta: Departemen Agama, Direktorat Jenderal Bimbingan Masyarakat Hindu dan Budha, p. 3. This is in line with the general policy of the Indonesian government that discourages sukuisme (ethnocentrism) by cutting out ethnic groups from official records. Instead, every citizen is administrated, classified, and officially addressed above all as an ‘Indonesian’ citizen. See also Makatonan 1985:63. To signifies ‘man, men, people’ and wani means ‘a village in the district of Wajo’, whereas lotang designates ‘south’. Hence To Wani To Lotang can be translated as ‘people who originate from the village Wani and now live in the south of Amparita’; cf. e.g. Atho Mudzhar 1977:24. See also further below. See interview with Uwaq Launga Setti in the South Sulawesi daily Fajar, 4 January 2001. See Kenneth M. George, Showing Signs of Violence. The Cultural Politics of a Twentieth-Century Headhunting Ritual, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1996. See Makatonan 1985. See Koolhof 1992. See Atho Mudzhar 1977; Nur 1980; Proyek Inventarisasi Kepercayaan Terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa 1986–7; Syamsuddin 1983–4; Syukri 1982. cf. Bill Dalton, Indonesia Handbook, Chico: Moon Publications, 1995, p. 1090. cf. Atho Mudzhar 1977:3–5; Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan 1991:15–18; Syukri Asaf Dalle 1982:12–18. See my Introduction to this volume. See also I Gusti Made Ngurah, Buku Pendidikan Agama Hindu Untuk Perguruan Tinggi, Surabaya: Paramita, 1998, pp. 27–8; Susunan Organisasi Dan Tata Kerja Departemen Agama – Direktorat Jenderal Bimas Hindu dan Buddha, Jakarta: Direktorat Jenderal Bimbingan Masyarakat Hindu dan Buddha, Departemen Agama RI, 1980, pp. 4, 7–24. cf. Frederik L. Bakker, The Struggle of the Hindu Balinese Intellectuals. Developments in Modern Hindu Thinking in Independent Indonesia, Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1993, p. 242. Among both Balinese and adherents of Aluk To Dolo/Ada’ Mappurondo (as elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago) we find the belief that certain places, stones, trees, etc. are imbued with an invisible spiritual power that is dangerous to human beings approaching in a casual, irrespective manner. There are, for instance, certain stones in the river Sa’dan that are believed to be ‘sacred’ in the sense that they are ‘known’ to be imbued with such dangerous powers. When people accidentally or deliberately step or

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38 39

40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60

climb upon these stones, they are likely to die instantly, at least according to local knowledge. On our journey to the residence of Puang Ketua Ranteallo in the village of Tengan in the sub-district of Mengkendek, Nek Sando was mentioning a lingga-yoni alami that is held ‘sacred’ in the sense to which I have just alluded. It is only approached by Toraja ‘Hindus’, i.e. adherents of Aluk To Dolo, at the time of certain rituals. This lingga-yoni alami is apparently a large stone with a natural shape that bears great resemblance to . Indian, Old Javanese, and Old Balinese Hindu depictions of a S´ iva-lin ga resting on a yoni. . A lin ga is a stylized depiction of a phallus symbolizing the creative power of the Hindu God S´iva, while a yoni is a stylized depiction of a vagina symbolizing the creative power . of S´iva’s female aspect or spouse Pa¯ rvatı˜, Uma¯, or S´akti. Often, the depiction of a lin ga . rests on the depiction of a yoni, in which case one speaks of a lin ga-yoni, symbolizing the creative union of the two cosmic principles. See also, for instance, Bigalke 1981:18–19. See Ramstedt, Weltbild, Heilspragmatik und Herrschaftslegitimation im vorkolonialen Bali – Eine Analyse des höfischen Diskurses, Frankfurt, etc.: Peter Lang, 1993, and also Bagus and Hefner in this volume. I do not want to re-enter the debate on the etymology of the name ‘Toraja’ here. Those interested in this debate may refer to the previous chapter as well as to Nooy-Palm 1979:6 and Bigalke 1981:13–16. cf. Pelras 1996:131. cf. e.g. Pelras 1996:16; Volkman 1985:20, 24. See also Nooy-Palm 1979:310. This word is conspicuously absent from Salombe n.d., a linguistic book by a Christian Toraja that contains also a small dictionary. cf. P.J. Zoetmulder, Old Javanese–English Dictionary, Vol. I, ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982, p. 398. With regard to indications of early Indianization in the lowlands, see further down below. See above. cf. Harvey 1974:250–2. cf. Bigalke 1981:379–80; Dijk 1981:1, 13–14; Harvey 1974:197, 240; Pelras 1996:282–6. cf. Harvey 1974:181–2. In this respect, see also the elaborations of Pelras 1996:284, 288–92. See the previous chapter. cf. Nooy-Palm 1979:9. cf. e.g. ibid. See also Bigalke 1981:433–4. See previous chapter. cf. e.g. Bigalke 1981:313, 327. In Indonesia, Protestantism (with its different sectarian faces) and Catholicism have always been viewed as two distinct religions. Due to the limits of space, I am unable to discuss here the relevant insights put forward in the following volume: Peter van der Veer (ed.), Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity, New York and London: Routledge, 1996. cf. Sebastian Rompe, De Indonesische Algemene Verkiezingen 1999, Leiden: KITLV Press, 1999, pp. 146–7. Like all other existing political parties apart from Golkar, Parkindo was finally dissolved in 1972, its constituency shifting to one of the two newly established ‘opposition’ parties, i.e. the Indonesian Democratic Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia, PDI), together with the constituencies of four other parties, i.e. the Indonesian National Party (Partai Nasional Indonesia, PNI), the Catholic Party (Partai Katolik), the leftist Partai Murba, and the army-backed Association of Supporters of Indonesian Independence (Ikatan Pendukung Kemerdekaan Indonesia, IPKI). The other new ‘opposition’ party was the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, PPP), fusing the constituencies of four Muslim parties, i.e. the Indonesian Muslim Party (Partai Muslimin Indonesia, Parmusi), the Partai Nahdlatul Ulama, the Partai Syarikat Islam Indonesia, and the Partai

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61 62 63

64 65 66 67

68

69 70

71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Islam (PERTI). cf. Sebastian Rompe, De Indonesische Algemene Verkiezingen 1999, Leiden: KITLV Press, 1999, pp. 70, 85–6, 143. See the previous chapter and e.g. Bigalke 1981:381–3. cf. Adams 1988:121; Crystal 1974:140–5 and 1978:118; Volkman 1984:162–4, 1985:41, 178, and 1989:93–4. For further introductory information on the Mandar, the pre-Islamic tradition of which Ada’ Mappurondo and Aluk To Dolo seem to share many similarities, please refer to Frank M. Lebar (ed.), Ethnic Groups of Southeast Asia, Vol. 1: Indonesia, Andaman Islands, and Madagascar, New Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press, 1972, pp. 143–4. cf. Azyumardi Azra and Saiful Umam (eds), Menteri-Menteri Agama RI: Biografi Sosial-Politik, Jakarta: PPIM, 1998, pp. 203–41. cf. Azyumardi Azra and Saiful Umam (eds), Menteri-Menteri Agama RI: Biografi Sosial-Politik, Jakarta: PPIM, 1998, pp. 245–67. cf. Tarmizi Taher, Menuju Ummatan Wasathan. Kerukunan Beragama di Indonesia, Jakarta: PPIMIAIN, 1998, p. 48. See, for instance, Suradi Hardjoprawiro, ‘Kepercayaan Terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa. Perkembangan dan Pembinaan’, in: Supartha, Wayan (ed.) Memahami Aliran Kepercayaan, Denpasar: Penerbit BP, 1994, pp.163–200. cf. Robert W. Hefner, ‘Reimagined Community. A Social History of Muslim Education in Pasuruan, East Java’, in: Charles A. Keyes, Laurel Kendall, and Helen Hardacre (eds) Asian Visions of Authority. Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994, p. 77. cf. Pelras 1996:82–93. I fortunately got a copy of a similar typewritten ‘Summary of the History of the Conviction and Teaching of the To Wani To Lotang’ (‘Ringkasan Perkembangan Timbulnya Keyakinan Dan Ajaran Toani Tolotang’) in the Indonesian language, which Uwaq Sandy Tonang had sent to the Dirjen Bimas a few years ago. Its content, abstracted from four traditional Bugis manuscripts, or lontaraq (i.e. the Mulaulona Batar Guru, Itebbanna Welenrengnge, Taggilinna Sinapatie, and Appongenna Toani), was corroborated by the interview with Uwaq Launga Setti in the South Sulawesi daily Fajar, 4 January 2001. I owe the reference to this interview to Sirtjo Koolhof. See also Atho Mudzhar 1977:24 and 1985:14. See also Atho Mudzhar 1977:24 and 1985:14–15; Nur 1980:15–17. The name Perrinyameng consists of perri (difficult, hard) and nyameng (well-being), signifying the achievement of well-being after tilling the fertile land around the new village, which ended the hardship of migration; cf. interview with Uwaq Launga Setti in the South Sulawesi daily Fajar, 4 January 2001. See also Atho Mudzhar 1977:26 and 1985:16; Nur 1980:17. See also Atho Mudzhar 1977:25 and 1985:17. See also Atho Mudzhar 1977:30–2 and 1985:14–15, 21; Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan 1991:27–8, 98; Syukri Asaf Dalle 1982:27, 70–1. See also Atho Mudzhar 1977:29–30 and 1985:18–19; Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan 1991:91–8; Koolhof 1992:57–60; Syukri Asaf Dalle 1982:58, 67–9. cf. Atho Mudzhar 1977:33–4 and 1985:22–3. cf. Atho Mudzhar 1977:47 and 1985:34–5. cf. Koolhof 1992:50. Oral information of an elder brother of Uwaq Sandy Tonang. An acronym signifying Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia (Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia), comprising both the army and the police. cf. Atho Mudzhar 1977:25–6 and 1985:15–16; Nur 1980:16. The pressure consisted of violent attacks on To Wani To Lotang who openly resisted the attempts at Islamization. Corpses that had not been interred according to Muslim rites were exhumed and reinterred according to the ‘proper procedure’. Moreover, access to the ritual places of the To Wani To Lotang was impeded. The Perrinyameng could only

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84 85 86

87 88

89 90 91

92 93

94

95 96 97 98 99

100 101 102

be saved from destruction by Muslim youths (pemuda Muslimin), members of the Kommando Keamanan Muhammadiyah, Ansor, and other Muslim organizations due the vigilance of armed To Wani To Lotang guards. cf. Atho Mudzhar 1977:45–57, 72–4, and 1985:33–43, 56–9; Koolhof 1992:50–1; Nur 1980:28–32; Syukri Asaf Dalle 1982:33–8. cf. e.g. Frank M. Lebar (ed.), Ethnic Groups of Southeast Asia, Vol. 1: Indonesia, Andaman Islands, and Madagascar, New Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press, 1972, p. 143. cf. Jan Fontein, The Sculpture of Indonesia. Catalog of an Exhibition held at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., New York and Washington: Harry N. Abrams & National Gallery of Art, 1990, p. 180. cf. Pelras 1996:71–2. The term ‘Hindu’ in ‘Hindu–Javanese’ refers to Indic influence rather than Hinduism. ‘Hindu–Javanese’ therefore refers to the Indianized polities of ancient Java and their culture. See also my Introduction to this volume. cf. Pelras 1996:72. cf. Pelras 1996:59; see also Kern 1993:vii, 40; Koolhof 1992:24; Koolhof and Tol 1995:19, 167–73. See e.g. Theodoor G.Th. Pigeaud, De Tantu Panggelaran. Een Oud-Javaansch Prozaschrift, uitgegeven, vertaald en toegelicht, ’s-Gravenhage: H.L. Smits, 1924, pp. 130, 131, 133, 135, 137, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 157, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 180, 181; Th.G.Th. Pigeaud, Literature of Java. Catalogue Raisonné of Javanese Manuscripts in the Library of the University of Leiden and other Public Collections in the Netherlands, Vol III, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970, p. 247; Soewito Santoso, Sutasoma. A Study in Javanese Wajrayana, S´ata-Pit.aka Series, Indo-Asian Literatures, Vol. 213, New Dehli: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1975, p. 175; P.J. Zoetmulder, Kalangwan: Sastra Jawa Kuno Selayang Pandang, Jakarta: Penerbit Djambatan, 1985, pp. 417, 473. cf. Pelras 1996:90; see also Kern 1993:35; Koolhof 1992:12, 23; Koolhof and Tol 1995:19, 174. cf. Theodoor G.Th. Pigeaud, De Tantu Panggelaran. Een Oud-Javaansch Prozaschrift, uitgegeven, vertaald en toegelicht, ’s-Gravenhage: H.L. Smits, 1924, p. 132; Th.G.Th. Pigeaud, Literature of Java. Catalogue Raisonné of Javanese Manuscripts in the Library of the University of Leiden and other Public Collections in the Netherlands, Vol III, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970, p. 392; P.J. Zoetmulder, Old Javanese–English Dictionary II: P–Y, ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982, pp. 1818–19; P.J. Zoetmulder, Kalangwan: Sastra Jawa Kuno Selayang Pandang, Jakarta: Penerbit Djambatan, 1985, pp. 191, 317, 323, 489. cf. David Bulbeck, Historical Archaeology: A Tale of Two Kingdoms. The Historical Archaeology of Gowa and Tallock (South Sulawesi, Indonesia), Canberra: unpublished PhD diss., Australian National University, 1992, p. 478. cf. Pelras 1996:57–8. See e.g. Jacob Cornelis van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society. Essays in Asian Social and Economic History, The Hague, Bandung: W. van Hoeve LTD, 1955. See interview with Uwaq Launga Setti in the South Sulawesi daily Fajar, 4 January 2001. See also Atho Mudzhar 1977:28 and 1985:18. cf. Atho Mudzhar 1977:74–7, 95, and 1985:59–61, 77–8; Koolhof 1992:51–2; Nur 1980:32–5, 86–91; Syukri Asaf Dalle 1982:38–50. In the course of the years, Balinese and Javanese Hindus as well as members of the To Wani To Lotang community would increasingly seek to join ABRI. The growing number of Hindus within ABRI would strengthen the ties between the Hindu community, Golkar, and ABRI. See my introduction to this volume. cf. e.g. Putu Setia, Kebangkitan Hindu Menyongsong Abad Ke-21, Jakarta: Pustaka Manikgeni, 1993, pp. 6–7. cf. Nooy-Palm 1979:9.

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103 cf. ibid.:274–93. 104 According to Nek Sando, a to minaa, for instance, owns the knowledge, orally transmitted in the following gelong (bodies of lore): gelong ossoran (story relating the birth of mankind in this world), gelong basi (the birth of iron and its use), gelong api (the birth of fire and its use), gelong tabang (about the tabang-leaves and their use (the leaves from the tabang plant are revered by all Sa’dan-Toraja, even by those who have already converted to Christianity, for their power to heal wounds and to stop bleeding; that is why the tabang plants can be found in the garden of every household, next to areca palms, mango trees, banana trees, and so forth; tabang leaves are not supposed to be plucked deliberately; they are to be used exclusively in healing ceremonies, so-called pesta to maro, by traditional healers called to matere, who cut themselves on their arms, tongue, or forehead and then close the wounds by applying a tabang-leaf to them)), gelong pare (about rice and its cultivation), gelong mawaq (about traditional clothing made of bark), gelong kambuno (about rontal-palms and the use of their leaves), gelong tedong (about water buffaloes and their use in rituals), gelong langiq (about the sky and its movements), and gelong lembang (about boats). Of course, there are local varieties pertaining to the range and content of the gelong known by a to minaa. Nek Sando himself is a to minaa from the Tallu Lembangna. See also Veen 1965, 1966, and 1979; Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan 1986–7. 105 See Veen 1965, 1966, and 1979. 106 cf. Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan 1986–7. 107 Tongkonan are the traditional houses of the Toraja. The tongkonan of prominent families are still the centre of nearly all Aluk To Dolo rituals as they structure the ritual space in accordance with the sacred geography of the Toraja; cf. e.g. Nooy-Palm 1990:147, 150. 108 See my Introduction to this volume. 109 Ibid. 110 cf. e.g. Volkman 1985:113. 111 cf. e.g. Adams 1988:4–5, 7, 8, 20, 21–2, 25, 106, 139, 178–82, 186, and 1997:159, 163–4, 167; Crystal 1974:138, 139, 148; Volkman 1984:162, 164–5, 1985:137, 167, 168, and 1989:94, 95, 96, 100–1, 104–7. 112 Since the delegitimation of the military and the police, there is currently no government institution that could effectively reinforce the practice of religious tolerance, especially in the more remote parts of the country. Under these conditions, forced conversion to Christianity has recently increased in hospitals, schools, and other workplaces. Adherents of Aluk To Dolo who seek treatment in hospitals are frequently not treated unless they convert. It also happens quite often that old people who die as ‘Hindus’ do not get the traditional Aluk To Dolo funerals as they would have wished. Instead, their Christian children and relatives bury them according to the Christian fashion. 113 Uwaq Sandi Tonang did not want to comment on whether he was afraid to attract opposition from the Muslim population of the area, in case a pura was built. 114 See my Introduction to this volume. 115 M. Massolla, Sukaran Aluk Aluk To Dolo, Messawa: Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia Kabupaten Polewali Mamasa, 1993, p. 3. 116 Ibid.:4. 117 A deity ruling the earth. 118 A deity ruling the water. 119 A deity ruling the sky. 120 A deity responsible for the well-being of all creatures including plants. 121 A deity ruling the forests. 122 A deity responsible for the destruction of the world, for instance through earthquakes or the eruption of volcanoes. 123 M. Massolla, Sukaran Aluk Aluk To Dolo, Messawa: Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia Kabupaten Polewali Mamasa, 1993, p. 40. 124 Sumpaq = ‘soul’; cf. Salombe n.d.:319. 125 Dadi = ‘coming into being’; sule = ‘again’; cf. Salombe n.d.:313, 319.

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126 Lenduq = ‘to stop in, to be called’; bali = to answer; puang = ‘god’; cf. Salombe n.d.:312, 315. 127 See also Ringkasan Perkembangan Timbulnya Sejarah Keyakinan dan Ajaran Toani (Tolotang), Amparita, n.d., p. 3.

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13 THE POSITION OF HINDUISM IN KARO SOCIETY (NORTH SUMATRA) Juara R. Ginting

This chapter examines the position of Hinduism (Hindu Dharma Indonesia) in Karo society. It argues that Hinduism among the Karo provides a continuation of the pre-colonial ways of life, which were determined by certain relations between people and land. The first section of this chapter analyses these relations between the Karo and their land as well as the relations between the various descent groups. The second section shows how these relationships formed the conceptual basis for religious diversity among the Karo. The third section discusses the position of Hinduism in the present context of religious diversity among the Karo.

Karo land and its people Karo society appears to its members as a particular society that constitutes relationships between the Karo land and the Karo people. The land of the Malays, the land of the other Batak (Toba, Simalungun), and the Alas of Aceh surround the land of the Karo. The world outside usually sees the Karo as one of the Batak subgroups. But the Karo people see themselves more as a special society consisting of five merga (Ginting, Karo-karo, Perangin-angin, Sembiring, and Tarigan) than as a subgroup of the Batak. Merga is a category that encompasses a number of different ‘clans’ related to each other as senina (sharing the same bride). The relationship between merga is that of ‘bride-taker’ (anak beru) to ‘bride-giver’ (kalimbubu). Members of different merga may relate to each other as ‘sharing the same bride’ when they together relate as ‘bride-taker’ or ‘bride-giver’ to members of yet another merga. A Karo ‘clan’ is a patrilineal descent group that forms a unity with the land of a particular urung. The founder of the urung becomes the ancestor of the clan. People that originate from the same urung relate to each other as sembuyak (sharing the same womb). People that originate from different urung may relate to each other as ‘sharing the same bride’ or as ‘bride-taker’ and ‘bride-giver’ but never as ‘sharing the same womb’. The land of an urung encompasses a number of different villages. Each of the villages (kuta) was jointly founded by different descent groups originating from four different ‘clans’. Thus, a village represents a bond of four different urung. The

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Map 13.1 Karo land. Source: Map by Juara Ginting

founding descent groups together are called ‘the village founder’ (simantek kuta). One of the four ‘clans’ represents the womb of the village (sembuyak), one the ‘bridetaker’ (anak beru), another the ‘bride-giver’ (kalimbubu), and the fourth those ‘sharing the same bride’. The land of the urung, however, forms a whole with the ‘clan’ that founded the urung. It requires one of the four village founding clans to be the same as the one that founded the urung. The ‘clan’ that founded the urung usually becomes ‘the womb of the village’. Occasionally, it may also become the ‘bride-taker’, the ‘bridegiver’, or the one representing those ‘sharing the same bride’. The clan that founded the urung has a special position in the village. The villagers that belong to this clan are conceived of as a special descent group with a status quite apart from the other village founders. This descent group is called pemena (pioneer) or si lebe merdang (that which starts the planting season of rice). None of the villagers may plant rice in his or her field before this group has performed the ritual planting of the rice.

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The special status of the descent group called ‘pioneer’ (pemena) demands that its members are not to be excluded from the various groups of ‘village founder’ (simantek kuta). Therefore, the clan that founded the urung always plays a double role in the village. The double role occurs since the ‘pioneer’ and the ‘village founder’ represent two different groups that oppose each other. The ‘pioneer’ refers to the village as a group of farms (barung-barung) developed by particular descent groups that originate in older villages. It conceives of the village as a farming area of older villages. Conversely, the ‘village founder’ refers to the village as a royal house (rumah) built together by different descent groups that relate to each other through marriage. It conceives of the village as originating in a particular marriage rather than in other villages. According to this, the village is seen as independent from any other village. From these two perspectives it follows that a village is seen as constituted by the village land and the village house. The village land is represented by a farm owned by a couple that belongs to the founding clan of the urung. All people that inhabit the land are considered as the couple’s workers. The couple’s patrilineal descendants inherit the ownership of the land and, therefore, they succeed the couple as patrons of the other villagers. The village house is represented by a royal house, which is inhabited by the patron couple and a number of other couples that share the patron couple’s bride price. These couples represent the three other ‘village founder’ descent groups that relate to each other as ‘sharing the same bride’, ‘bridetaker’, and ‘bride-giver’. Each of the couples is considered as a ‘rich man’ (sebayak). The difference between the village seen as being constituted by its land and the village seen as being constituted by its royal house is the following: in the first case, the couple representing the clan that founded the urung relates to the rest of the villagers as a patron to his clients. In the second case, however, it relates to the rest of the villagers as a rich man to other rich men. Relations among villagers are thus simultaneously structured by notions of equality and inequality. The village land and the village house are, however, complimentary to each other. A village represents a particular piece of land of a certain clan that has become part of the clan’s particular urung land. However, a piece of land can only become village land when a village house has been established, in which members of different clans may be considered as people of the same royal house. Several royal houses may be built in the same village house, so the village house may encompass several royal houses. The village house itself is part of the village land. The first royal house established within the village house represents the construction of the village house. Yet, the village house itself does not always have to be a building. It may also be an earthen ground where members of different clans relate to each other as people of the same royal house. The actual construction of a Karo royal house varies as it consists of four, six, eight, twelve, sixteen, and twenty-four sections, each of which represents a clan. In spite of this variation, the four corner sections of a royal house encompass all the other sections. One of the corner sections represents the clan of the chief of the house, and the other corner sections represent the clans of its bride-taker and its bride-giver as well as the clan of those who relate on the same terms to the

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chief of the house, the chief ’s bride-taker, and the chief’s bride-giver. The same order is applied to the village house. The village house is built as a royal house within which the four founding clans of the village are represented by the four corner sections of the house. One of them represents the chief of the village founders, etc. The chief of the village founders may occasionally belong to the clan that relates as bride-taker, bride-giver, or as sharing the same bride to the clan of the pioneers. Hence, the village house relates to the village land as bride-taker, bride-giver, or sharing the same bride. In most cases by far, however, the chief of the village founders belongs to the same clan as the pioneers. Thus, he also belongs to the group of pioneers. In this case, the chief of pioneers and the chief of the village founders relate to each other as the oldest and youngest sons of the same couple. The village land and the village house relate to each other as those sharing the same womb. A conflict between the two chiefs may cause an epidemic in the village, which then necessitates a war game between the party of the village land and that of the village house. For this ritual, the pioneers may divide themselves into two groups: that which supports the party of the village land and that which supports the party of the village house. The chief of the group that wins the game becomes the village chief until the game is played again when the village is haunted by a new epidemic. Epidemics and war games are thus important factors in the succession of the village chief. The construction of a fence underlines the distinction of the village house from the village land. It encircles the village house and sets its ground apart from the rest of the village land. Rituals performed on this ground must relate to the four different clans as the sections of the same royal house. Therefore, the participants can be considered as people of the same royal house. A clan may perform its own rituals without the participation of other clans, but only in the part of the village land that lies beyond the space encircled by the fence. Here, a clan may enact its own tradition without considering its relation to another clan. The difference between the village land and the village house can be traced to the village foundation. A village can only be founded in an area that has become the farming land of a certain urung. The couple that built the first farmhouse in a certain place within the boundaries of a certain urung is acknowledged as the pioneer. Other people who then also erected a farmhouse there are considered as the pioneer’s workers. At this stage, the village represents a couple’s farm. The next stage is building a royal house and a fence encircling its ground. The four corner sections of this royal house represent four clans that relate to each other as the womb, the bride-taker, the bride-giver, and the one sharing the same bride. The third stage is the integration of the village house into the village land by means of ritual hair washing at the bathing place of the village. There is no larger descent group in Karo society than one whose members are patrilineal descendants of the founder of an urung and whom we call ‘clan’. Relations between clans occur only through marriage. Marriage itself, which is called erjabu (having a section in a royal house), implies the inclusion of a couple within a royal house. Therefore, relation by marriage is the same as that between sections of the

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same royal house. This relation, however, is irrelevant for the relation to the village land. From the perspective of the relation to village land, the wife and children of a man belong to his clan, whereas from the perspective of the royal house, the husband and children of a woman belong to the wife’s section in a royal house. Relation between the sections is the same as relation between women that own the sections. The difference between village land and village house is applied to the division of Karo land into regions. Karo land is divided into Karo Gugung and Karo Jahe. The Karo Gugung is further divided into four sections: Karo Julu, Karo Berneh, Karo Gunung-gunung, and Karo Baluren. A divergent meaning of the geographical designations jahe and julu in the sub-regions Karo Julu and Karo Berneh make the geographical division relative and transitive. In Karo Julu, the words jahe and julu respectively mean the downstream and upstream parts of a river. In this perspective the two main regions of Karo land, i.e. Karo Jahe and Karo Gugung, refer to downstream Karo and Karo highland, and the four sub-regions of Karo Gugung to upstream Karo, Karo lowland, Karo mountainous land, and Karo gorges. From the perspective of Karo Berneh, however, the words jahe and julu respectively refer to the West and East. Thus, the two main regions are referred to as western Karo and Karo highland; and the four sub-regions of the Karo highland to eastern Karo, Karo lowland, Karo mountainous land, and Karo gorges. An understanding of the cognitive principles of this division is the key to understanding the transformation of the relationship between Karo clans into the relationship between recently established religious organizations among the Karo. In connection with that, three further points deserve our attention. First, the division of Karo land into two main regions deviates from ethnographical reports on Southeast Asia that for the most part assume the importance of dual oppositions such as those between downstream and upstream, lowland and highland, or between east and west. Second, the two divergent semantic notions of jahe and julu allow no single line to be drawn between the Karo land and its surroundings. The semantic notions of each of the two names are such that each name actually represents different areas. For example, Karo Julu is, according to the notion of the Karo Berneh referring to eastern Karo, a part of which may be considered as being part of Simalungun land. But according to the notion of Karo Julu, it refers to upstream Karo that exclusively belongs to Karo land. This brings us to the third and last point. The difference between the two notions can be traced to two movements progressing along the jahe–julu continuum. The Karo Julu notion refers to the flow of river water and the Karo Berneh notion to the course of the sun. Karo land is thus either referred to as a land that is defined by the flow of water or as a land defined by the course of the sun. These two notions concerning how Karo land is defined correspond to the Karo classification of the two divisions within each settlement, i.e. the perlajangen (the domain of bachelors) and the kemulihen (the place of return). Perlajangen refers to the place where a person is not considered as being part of any royal house, whereas kemulihen refers to the place where a person is integrated into a certain royal house. This classification is also applied to the division of Karo land into

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Karo Jahe and Karo Gugung. They are called ‘the domain of bachelors’ and ‘the place of return’ as well. Some authors assumed this classification to refer to a wave of Karo migration from Karo Gugung to Karo Jahe. On the basis of this assumption, the colonial officers had restricted Karo land to Karo Gugung and had declared Karo Jahe as being part of the territories of Malays of the Langkat, Deli, and Serdang sultanates. They ignored the perception of the Karo themselves, who basically apply this classification to the relational movement between people and not to the geographical movement of the people themselves. According to the perception of the Karo, a person may be considered as being in a domain of bachelors even though he or she inhabits a village in Karo Gugung. Similarly, a person may be considered as being in a place of return when he or she is visiting his or her royal house of origin in Karo Jahe. The most important difference between the domain of bachelors and the place of return is the following: in the domain of bachelors, a person is solely associated with his or her clan and therefore may enact his or her own clan’s tradition in this area. In the place of return, a person is associated with a section of a royal house and thus no clan-specific ritual may be carried out there. Hence, Karo Jahe as ‘the domain of bachelors’ corresponds to the village land, and Karo Gugung as ‘the place of return’ corresponds to the village house. Therefore, Karo Jahe and Karo Gugung should be seen as complimentary to each other. Belonging to the place of return, all urung in Karo Gugung are associated with different sebayak (rich men). The sebayak on their part relate to each other as different sections of a royal house. Therefore, every Karo Gugung clan is associated with a certain clan in Karo Jahe. Urung in Karo Jahe are independent from each other, so each of them forms a particular ‘nation’ that can make its own decisions without any confirmation from another urung. Interdependency arises, though, when an urung in Karo Jahe follows its Karo Gugung counterpart to relate to another Karo Jahe clan as sections of the same royal house. The two corresponding urung in Karo Jahe and Karo Gugung usually carry the same clan name. They are differentiated from each other by adding the name of their urung to that of the clan. They may relate to each other as sharing the same bride, but never as sharing the same womb. In a relationship with another Karo clan, they point at Karo Gugung as their origin, but in relation to a particular land they point at Karo Jahe as their origin. This suggests that the division of Karo land into the domain of bachelors and the place of return corresponds to the two different aspects of a clan, i.e. its independent particularity and its interdependency within a larger network of clans. This also applies to the distinction of the pioneers (pemena) from the founders (simantek). The pioneers point at the village as part of an older village, through which it is considered as part of an urung. Conversely, the founders point at the village as a particular bond of different urung, which sets it apart from any other village. The next section will demonstrate how such a pattern of relationships was established between a religious group called Pemena and another religious group called Hindu Karo.

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Religious diversity among the Karo: the perception of agama What the Karo mostly perceive as agama today is not much different from what was understood by their grandparents or great grandparents when they had been introduced to the ‘first’ agama, Christianity, or Agama Kristen. Historians may say that Islam had been introduced prior to Christianity, but we need to take into consideration that the Karo did not know the word agama before Christianity was introduced as an agama simbaru (new religion). Furthermore, the word Islam was not much known among the Karo at that time. What historians use to designate as pre-colonial Islamic groups or Muslims are those who were called ‘Jawi’ by the Karo. ‘Jawi’ refers to different groups of people such as the Malays of the east coast of Sumatra or the Acehnese in the north of Sumatra who inhabit a land called Taneh Jawi (Jawi land). Islam, on the other hand, now appears to the Karo as one of several agama. The Karo perceive agama as a kind of universalist belief system that connects people to the global world and does not imply a specific relationship with land. This perception of agama can be traced to what was conceived of by the Karo as kalak Kristen (Christian people). Before the introduction of Christianity, the word kalak (people) was mostly used to indicate a specific relationship between people and land. Kalak Jawi (Jawi people), for instance, could be traced to Taneh Jawi (Jawi land). The term kalak Kristen, however, is the first expression in which the word kalak is used without indicating a specific relationship between people and land, since it appeared to the Karo that there is no Christian land. When kalak was later used in kalak Islam (the people of Islam), kalak Hindu (the people of Hinduism), and kalak Buda (the people of Buddhism), it also no longer implied a reference to land.

The Agama Pemena In 1967, some Karo proclaimed to adhere to Agama Pemena. The name pemena has been introduced above as referring to the village pioneer. Like the clan of the village pioneers, Agama Pemena was conceived of as a specific religion that had come to Karo land before the arrival of any other religion. This definition of Agama Pemena, at least, was announced by an organization named Balai Pustaka Adat Merga Si Lima (BPAMSL), established in 1967 in Berastagi (Karo highland). It was the purge of Communism that had started off in 1965, after the crush of the so-called Communist putsch (GESTAPU) by the Indonesian military, that had spurred these developments.1 At that time, still over 70 per cent of the Karo had embraced neither Islam nor Christianity. In order to escape the accusation of being a member or sympathizer of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), many either entered the Karo Batak Protestant Church (GBKP) or officially registered as Muslims. But the majority of the people still refrained from adhering to any of the five recognized agama, i.e. Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The BPAMSL provided these people with an organizational framework as well as protection vis-à-vis accusations of being atheist or Communist. Its leaders

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contested the assumption that Karo rituals were animistic, claiming that they were part of a specific agama named Pemena. The foundation of the BPAMSL took place in the town of Berastagi, accompanied by a specific ritual. The ritual consisted of three stages. At the first stage, the participants made offerings and bathed at Lau Debuk-debuk hot spring, cleaning their bodies with special herbs. At the second stage, the participants processed from the Lau Debuk-debuk hot spring to the newly built ceremonial hall of Berastagi, where trance dances were performed. At the third stage, the head of the Karo regency officially installed the BPAMSL board members. That ritual was clearly derived from the rituals accompanying the foundation of a Karo village. The Lau Debuk-debuk hot spring had replaced the village bathing place, which represents the village land, whereas the ceremonial hall of Berastagi corresponded to the village house. The official installation of the board members resembled the third stage of the village foundation ritual by which some men or women are initiated as shamans. One of the shamans becomes the village shaman (locally called guru kuta, literally ‘spiritual teachers/leaders of the village’) that mediates between the village pioneers and the village founders. The establishment of the BPAMSL was connected to two main issues, which in the beginning were rather unconnected. One of the issues was concerned with the status of Berastagi as a Karo settlement. The town had originally been a market place that was developed by the Dutch colonial administration. By 1967, the town had grown into a settlement resembling a Karo village, but the inhabitants still had to return to their respective village of origin for performing certain rituals, as the settlement did not possess a royal house. Therefore, it could not be considered a proper Karo village yet. The other issue arose during the preparations for the ritual transformation of the settlement into a proper Karo village. People feared accusations of being Communists should the ritual be performed in the traditional manner. The fear was mainly expressed by those inhabitants who had already converted to Christianity. In response to this, the Karo branch of the Trotskyite Party (Parte Murba) instigated all those Karo who did not adhere to any agama to establish the BPAMSL in order to strengthen the Karo society against foreign influence. At the time, many likened the condition of Berastagi to the condition of the first Karo settlement ever established in Karo land. Berastagi was already representing a group of people, but there was still no clear relation among the people because the group itself had not yet been integrated with the land. This condition caused a particular problem for the inhabitants. No part of the land could be used as a place for a ritual exchange between different clans, which was crucial for the royal marriage (erdemu bayu) and royal mortuary rites (nurun-nurun cawir metua). People were, of course, allowed to perform a ritual exchange but only in their village of origin. In this condition, the town was considered more as a group of farms (barungbarung) than as a proper Karo village (kuta). The inhabitants still had to build a royal house before the settlement could be considered a proper kuta. The Karo perceive of Karo land as originating from a group of farms developed by people who came from various places beyond the boundaries of Karo land. Each of the farms constituted a patron–client relation between the owner

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and his workers, which was not yet based on clan differentiation. Karo society came about when a royal house was constructed, after which clan differentiation became important. According to a myth, the autochthonous ‘people’, called umang,2 built the first Karo royal house as a bride price given by the chief of this ‘people’ to the chief of Si Pitu Kuta urung. The royal house was a gift of the chief of the umang for his marriage with the daughter of the Si Pitu Kuta urung chief. The wedding was celebrated together with the inauguration of the royal house itself. After the wedding, the new couple moved to live at the top of Sibuaten Mountain, the highest mountain in Karo land. On the basis of this myth, the Karo direct their offerings to Sibuaten Mountain when they are opening a new farm. The ‘pioneer’ represents a group of villagers that precede other villagers in their relation with this couple. The couple itself represents an integration of the autochthonous people with the Karo as the allochthonous. It occurred to the people that the ritual transformation of Berastagi into a proper village would represent the return of Karo society to its very early condition, turning the ‘founding’ ritual into a kind of pilgrimage. This was of great interest not only to the inhabitants of Berastagi, but also to many other Karo living either in other parts of Karo land or beyond. The participation of Karo branches of various Indonesian political parties and the regent of Karo regency in that event contributed not only to the people’s trust that Agama Pemena was a legal religion, but also to the people’s trust in the BPAMSL’s ability in linking the Pemena to the national state.

The distinction between adat and agama The BPAMSL became at once the largest religious organization in Karo land. Many who had earlier joined the Karo Batak Protestant Church (GBKP) had left that Church by the late 1960s and now declared themselves to be adherents of Pemena. This made the GBKP aware that the fear of being accused as atheists and thereby as Communists would no longer bring new Karo members to the Church. Therefore, in 1969 new board members of the GBKP launched a new strategy that aimed at rendering the GBKP more attractive to the Karo. In order to understand this new strategy, it is helpful to recall the main stages of the historical development of the GBKP in Karo land. During the colonial period, Christians appeared to the Karo as people belonging to a foreign society. At the time, the Dutch Missionary Society (NZG) had established itself in Karo land in order to introduce Christianity to the Karo. The name Gereja Karo (Karo Church) used by the NZG’s first church in Karo land designated more a field to which missionary activity was directed on the part of the NZG than a church owned by the Karo. During the Japanese occupation, newly baptized Karo Christians established the Gereja Batak Karo Protestan (GBKP) as an independent Church. At the time of the first and second Dutch political actions (1947–9), the GBKP joined the Dutch by supporting the Federal State of East Sumatra, while most of the Karo supported the national state led by Sukarno. In 1949, the victory of the national state over all the Dutch-supported federal states caused some difficulty for the GBKP. As it had supported the federal state, most Karo

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accused the Church of being a ‘traitor’. The GBKP tried to change this image by adapting itself to Karo society. To this end, it discriminated between secular and religious principles in Karo society. Classifying so-called adat (custom, tradition) practices in the secular domain of Karo society, the GBKP determined kiniteken (belief, trust) as the religious sphere. Based on this classification, the GBKP allowed its members to participate in the adat practices of Karo society, but prohibited them to participate in matters of kiniteken. In the mid-1960s, the GBKP’s discrimination between secular and religious, i.e. adat and kiniteken, spheres of society became a subject of conflict among the Karo. After an increase in membership in 1966, the GBKP tried to apply its concept of separate spheres to the Karo village. Using the power of the government and its fear of GESTAPU activities, the GBKP started to isolate aspects of kiniteken from the Karo village, reducing the village to just a matter of adat. This strategy evoked resistance and eventually led to the establishment of the BPAMSL in 1967. The BPAMSL induced non-Christian Karo to combat the GBKP’s attempt to secularize the village. In the name of Pemena, non-Christian Karo banned members of the GBKP from participating in the establishment of a village house, causing them to lose their access to the village land.3 This aroused fear among the GBKP members, leading many to abandon the Church in favour of Pemena. The GBKP’s new strategy handled the distinction of adat and kiniteken more clearly and precisely. In the first instance, the GBKP suggested the separation of the Church from the village as belonging to a different society, and, in the second instance, it spurred its members to participate in both societies, i.e. the Christian and the Karo society. This strategy not only seemed to satisfy the GKBP’s own members, but also to the adherents of Pemena. The latter were now more willing to isolate kiniteken aspects in village rituals. Thus, Christians could experience and participate in them as a matter of adat.

A general consensus about adat and kiniteken The tolerance shown by the adherents of Pemena resulted in a general consensus about the continuity of Karo society on the basis of religious diversity. The consensus entailed the acceptance of the concept that Karo society is constituted by adat and kiniteken. Adat referred to a social institution that unites the society with the land, whereas kiniteken referred to another institution that integrates the society into a specific order of the universe. This allowed people to affiliate with Karo society in terms of adat and with another society in terms of kiniteken. This discrimination between two societies or social groups, however, was not a new invention by the GBKP. It can be traced back to the relationship between the different Karo clans. As I have mentioned above, all Karo clans are grouped into five merga (Ginting, Karo-karo, Perangin-angin, Sembiring, Tarigan). People belonging to the same clan relate to each other as sharing the same womb. People belonging to different clans either relate each to other as sharing the same bride, as bride-taker, or as bride-giver. Membership in one of the five merga and engaging in the kind of relations implied by the traditional patterns of social communication among the Karo do not mean that a Karo cannot also be part of another society. All Karo clans,

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in fact, trace their origin to another society. In doing so, each Karo clan represents another society that differs from Karo society. The distinction of the village house from the village land corresponds to the alliance of each of the Karo clans with two different societies. With regard to the village land, a clan may act as a specific society that differs from Karo society. With regard to the village house, a clan should act as part of Karo society by pointing to a royal house as its origin. The same conceptual pattern was applied to the various kiniteken or agama. Adherents of any agama may act as a specific society apart from Karo society, but only on the village land. Within the boundaries of the village house all adherents of any agama are part of the village house in which every new relation should adapt to the relationship between the four founding clans of the village. The general consensus allowed Pemena a position equal to other agama. But it had not given Pemena a superior position vis-à-vis the other agama, equivalent to the status of the clan of the pioneers compared to that of the other clans. A widespread desire for such religious superiority seemed to open a way for Hinduism, which was perceived by the Karo as being Pemena’s counterpart.

The rise of Hinduism among the Karo From 1972 onwards, many Karo who had openly declared themselves as adherents of Pemena began to officially register as Hindus, owing to the fact that the BPAMSL was transformed into the Association of Karo Hinduism (PAHK), after the government party (Golkar) had won the general elections of 1972. When the New Order government had frozen all the activities of the Trotskyite Party a few months before the general elections of 1972, the BPAMSL faced an organizational crisis. Many important figures in the BPAMSL had joined the government party and had officially declared themselves as adherents of Islam. Also the chairman of the BPAMSL, who had been an influential politician in the Karo branch of the Trotskyite Party, had joined Golkar and had officially become a Muslim. During the campaign for the general election of 1972, he had declared the BPAMSL to be a mass organization of Golkar and had demanded that its members support the Golkar campaign in Karo land. Djamin Ginting, the founder of Gakari, the most important national organization of Golkar at that time, had led these campaigns.4 This caused a split of the BPAMSL into two factions, as most of the other board members of the BPAMSL had been members of the Indonesian National Party (PNI). The leaders of the Karo branch of the PNI had mostly been ex-members of the Karo Folk Army called Pasukan Hililintar (‘The Thunder Troop’). In the period 1947–9, they had fought a guerrilla war against the Dutch occupation of Karo land. The leader of this guerrilla troop, Selamat Ginting, had been known to be a fierce opponent of Djamin Ginting in their combats against the Dutch occupation. Now in politics, Selamat Ginting was a PNI leader of national format and Djamin Ginting a main figure within Golkar. The split of the BPAMSL had stifled its activities. Many Karo shamans continued to perform the Pemena rituals, but no longer under the authority of the BPAMSL. At this time, sympathy for and the membership of the Karo Batak Protestant Church (GBKP) began to increase. The status of Pemena as a legal agama became

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Figure 13.1 Consecration of a padmasana in a Karo village. The padmasana is originally a Balinese structure, which has been redefined as the obligatory representation of Sanghyang Widhi in every Hindu temple throughout Indonesia by the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia. Source: Photo by Juara Ginting

threatened since most of the governmental officials and schoolteachers in Karo land were Christians or Muslims. Unofficially, people were required to fill in adherence to one of the five nationally recognized agama (Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism) in school forms, identity cards, and diplomas. Pemena was not included in the list of agama, because it was usually just seen as kepercayaan (belief). The only way to answer the question of agama was thus to fill in the answer tidak beragama (without religion). Fear of being accused of GESTAPU activities again increased among those Karo that adhered to none of the five agama, heightened by the fact that the New Order government began to hunt down the so-called ‘PKI remainders’ (sisa-sisa PKI) in order to put them into jail. Fortunately, on a Sunday, Brahma Putro (the pseudonym of K.S. Brahmana, a Karo of the Brahmana clan) invited some ex-board members of the BPAMSL to have lunch at a luxurious restaurant in Berastagi. He was joined by a rich man of the Indian community of Medan who owned one of the largest schools in the capital of North Sumatra. Brahma Putro happened to be the director of that school. A discussion took place after lunch that started with the question about the origin of Pemena. The discussion eventually reached the conclusion that Pemena

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originated from Indian Hinduism, more specifically in the teachings of Bagavan Br.gu. The conclusion was based on the following assumptions: first, the fact that the names of some Karo clans such as Brahmana, Cholia, Meliala, and Pandia originated from Indian words suggested an Indian contribution to Karo society and culture. Second, a resemblance of some of the Karo rituals performed by the adherents of Pemena with certain Hindu rituals convinced the participants of the discussion that Pemena originated from Hinduism. Third, the name Perbegu, by which Pemena was referred to before Christians and Muslims interpreted it as ‘the people of begu (ghost)’, seemed to indicate the name of its Indian founder, Bagavan Br.gu (Brahma Putro 1981). Thus, the discussion in Berastagi became the starting point for promoting Pemena as a branch of Hinduism. On the very same day, the Association of Karo Hinduism (PAHK) was established. Most board members of the BPAMSL – excluding, of course, the chairman of the BPAMSL, who supported Golkar and had become a Muslim – became the board members of the PAHK. Brahma Putro received some money from the rich Indian to write a book on Karo history in order to ‘scientifically’ elaborate on the way in which Pemena comprises a branch of Indian Hinduism.5 Furthermore, the Indian community of Medan donated money to the PAHK in order to transform all BPAMSL branches into PAHK branches. A few months later, the ex-secretary of BPAMSL, Adhata Bukit, was appointed as the second vice-chairman of the provincial office of the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI). A Karo journalist, Moksa Ginting, was sent to Jakarta in order to learn more about Indonesian Hinduism. Moreover, the PAHK launched a campaign under the slogan ‘Hinduism and Pemena are the same’, assuring people that an adherent of Pemena does not have to learn and practise new rituals in order to become a Hindu because all Pemena rituals are already Hindu. In 1985, the provincial office of the PHDI incorporated Karo Hinduism into a new sub-section called Parisada Hindu Dharma Karo (PHDK). It immediately became the largest sub-division of the PHDI after that of Bali. The PHDI claimed to have 50,000 Karo members and about 50,000 Karo sympathizers.

Karo Hinduism versus Hindu Dharma Indonesia The establishment of the PHDK in 1985 was actually the climax of Karo enthusiasm for Hinduism. It was accompanied by the inauguration of the first Karo Hindu temple in the village of Tanjung (Karo highland). This temple was built in Balinese style under the supervision of a Balinese Brahmin priest (pedanda). The inauguration ritual was performed according to what the PHDI claimed to be the correct Indonesian Hindu Dharma ritual. At the same time, the PHDI made it clear to its Karo members that only Hindu Dharma was true Indonesian Hinduism, and that only those rituals taught by the PHDI could be performed as true Indonesian Hindu rituals. This statement totally bypassed the much-publicized assumption that Karo rituals would originate from India. Surprisingly, the PHDI classified Pemena rituals as ‘animistic’ and suggested that adherents of Pemena learn the Hindu Dharma rituals. Thus, all of the sudden, the PHDI took the same stance as the Karo Batak Protestant Church (GBKP) towards Pemena.

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This caused a considerable decrease in the popularity of Hinduism among the Karo. Many people who had officially registered as Hindu in 1985 no longer liked to participate in Hindu activities. They continued to practise the Pemena rituals, which they now called cara-cara sindekah (the old ways). Sometimes, they referred to themselves as kalak pemena (the people of pemena) or permerga si lima (part of the five (Karo) clans). Besides, they no longer made a clear distinction between pemena as referring to the group of village pioneers and Pemena as referring to a religious group. These people were in general shamans (locally called guru). Some of them established various ‘non-religious’ organizations that have aimed at continuing the traditional knowledge of Karo society, such as the Persatuan Pengobatan Tradisional Karo (The Association of Karo Traditional Healing) or the Arisen Perjenujung Deleng Sibayak (The Co-operation of Shamans Whose Spiritual Partner Originates from Sibayak Mountain). Others entered one of the Churches established in Karo land, such as the Karo Batak Protestant Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Pentecostal Church, and the Adventist Church, or embraced Islam. Several Karo have continued their membership in the Parisada Hindu Dharma Karo (PHDK), though. The PHDK has also attracted new members, both from the younger and the older generations. Its members now congregate in four Hindu temples, built in Balinese style and located in various Karo villages. It is only in these villages that Karo still adhere to Hinduism. But there, too, Hinduism is on the decrease. Most of the young Karo who do not live in these villages have never heard about the Parisada Hindu Dharma Karo. Even many Karo who in 1985 participated in the inauguration of the first PHDI temple in Karo land, have forgotten that at the very same event the PHDK was established. Whereas the PHDI considered the founding of the PHDK as an auspicious beginning for the rise of Hindu Dharma among the Karo, the members of the PHDK themselves saw it as the final stage in the process of having Pemena officially recognized as agama. As has been described above, the BPAMSL had aimed at raising the status of Pemena to the equivalent of being the ‘pioneer in the planting of rice’ amongst all the recognized religions. To this end, the BPAMSL had associated itself with a royal house during the founding ritual that transformed Berastagi into a proper Karo village. Like the village house representing a bond of different clans, the BPAMSL represented an institution through which Pemena could relate to all the other agama as ‘pioneer’. This strategy was informed by the basic relation between Karo land and its people, on the one hand, and the distinction between kiniteken and adat, on the other hand. It referred to the religions adhered to by the Karo as representing different societies that originated elsewhere beyond Karo land. Like a clan, every religious organization must be allowed to practise its own tradition everywhere outside the boundaries of the village house. Within the village house, each of them must pay due respect to the local bond of the Karo clans as structured by the village foundation. The GBKP and other religious organizations might see the founding of a village as belonging to the secular sphere of Karo society, but the adherents of Pemena would perceive it as the society itself. The model proposed by the BPAMSL is not new to the Karo. The same model has, since colonial times, informed the construction of religious buildings such as

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mosques or churches outside the boundaries of the village house. This has even occurred in villages like Bukit (Karo highland), where almost 100 per cent of the inhabitants are members of the GBKP. The aspiration of the BPAMSL to provide something like the ‘village house’ for the various religious organizations present in Karo land was already indicated in its name, Balai Pustaka Adat Merga Si Lima. Balai (house of council, or meeting place) referred to its function as a meeting place, equivalent to the village house. Pustaka (Karo bark book, or holy book) referred to the ‘holy books’ of Pemena and the other religions. Adat in this context was understood as all matters pertaining to the relations between different clans. Merga si lima (the five merga) was another name for Karo society, referring to the grouping of all the Karo clans into five merga. Thus, the name of the BPAMSL indicated that it would represent Karo society by linking the different agama adhered to by the Karo and thereby integrating them with the Karo land. It admonished all Karo to maintain social unity in spite of their different worldviews, offering itself to the Karo as a royal house that mediates between the various religious organizations. However, the founding ritual performed in 1967 in order to transform Berastagi into a proper village was thought to be incomplete. According to the participants, the transformation of Berastagi into a proper village would only be achieved after the founding ritual had been performed seven times, i.e. annually over a period of seven years. People hoped to perform the ritual for the seventh time in 1973. Unfortunately in 1972, the BPAMSL experienced a crisis after the government had frozen all activities of the Trotskyite Party, and hence it was unable to organize the seventh performance of the founding ritual. That signified to the people that the BPAMSL had not yet acquired full status as a royal house, implying that Pemena could not yet aspire to the status of ‘pioneer’ amongst all the other religions. The transformation of the BPAMSL into the Association of Karo Hinduism (PAHK) in 1972 brought new hope to those who wanted to establish Pemena as the pioneer religion in Karo land. Considering Pemena to be equivalent to the village pioneer and Hinduism to correspond to the chief of the village founders and thus to Pemena’s younger brother, the adherents of Pemena could embrace Hinduism. A new problem arose when the Balinese community of Medan began to dominate the board members of the North Sumatran branch of the PHDI, replacing the Tamil community of Medan in this capacity. The new board members agreed to acknowledge Pemena as Karo Hinduism, but only after the name of the Persatuan Agama Hindu Karo (PAHK) had been changed into Parisada Hindu Dharma Karo (PHDK). The change of name implied that Karo Hinduism would have to become ‘proper’ Hindu Dharma. At that time, neither the adherents of Pemena nor the board members of the PAHK had any idea that this would lead to a strict separation of Hindu Dharma rituals from Pemena rituals, as is the case today. Instead, they thought that the foundation of the PHDK in 1985 signified the last stage in the process of establishing Pemena as the pioneer among the other religions adhered to by the Karo. They did not have a clear concept of agama yet, since kiniteken (belief) refers to matters of agama as well as adat.

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Conclusion This chapter showed that adherence to Hinduism among the Karo strongly depends on their attachment to Pemena. The recent board members of the North Sumatran branch of the PHDI, however, who are in general Balinese, ignore this. They seem to have the opinion that Pemena rituals are animistic and therefore deviate from the monotheistic principle of the Indonesian Hindu Dharma. Thus, they do not accept that Pemena rituals are endorsed by the Parisada Hindu Dharma Karo. This has made Hinduism far less attractive to the Karo. In my opinion, the North Sumatran branch of the PHDI should study the recent success of the Karo Batak Protestant Church (GBKP), if it wants to regain the former interest of the Karo in Hindu Dharma. The GBKP had always lost many members when denigrating Pemena. But since it began to pay more respect to all Karo rituals, it has become the largest religious organization in Karo land. Pemena seems to be the hidden power in Karo society. In spite of the openness of the Karo to the outside world, the powerful hidden structuration of their society has always caused strong reactions against any new category that threatens the foundations of Karo society defined by its relation to the land. The GBKP has obtained the position as the most dominant religious organization among the Karo since it has presented itself as one among other religions adhered to by the Karo that pays respect, like a clan in a village, to the spirit of the local land. Moreover, some of the activities of the GBKP appear to the Karo as aiming at the protection of Karo traditional practices that are classified as kinitiken by the GBKP itself. The PHDI would have to emulate the recent policy of the GBKP in order to regain some of its former status among the Karo.

Notes 1 2 3

4

5

See also M. Ramstedt’s introduction to this volume. The Karo perceive umang as ‘half human, half spirit’. Umang are thought to have inhabited the Karo land before the Karo. Access to the village land is, for instance, acquired through a royal death ritual. As members of the GBKP were not allowed to perform this ritual, their bodies could not be buried in the village graveyard. Djamin Ginting was a Karo who, after the GESTAPU of 1965, had held the highest rank in the Indonesian National Army before Suharto made himself a five-star general (jenderal berbintang lima) in 1966. The book was published in 1981 under the title Karo Dari Jaman ke Jaman (Karo from Era to Era) (see Brahma Putro 1981).

Bibliography Brahma Putro (1981) Karo Dari Jaman ke Jaman, Medan: Yayasan Masa. Ginting, J.R. (1986) Pandangan tentang gangguan jiwa dan penanggulangannya secara tradisional pada masyarakat Karo, Medan: Unpublished examination paper at the Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sumatra Utara. –––– (1991) ‘Pa Surdam, A Karo Batak Guru’, in: Achim Sibeth The Batak: Peoples of the Island of Sumatra, London: Thames and Hudson, pp. 85–98.

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14 OLD GODS FOR THE NEW WORLD The ritual struggle of the Tamil and the Karo within Hinduism in North Sumatra Silvia Vignato

Two cases of ‘true Hinduism’ On the evening of 23 February 1995 in Medan, North Sumatra, the heart of the old Indian neighbourhood (the kampung Keling) filled up with Tamils1 gathering from all over the city. For the first time in history (others more modestly stated, for the first time in decades), Maha¯sivarattiri, ‘the great night of S´iva’, was celebrated in the two main Hindu temples of the Tamil urban community. In South India, Maha¯sivarattiri is basically a long consecration ceremony entailing the ritual washing and anointing (abise¯ gam) of a lingam, the symbol of S´iva, performed by a Brahmin priest while chanting mantras. This ritual washing and anointing is repeated four times, each of the four performances corresponding to one quarter of the great night of S´iva.2 In Medan in 1995, however, this pattern was not fully adhered to. First, only the recently renovated Sri Mariamman temple possessed a true lingam. At the Sri Thanthayuthapany temple, the abise¯ gam was performed on a statue of the dancing S´iva. Second, and more importantly, no Brahmin priest conducted the ritual at the Sri Mariamman temple. This was done by the usual pu¯sari, who was assisted by a few learned men of the community. At the Sri Thanthayuthapany temple, on the other hand, a supposedly ‘real’ Brahmin priest, a Malaysian gurukkal, performed the ceremony. At both temples, however, many parts of the whole ceremony raised questions in both performers and participants and often comprised sheer invention. All members of the diversified Tamil community participated in this ceremony in one of the two temples: youngsters, young women waiting to emigrate to Malaysia in order to work at Malaysian factories, old women wearing kebaya and sarong, Malaysian Tamil students of medicine, and so on. That was the only time during my two years of fieldwork in North Sumatra that I saw all these different sections of the North Sumatran Tamil community coming together. Everybody was sitting in silence, watching the god being washed, eating traditional Tamil snacks and prasadam after the end of each ritual cycle. Until then, I had always seen the community divided into two ferociously opposing groups: the faction of powerful

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reform Hindus performing rituals in accordance with what they consider as prescriptions in the sacred Hindu scriptures, on one side, and the faction of rebellious ‘traditionalists’ performing secret and forbidden rites, on the other side. Disagreement focused on the important question of whether ‘true Hindu ceremonies’ should involve processions, bloody sacrifices, forms of devotion implying self-mortification, funerary drum music linked to dance and trance, and fire walking. The rich, small, super-reformist group had answered this question in the negative, having succeeded in convincing the Balinese-dominated local branch of the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI, Indonesian Council for Hindu Religion) that such practices are not ‘true religion’. This has resulted in the prohibition of such popular forms of devotion in Medan. Consequently, most Tamils belonging to the ‘traditionalist’ faction feel that their devotion finds no satisfaction in the reformed Hindu festivals due to the absence of procession, sacrifices, and trance. Even at major events like the Tai Pusam, large parts of the Tamil community are absent. But the Maha¯ sivarattiri celebrated in 1995 reunited the divided Tamil community because it was perceived by reformists and ‘traditionalists’ alike as simultaneously being completely ‘traditional’ and ‘truly Hindu’, due to its ancientness, tamilness and Brahmanic character.3 Traditionally, it is neither supposed to have a grand procession nor is the devotee expected to show his devotion to S´iva in self-mortification or bloody sacrifice. Besides, people did not feel that the performance of Maha¯ sivarattiri was mutilated by reform because they got acquainted with the ritual for the first time and had no memory of any other way to celebrate it, its deep structure being so radically different from any other festival of the Tamil diaspora that no comparison was even possible. Moreover, Maha¯ sivarattiri has made sense and has created consensus not only amongst the Tamils but also amongst the other Indonesian Hindus as it is attested to have taken place in ancient Java since the fourteenth century. The Balinese have started to celebrate it too, and in a very similar way although on a different day. Last but not least, the Indonesian Ministry of Religion has approved of its quiet, non-disturbing, and monotheistic character, its performance being limited to the inside of the temples and focusing solely on S´iva. Most Tamils have not directly been aware of these factors; still I think they have played a role in their acceptance of the ritual. In 1995, the Balinese representatives of the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia attended the event, and they were very happy about the celebration. When I interviewed the Tamil president of the PHDI, who was one of the chief opponents to sacrifices and processions, he explained that the Maha¯ sivarattiri was ‘truly Hindu’ as well as ‘real Tamil tradition’, as it consisted of abise¯ gam, vision of the god, mantra chanting, and meditating – to him the only practices that qualify as ‘truly religious’. During the same period in North Sumatra, I attended other ‘truly Hindu’ rites that were recently instituted and fully approved by the PHDI, and came to the conclusion that the Indonesian Indians allowed the truth of Hinduism to have many different facets when it did not concern the Indian community itself. In 1993, in the village of Sukamakmur, I had attended another ceremony that the Tamil president of the PHDI himself considered as truly Hindu or, more precisely, as ‘traditional Hindu Karo’.4 It was the Mbuah Page or ‘harvest of fruits’, which had nothing to do with any Tamil rite, except that it was as new to the Karo as

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the Maha¯ sivarattiri was new to the Medan Tamils. The few Karo who were Hindu in 1993 had completely and consciously invented their Mbuah Page in a long process of collective discussion and decision. They had devised an official Hindu ceremony that the umat Hindu (Hindu community) of the six villages of the kabupaten Deli-Serdang and Langkat could perform annually. They had debated on the essential elements of the ceremony, which would make it both Karo and Hindu. They had included a short procession, starting from the river, where a ritual bath with floral water would take place, and heading towards the ‘Hindu church’ ( gereja Hindu), as the Karo often called their shrine. The procession was to be led by the local pemangku, a Karo Hindu-Balinese priest who had spent six months in Bali to learn something about ‘Hindu’ ritual. Once he arrived in the temple, the pemangku was to prepare tirta, i.e. holy water, in the fashion of his Balinese namesakes, and then to sprinkle it on to those present. Meat was to be cooked and subsequently offered to all participants. Then, music and dance were to begin. This was exactly what happened on 29 August 1993 in the Karo village of Sukamakmur, in the presence of local Karo Hindus who had also come from the five other villages represented in the meeting. Some Tamils and some Balinese were there too. They had arrived after the procession and gave long speeches about spirituality and the unity of the national Hindu community. Afterwards, the Balinese shared the village food that the Karo hosts had cooked during the previous night. Since the food also consisted of pork and beef, the Indians refrained from eating. Then the traditional music ensemble (gendang) started to play and the dances began, the whole village and all the guests joining in regardless of religious belonging. There were even some unplanned trances, involuntarily triggered by the music. But before the spirits could take possession of the place, most participants collapsed into sleep, while others took leave. As I attended the ceremony, one thing became evident to me: what for the Tamils was now indecent and forbidden religious practice, i.e. processions, dance, possessions, and sacrifice, was perfectly allowable for the Karo. Strangely, the PHDI itself both prohibited the Tamils to perform such religious acts and endorsed the Karo performing them. This hinted at greatly varying notions of ‘true Hinduism’ among the Hindu bureaucrats themselves. Paradoxically, it turned out that the Karo participants were not very satisfied with their invented ceremony, whereas the Tamils had liked their newly introduced ritual very much.

Hinduism and possession in Indonesia Let us recall how it came about that some Karo had converted to Hinduism, and how the same religion has played different roles for the Indonesians of Indian origins and for the Karo. As we know, after 1965 Suharto’s New Order regime reinforced the distinction between ‘religion’ (agama), i.e. monotheism with a precise name, based on a holy book, and ‘custom’ (adat), a set of social rules and habits varying from one ethnic group to the other. This distinction was crucial for people’s survival, as Suharto made ‘religion’ an essential part of his state ideology. In the first ten years of the Orde Baru, a person could not be an atheist – and animism was equated with

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atheism – without risking his or her life. However, the five religions recognized by the Indonesian government had different positions on the traditional reverence to ‘spirits’. Hindus and Buddhists were more tolerant towards such reverence as long as it remained subordinate to the worship of a supreme God (Sanghyang Widhi Wasa or the Adibuddha). In this way, Hinduism and Buddhism allowed for the maintenance of certain traditional elements that were necessary for the continuation of an ethnic identity within the larger national society. Besides, both religions served as an instrument of national integration in the interest of the Indonesian state by regulating ethnic tradition. For the Tamils and the Karo, adherence to Hindu Dharma Indonesia provided a means to express some self-determination concerning the direction their path of modernization would follow within the Indonesian state. As soon as most Tamils had declared they were Hindu, joined by a number of Karo, the suspicion of being atheists was abated. It now remained to decide on the problem of what kind of tradition each group wanted to maintain by joining Hinduism. A whole worldview was at stake. The relationship between man, the spirits, and God, as well as the many different ways to interpret this relationship were of course central to this problem. In this regard, the official notion of ‘true Hinduism’ held by the Hindu bureaucracy played a different role with respect to the traditions of the Tamil and Karo. For the former, ‘true Hinduism’ outlawed the possession by spirits and the performance of sacrifices; for the latter, ‘true Hinduism’ initially meant the protection of just such practices. All through their lives, Medan Tamils deal with different forms of one sacred being that are sometimes of vague human origin. Belief in and worship of this multi-faceted sacred being help to establish individual identities as well as the identity of the Tamils as a group. It can be a devilish spirit related to certain individuals and small groups (it is then called pe¯ y). More often, however, it is a deity (most often the Goddess) worshipped in a variety of ceremonies individually as well as collectively.5 A similar plurality of immanent divinities exists for the Karo. For them, the motivation to embrace Hinduism was actually the need to save this supernatural collectivity as a whole, encompassing ancestral spirits (nini ), individual spirits necessary to perform a healing ritual ( jinujung), and the numinous beings called keramat that uphold cosmic order, dwelling on the volcanoes of Karo land or criss-crossing the country. Both Tamil and Karo traditional sacred beings had a hard time in the religious politics of the Orde Baru, but not in the same way. Within the Tamil community, as we have seen, the reformist leaders called upon the Indonesian laws to ban public processions, bloody sacrifices, and devotional self-mortification. At some stage, all these ritual practices involved possession by a supernatural entity. Although no decree explicitly forbade possession, the result was nonetheless that theoretically, all the typical occasions for the embodying of the supernatural beings were sentenced to disappear. In the Karo area, on the other hand, it was the Christian missionaries, backed by the state, who prohibited the performance of all rituals involving spirit possession, even when the various Churches started to follow the modern trend of keeping up as much of the ‘local culture’ as was possible given their strict religious principles.

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This is the shape that religious evolution in the Indonesian state took for the two groups. On the one hand, there was repression of possession cults – that is, cults relating each man and social unit to supernatural beings that grant the continuation of a cosmic order other than the ones approved by the state. On the other hand, there was a division of religious practice into religious worship of a transcendent divinity, which related the worshippers to the Indonesian society and state, and personal, private cults, subject to individual inclination, which were then called ‘tradition’ (adat, tradisi), ‘culture’ (kebudayaan), or more general ‘beliefs’ (kepercayaan). The latter includes the cult of ancestors as well as divination or ‘black magic’. Facing these challenges, both the Tamil majority and the Karo had the same reaction: they stepped back and defended their spirits as social and sacred or divine entities. Yet, it must be borne in mind that little solidarity could develop between the respective Tamil and Karo apologists, because the spirits that the two groups defended did not share the same characteristics and conceptual framework. Hence, also the strategies of defence greatly differed: the Tamils eventually stayed within the boundaries of Hinduism in spite of immense disagreements amongst the different parties within the community. The Karo, however, continued practices that were initially condoned by the Hindu bureaucracy, but that were later likewise condemned by it, causing a large part of Karo ‘Hindus’ to eventually move away from Hinduism.6

Constructing Hindu devotion outside Hindu society For Medan Tamils, any kind of manifestation of divinity, be it S´iva or an unnamed pe¯ y, is non-human in essence. Even though ancestors are respected, and pictures of the deceased stuck on walls, no specific cult is performed for them after the funerary cycle is completed. Through the slow process of purification that dehumanizes the deceased after death, they disappear from people’s lives altogether. There is thus a conceptual discontinuity between men and divinity, even though each man has a spark of divinity in himself. Most divinities do not have human origins. For those who do have a vague human origin, no known mythological background is there to help define them. In Medan, human origin is not important in defining the actual links between the gods and the community, or among the various social and kinship groups. For the Karo, on the contrary, most sacred beings have a human origin, whether it lies in a mythical past or is rather recent. Usually, these beings are the ancestors of the different Karo clans and still contribute to the structuring of the kinship-based Karo society. Some divine spirits of non-human origin do exist as well, but they are hardly ever worshipped directly and they were not the main reason for converting to Hinduism. It is, indeed, because their supernatural beings are so familiar, so close to Karo society, that reverence to them can easily be classified as ‘customary belief ’ or ‘token of the respect for the ancestors’ and therefore compatible with world religions in the political and ideological framework of modern Indonesia. As it goes, most Karo of all admitted religions perform some rituals involving reverence to spirits for a variety of motives, such as healing, problem-

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solving, or the general prevention of disaster. They do so as part of practising their ‘culture’. Of course, the social status of the invoked spirits has changed, but then, the deep structure of society has also changed. I think this is a very important point when trying to explain why Medan Tamils could stay within the boundaries of Hinduism and the Karo could not become fully ‘Hindu’ in any sense. In contrast to the Karo spirits, the sacred beings of the Tamil community cannot be deprived of their divinity. This applies even to demons that are regarded as aspects of the same divinity as the gods. Paying an offering to Ka¯ t.t.e¯ ri, a demon protecting or attacking children, has the same value as paying it to Goddess Ma¯ riyamman or Lord S´iva (or any other bhakti 7 god for that matter), even though it does not convey the same personal and sociological meanings. When a ritual is performed for a demon, a notion of the universe is implied, which transcends the local demon and its petty concerns, linking it with the whole Hindu cosmology and anthropology. For example, an offer to child-eating Ka¯ t.t.e¯ ri, which is not accompanied by the lighting of a lamp, implies that lamps are lit for other forms of the Goddess, thereby inversely implying also all of the other forms of the Goddess. Since the ‘highest’ form of the Goddess is sakti to Lord S´iva, he is also implied; and because S´iva is part of the trimu¯rti, Vis.n.u and Brahma are also implied. Eventually, the Absolute, brahman, is also implied, being the immanent source of all forms and manifestations, even though the women performing the ritual to Ka¯t.t.e¯ ri in Medan ignore most of these philosophical and mythical connotations. The general fact that in the Indian Hindu tradition, all the major divinities are always implied even when a small ritual or a specific cult is performed, is enhanced in migration. In Medan, no detailed hierarchy of gods corresponds to a similarly stratified social order encompassing different ‘castes’ ( ja¯ ti), since the institution of ja¯ ti has long disappeared. Besides, the Tamils are scattered over different parts of the metropolis and live in mixed surroundings that do not allow for separation of relationships and space. In an urban environment where cemeteries and woods – the traditional dwelling grounds of gods like Muniandi, the pe¯ y like Sanggili Karuppan, or the dreadful Su¯dugat.t.ukka¯.li – have become rare, the Tamils have tended to drop their feelings for such deities and spirits. Instead, they have emphasized their relationships with the ‘higher’ Hindu pantheon. Moreover, they increasingly confuse the different deities as they lose memory of the local myths identifying each of them, blending their specificity with the attributes of widerknown deities and worshipping them as gods common to large parts of the Hindu world.8 Rather than separating personal or local ‘beliefs’ from universal God, the Tamil have underlined their devotion to the universal God as being the root of their personal beliefs. As they have become more and more standardized the local cults of Medan Tamils have increased their legitimacy and their strength. Conversely, the Karo tradition had no historical link to any kind of largely shared weltangschauung such as the Hindu pantheon. From the Karo perspective, divinity or sacredness is a quality that circulates from men to villages, to fields, to volcanoes, back to men, and is rooted in the local landscape without connecting at a certain stage to a wider, translocal cosmology. I am not in the least suggesting that the Karo tradition or weltanschauung is of lesser value than the Indian one. It

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is a just a question of socialized and shared references. Notwithstanding the official Indonesian position that the Karo had actually been Hinduized in the past, they were never subject to the incredibly structuring and stratifying power of social and political Hindu ideology, the highest gods of which are recognized by different ethnic groups throughout South Asia. In Indian Hinduism, different local myths, habits, and cults have all become part of an organized worldview, capable of justifying the existing social organization on supernatural grounds. During the long process of Hinduization, for instance, of Southern India, local societies were integrated into Hindu kingdoms, i.e. political unities, with different roles and powers. But the Karo were never relating to a Hindu society in such a way. There were hence no historical links that necessitated them to embrace Hinduism. On the contrary, since Christianity and Islam were adapted to modernity and perfectly compatible with the Indonesian state ideology, they were a serious option especially for most of the Karo intellectuals. Over time, they proved to have the strongest attraction for the large majority of the Karo. At the end of the 1980s, only the inhabitants of the remotest Karo villages were still adherents of Agama Hindu, a position that was understood as a form of resistance to change rather than as a means to control it as some had wished in the beginning. And how could the most conservative among the Karo peasants, who most resisted change, devise the concepts necessary to transform their local divinities into aspects of the one God? Contemporary Medan Tamils, on the other hand, could easily find links to a more global worldview in their own tradition. Embracing Indonesian Hinduism is thus easier for them and more in line with their sense of ethnic identity than converting to Christianity. Spirits and gods, of course, have to be considered within the context of the ritual relationship man entertains with them. When I said that both the Karo and the Tamils have defended possession, it does not mean that ‘possession’ means exactly the same thing in the two cases. For Medan Tamils sacrifice, including its symbolic substitutes, is the foundation of the link between man and gods, between micro-cosmos and macro-cosmos. Ultimately, any sacrifice is self-sacrifice, be it in the externalized form of bloody sacrifices or in the internalized form of silent meditation: the devotee offers himself as a victim, and his or her ‘death’ reveals his or her divine part. Medan Tamils take this devotional attitude, or bhakti, towards all kinds of sacred beings. For them there is no difference in absolute value between the Brahmin sacrificing ghee to S´iva and the humble man sacrificing a chicken to a pe¯ y. They are both taking in the divine essence, refilling themselves with godly power or sakti. In this devotional horizon, ultimately all rituals are a repetition of the same sacrificial death, and theoretically, only one small symbolic act should be enough to achieve that. Emotionally, though, it is difficult for most Medan Tamils to give up the multiple steps representing and enacting the ritual death, to stop bloody sacrifices and selfmortification, and to eventually condense all the ritual steps into one symbolic act. The somewhat ascetic celebration of the Maha¯ sivarattiri was saluted as a great event because it was elaborate enough to satisfy at least some desire for rituals,

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even though it was difficult for Medan Tamils to be contented without a more explicit act of sacrifice. Thanks to bhakti, the Tamils of Medan can work out an internal transformation of their tradition without conversion to another religion ever becoming an attractive option. Through bhakti the Medan Tamils make Hinduism possible outside a Hindu society. Sacrifices are, of course, also performed in the Karo tradition, like when the Karo stick a grilled chicken on to a kind of altar (ercibalen) or direct it to a keramat’s dwelling ground. But for the Karo, as for most Indonesians, the basis of rituals is that they are offerings constructed according to a refined and precise syntax, where the victim is a part of a more general and sometimes quite complex semantic context. It does not carry the weight of a man-to-god relationship.9 Sacrifice does not represent a personal or family devotion to a particular divine entity singled out among those available as the most suitable representative of an immanent, continuous divinity. The Karo do have ‘owners of rituals’ (sukut si kerja),10 but they are not sacrificers in the first place. Karo society is just not grounded on sacrifice. People are rather involved in multiple acts of ritual reinforcing the relationships between the ‘five clans’ and in honouring the ancestor-spirits from whom Karo society originated. But as I have said before, many of these rites can nowadays be performed outside of any ‘religious’ context. In this way, Karo spirits can still grant a certain part of Karo society while being ‘just beliefs’ pertaining to adat. What was the point in performing the Mbuah Page given the fact that it paid much less reverence to the ancestor-spirits than other adat rituals performed by converts to other religions? From a Karo point of view, the inconsistency of holding the Mbuah Page was clearly shown in the poor offerings that were prepared for this ceremony. As a reference to Agama Hindu, these offerings included two Balinese-style offerings (banten) and some flowers. Some cimpa, traditional Karo sweets, had actually been prepared by some non-Hindu girls of the pemangku’s family, abiding by their customary kinship duty. They served as a sort of official reminder of ‘Karo-ness’. Yet, in spite of the ritual ablution in the river (erpangir ku lau), no cigarettes or areca nuts were offered to the spirits. The Mbuah Page was perceived as being neither a Karo nor a Hindu ceremony by most participants. The lack of an individual relationship between man and divinity in the Karo tradition, which is for the Tamils the main condition and the main cause of their attachment to their traditional religious practices, lies at the root of the disappointment in the new, hybrid form of Karo Hindu worship. Let us now focus on the difficulties of the Karo to transform themselves into ‘proper Hindus’. A major problem was, as I have said, the lack of a concept of devotion, which had to be taught to the Karo to turn them into any kind of Hindus. This is not a problem, however, that only the Hindu community faced, because devotion, however different the theological references, is the key to Christianity and Islam, too. The first thing Christian missionaries do is to teach their converts what devotion to God means, how it is practised, and what the beneficial consequences of devotion are for the individual. The problem was who would teach Hindu devotion to the Karo. Who were the Hindu missionaries looking

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after the new flock? It was out of the question for the first leaders of the Hindu Karo movement – keen intellectuals with a fine political nose – to settle with their wives in a faraway village in order to teach Hindu devotion the way Christian missionaries were ready to do, even if they had been capable of doing so. And yet, the people in these villages were somehow expecting just that. Even at the time of my research (1992–5), the few Hindu Karo left were still complaining about the lack of penginjil Hindu (Hindu evangelizers). On the other hand, the concept of evangelism does not exist in the Hindu tradition; no merit is to be gained in making new converts. Another problem concerned who would pay for such Hindu teachers to go to remote villages: the local Hindu community or the central Hindu bureaucracy. Conversion itself is an abhorrent notion in a religion you belong to by birth. Besides, these Hindu teachers would likely be members of other ethnic groups, most probably Balinese or Tamil, unfamiliar with the Karo tradition, which would almost certainly cause some misunderstanding and even alienation, as it has in fact invariably done when both Indians and Balinese have tried to teach ‘true Hinduism’ to ‘Hindus’ of other ethnic background.11 Some Tamils of the reformist group, at one point, had made an attempt at proselytizing the Karo. These urbanized Tamils looked upon the Karo as distant, nice neighbours, and even though they did not like Karo food, they liked the idea of educating them in the noble Hindu religion. But for the Tamils, it has been very difficult to separate being Hindu from being Indian, and this obstacle was never to be overcome. For example, around 1990, a Tamil shopkeeper made a donation to the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia in Medan in order to have a small temple built in the Karo village of Rumah Pil-Pil. Rumah Pil-Pil is the most accessible Hindu Karo village when coming from the direction of Medan. Subsequently, a shrine dedicated to Kartigeia, alias Murugan, was erected in this village. When I first visited the place in 1991, the person responsible for the shrine, who had spent some time in Medan to learn how to perform a puja, performed a small ritual in the Tamil way. A few years later, though, he complained to the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia office in Medan that he felt abandoned in his lonely Sri Kartigeia temple, and did not know what to do about it. The Tamil donator was taken aback. He mentioned to me that in order to revive worship at the shrine in Rumah Pil-Pil, one should populate the place with Indians. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do to help the Karo. As for the Hindu Karo responsible for the shrine, he insisted so much on support from the Tamil because, in his words, he did not feel safe in the presence of the temple with all these (in his eyes slightly ridiculous) blue and red gods. In the end, the Balinese took over, and the rest of the very small umat Hindu in Rumah Pil-pil now celebrates small ceremonies in the Balinese way inside the Kartigeia Koil. What about the Balinese, then, the official representatives of Indonesian ‘hinduness’ in Medan? What were the obstacles for them as teachers of Hinduism? Unlike the Tamils, the Balinese liked visiting Karo villages and enjoyed Karo food such as babi panggang (grilled pork) or beef, both of which horrified the Tamils. They liked to spend a nice day up in the highlands. But that was mostly as far as it went, notwithstanding the few important exceptions. The relationship between the Karo

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and the Balinese was essentially a city–village relationship, a weekend affair. Nothing important was at stake for the Balinese, and the Karo I knew best resented the condescending attitude of the Balinese. The fact that this ‘ethnic distance’ was problematic for the diffusion of Hinduism leads us to a last consideration. Indonesian Hinduism, as it was proposed to the Karo people, paid no attention to the formation of a Hindu self. Even those Tamils and Balinese who were willing to make efforts for the Hindu cause among the Karo, or those amongst the Karo who took Hinduism to heart, could hardly provide a ritual framework for the process of structuring a devout Hindu self in the absence of the supportive factors of a functioning Hindu society. The very constitution of the individual, as it is developed, for instance, through the Karo life rituals, was never Hinduized. This process remained rooted in the local tradition. Thus, new Karo Hindus received little help when stepping out of their traditional universe to enter the new Hindu worldview. They were not taught a more personal access to a universal divinity; at least I never observed any personal ritual performed according to the prescriptions of the Agama Hindu. When, in 1993, I attended a meeting where some representatives of the Karo Hindu community were supposed to establish new rituals, which was actually the very same day they invented the Mbuah Page, the only thought which was given to individual religious practice was the decision to teach the Trisandhya, a Balinese-style prayer of the PHDI version of Agama Hindu to be performed three times a day. It has never had the same emotional pull, though, as the traditional Karo rituals have had. Agama Hindu was introduced into Sumatra as the Indonesian form of a world religion that any individual should be able to embrace regardless of his or her origin and background. However, even though there was a personal ritual of ‘entrance’ for the new converts, the Suddhi Wadani,12 other engaging personal rituals have never been developed. In effect, the formation of a religious self was left to the care of the ethnic tradition where the idea of individual devotion has been absent. Strangely, the practice of the supposedly universal Agama Hindu has thus ended up as a predominantly ethnic affair. The new hybrids of mainly Balinese and a few Indian elements like the Suddhi Wadani and the Trisandhya, suggesting that a Karo has to be Balinesed and Indianized in order to be Hindu, have not been able to substitute the traditional Karo rituals.

‘True Hinduism’ is modern On a more general level, one could read all the ritual inventions or innovations that took place in the name of Hinduism in Sumatra as the creative and experimental offshoot of an ideology concerned with modernity. ‘True Hinduism’ is a modern way to interpret humankind and the world, evolving in a modern nationstate that has experienced technological, economical, and socio-political modernization as well as demographic explosion. Rapidly changing circumstances constantly summoned both the Tamils and the Karo to invent new ways to get by as individuals and as ethnic groups. Hinduism seemed to provide a context conducive for adapting to the modern life, enabling its adherents to derive some cognitive and emotional support from its rituals.13

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In everyday life, neither the Tamils nor the Karo appeared to be inclined to stick to the ‘old’ way. Rather they eagerly and optimistically embraced novelty, whether it was in food, in crops, in dress, in language, in work, or in the general structuring of their time. Yet, they were much more discriminative with regard to changes in ritual, especially the changes in collective rites. It was as if in performing their rituals, they acquired a better understanding of the type of transformation they were willing or unwilling to undertake and of the limit beyond which they did not want to go. The Tamils wanted ceremonies of bloody sacrifice; in everyday life, they wanted to be the kind of people who perform it. The Karo wanted to worship their divinities in a social context, because in everyday life they wanted to recognize them around their world, and were ready to adapt them for the same reason. This is why that what brought forth a strong activity of conscious ritual transformation, within or outside Hinduism, was the query for the general new cognitive categories14 needed to master the changes occurring in the world: ritual change could convey or imply a sharper understanding and easier handling of novelties, including their massive political aspects – ranging from the religious politics of the Orde Baru to the actual, lacerating ethnic conflicts. Beside, we have seen what complicated, refined, debated questions arise for the researcher while analysing any Hindu rites. In this light, conversions, decisions on religious matters, sharp contrasts occurring within the Tamil community and the Karo society have to be seen as part of a general, deep inner transformation of the individuals as well as of the groups, rather than sheer adaptation to cohercitive laws.15

Conclusion The conclusion of my reflection on ‘Neo-Hinduism’ in North Sumatra is that without its adherence being rooted in bhakti, Hinduism has hardly any chance to survive in a non-Hindu society. Since Indonesian Hinduism has neglected the implementation of bhakti through thorough education in Hindu thought and practice,16 Hinduism seems to be threatened to continue to lose out to the other religions in Indonesia, unless missionary action is undertaken. But as we have seen, proselytism seems inconceivable in a religion you may belong to by birth. In this respect, it is interesting to look at new tendencies in India, in Bali, and in the Tamil diaspora. The Indian movement promoting hindutva wants to convert back to Hinduism those Indians who have ‘lost’ their ‘true’ Indian identity by having been mislead, in recent or ancient times, into converting to other religions notably by Muslims and Christians.17 The very politicized activists of the hindutva movement have been carrying out structured proselytizing all over India. On the grounds of their basic assumption, they could also proselytize among those Indonesians who claimed to have been Hindu in former times. This might give a different turn to the future development of Indonesian Hinduism. Balinese intellectuals and religious authorities have also kept on writing and debating about what their Hinduism should be. Increasingly, they have emphasized the personal relationship which each devotee (penganut Agama Hindu) is supposed to entertain with divinity, no matter if divinity was conceived of as traditional Balinese sacred beings, as the Indonesian Hindu Sanghyang Widhi, or as

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Indian deities such as S´iva, Kr.s.n.a, or others.18 Moreover, the large Tamil diaspora living outside India has become extremely important for South Indian religious centres like Madurai, due to the lavish funding on the part of Tamil diaspora communities. In other words, Hinduism has already started to effectively transcend the boundaries of India. The implications of these developments for the development of Hinduism in Indonesia cannot, however, be fathomed yet.

Notes 1 Sumatran Hindu Tamils, some 30,000 people, are third- to fifth-generation immigrants, nowadays holding Indonesian citizenship. Even though their forefathers were mainly plantations workers, they are now entirely urban, living in Medan or in nearby towns. 2 See Long 1982. As L’Hernault and Reiniche (1999:128–9) have pointed out, though, in many temples in India this ceremony also includes a procession. 3 As Long (1982:199) has pointed out, this is a Brahmanic celebration that nevertheless stresses the equality of all devotees in worship, regardless of caste. 4 The Karo are an ethnic group consisting of about 300,000 people mainly living in the highlands west of Medan or on the nearby slopes. Until 1970, when they massively converted to Christianity, more than half of them still openly practised the traditional Karo religion. The Hindu Karo movement had sprung from a traditionalist association that wanted to preserve Karo adat (customs), rooted in the basic principles of kinship and the belief in the supernatural beings that had constituted them. Nowadays, hardly 5,000 Karo still declare Hinduism as their religion. They are scattered in some twelve villages and are mainly about sixty or more years old; see also Chapter 13 of this volume. 5 See also Vignato 2000:93–119. 6 See also Chapter 13. 7 Bhakti (Sanskrit for ‘devotion’; Tamil: bakti) is one of the main dimensions of Hinduism. In bhakti, any human being can obtain salvation regardless of his or her status obtained through birth (i.e. his or her ‘caste’ or gender), owing to the transformative power of his or her love relationship with his or her favourite god; cf. Biardeau 1981:93–101. 8 This upgrading of local gods, part of what Srinivas (1962) called ‘Sanskritization’, has been a general phenomenon in India as well as among the Indian diaspora. 9 On offers and rituals amongst the Karo, see Smith Kipp 1983 and Smith Kipp 1987. 10 See Ginting 1994. 11 See e.g. Ginting and Ramstedt in this volume. 12 Two official books on the Suddhi Wadani have been published in Jakarta since I carried out fieldwork in Sumatra; cf. Departmen Agama RI 1998 and Titib 1997. They give ample proof of the effort to find a justification in Indian Sanskrit texts for an otherwise Balinese ritual. 13 cf. Valeri 1981:230. 14 For a detailed, even though sometimes unclear, discussion about the importance of cognition in anthropology, see Sperber 1996 and Bloch 1998. ‘Cognitive categories’, as I see them and as Bloch suggests, are not only ideas about the world, they are also implicit possibilities of action. As they include principles of action, they imply relationships, or the chance to create them when needed: they can also lead to political decisions such as ‘converting’ to a new, unknown Indonesian Hinduism. 15 For the Karo, Rita Smith Kipp comes to the same conclusion when she states that Protestant churches never stopped exacting a year of catechism before bestowing baptism upon new converts (Smith Kipp 1993:197). 16 See Chapter 5 of this volume. 17 See Clémentin-Ojha 1997; Jaffrelot 1993. 18 See Howe in this volume.

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Bibliography Biardeau, Madeleine (1981) L’hindouisme, anthropologie d’une civilisation, Paris: Flammarion. Bloch, Maurice (1998) How We Think They Think, Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press. Clémentin-Ojha, Catherine (1997) Renouveaux religieux en Asie, Paris: EFEO. Departmen Agama RI (1998) Tuntunan Pelaksanaan Upacara Sudhi Wadani, Jakarta: Departemen Agama RI. Ginting, Juara R. (1994) Plants That Cool and Clear the Mind, Leiden: Ph.D. diss. in Cultural Anthropology, Leiden University. Jaffrelot, Christian (1993) Les nationalistes hindous. Idéologie, implantation et mobilisation des années 1920 aux années 1980, Paris: Presse de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques. L’Hernault, Françoise, and Marie-Louise Reiniche (1999) Tiruvannamalai. Un lieu saint sivaïte du Sud de l’Inde, Rites et fêtes, Paris: EFEO. Long, J. Bruce (1982) ‘Maha¯ s´ivara¯ tri: The S´aiva Festival of Repentance’, in: G.R. Welbon and G.E. Yocum (eds) Religious Festivals in South India and Sri Lanka, Delhi: Manohar, pp. 1–25. Smith Kipp, Rita (1983) ‘A Political System of Highland Sumatra’, in: Rita Smith Kipp and Richard D. Kipp Beyond Samosir, Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies. –––– (1987) ‘Karo Batak Rice Rituals Then and Now’, in: R. Carle (ed.) Cultures and Societies of North Sumatra, Berlin and Hamburg: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. –––– (1993) Dissociated Identities. Ethnicity, Religion and Class in an Indonesian Society, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Sperber, Dan (1996) La contagion des idées, Paris: Odile Jacob. Srinivas, M.N. (1962) Caste in Modern India and Other Essays, Bombay: Asia Publishing House. Titib, I. Made (1997) Pedoman Upacara .luddhi wada˜ni, Denpasar: Upada Sastra. Valeri, Valerio (1981) ‘Rito’, in: Enciclopedia Einaudi, Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore. Vignato, Silvia (2000) Au nom de l’hindouisme. Reconfigurations ethniques chez les Tamouls et les Karo en Indonésie, Paris: L’Harmattan.

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15 CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS INTERACTION BETWEEN MODERN INDIA AND INDONESIA Yadav Somvir

Come, O Aryan and non-Aryan. Hindu and Muslim, Come, O English and you Christian, Come, O Brahmin Purify your mind and clasp the hands of all; Come, O downtrodden And let vanish all burdens of your humiliation. Tarry not, but come you all To anoint the Mother on the shore of Bharat Where men of all races have come together. (Rabindranath Tagore: Gitanjali)

Nowadays, many attempts are being made at developing a new universal humanism, or a kind of global ethics, to which people of all cultures can agree. Similar efforts, albeit on a much smaller scale, have been made within the Indian Hindu tradition for several thousands of years. They have generally been described as Sanskritization or the dissemination of a great tradition re-structuring a plethora of little traditions. Yet, there have also been bottom-up attempts at synthesizing diverse cultural and religious elements in India, such as the bhakti movement, the development of the Sikh tradition, not to forget the various reform movements that have emerged since the nineteenth century. Indian civilization in fact developed by integrating and very often blending the key concepts of different contemporaneous cultural streams. As Swami Vivekananda explained to the delegates of the Parliament of Religion in Chicago in 1893, India stands for ‘assimilation and not dissension’. This assimilation has brought forward the universalism within Indian culture, philosophy, and religion; and this especially applies to the Hindu tradition that has reached out beyond the Indian subcontinent, integrating and being adapted to so many Southeast Asian traditions. Relations between India and Indonesia reach far back into the past, to the time of the Indic states of Kutai, S´rivijaya, Mataram, Kadiri, Singasari, and Majapahit. Indian merchants, artists, and priests settled in the archipelago either as a result

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Figure 15.1 A workshop on yoga at the Sekolah Tinggi Agama Hindu Negeri, STAHN, in Denpasar in July 2000. The teachers were an Indian spiritual teacher of the global, yet India-derived Ananda Marga movement and a Balinese Brahmin priest (Ida Pedanda). Source: Photo by Martin Ramstedt

of conquest, peaceful trade, or in response to the invitation of local potentates. Some of the local Indic states, i.e. S´rivijaya and the Central Javanese S´ailendra kingdom, sent a number of their subjects to study at the famous Nalanda University in the northwest of India. The Indian epics Ramayana and the Mahabharata have taken root in various Indonesian cultures, especially in Java and Bali, adapting to local values and needs. It is less well known, perhaps, that not only Hinduism and Buddhism have served as a link between India and Indonesia, but also Islam. Indian Muslim thinkers have indeed considerably influenced the thinking of both Sufi philosophers and modernist Muslims in Indonesia. The onset of modernity in India as well as Indonesia was brought about by colonialism, leading to similar experiences and responses in both countries. Therefore, it is not surprising that thinkers of the new India and Indonesia began to converge their ideas and actions at a time when Western imperialism was beginning to slowly lose its impetus.1 In this context, I would like to briefly point to the encounter between Pandit Nehru and Mohammad Hatta at one of the conferences of the League of Oppressed Nationalities in Brussels in 1927;2 the visit of Rabindranath Tagore to Java and Bali in the same year; the influence of his aesthetic, educational, and philosophical thoughts on the Javanese and Balinese intelligentsia; and the influence of Gandhi’s political thoughts on Sukarno as well as on other Javanese and Balinese nationalists. Having obtained its own independence in 1947, India unremittingly supported Indonesia’s struggle for

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independence,3 which was finally achieved in 1949. Pandit Nehru was the first foreign head of state to visit independent Indonesia, returning Sukarno’s visit to India earlier in 1950.4 To foster the relationship between the two newly independent nations, the Indian government immediately started to grant scholarships to Indonesian students through the agency of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). The programme, which is still running today, started out by offering more than eight scholarships per year. In the first years, many Indonesians responded to the offer. Most of them came from Java and studied at Poona University, especially the Christians among them. In the 1950s and 1960s, many lecturers from the Sanata Dharma University in Yogyakarta went to India. One of them is the present rector of this university. Strangely, only a few Balinese availed themselves of the opportunity to study in India. The few Balinese students who actually went comprised Ida Bagus Mantra, Ida Bagus Puniatmaja, Tjokorda Rai Sudharta, and Nyoman S. Pendit. Ida Bagus Mantra and Nyoman S. Pendit studied at Shantiniketan Vishva Bharaty University, founded by Rabindranath Tagore, and Oka Puniatmaja and Tjokorda Rai Sudharta studied at the Banaras Hindu University. After having graduated from their respective universities, all four Balinese returned to Indonesia, where they attained influential positions. Oka Puniatmaja and Tjokorda Rai Sudharta, for instance, became members of the Indonesian Parliament (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, DPR). Nyoman S. Pendit is still one of Indonesia’s foremost Hindu intellectuals and has lived for many years in Jakarta. Ida Bagus Mantra, on his part, became the most successful of the four. After his return to Indonesia in 1954, he first became a lecturer in Indian history and culture at the prestigious University of Indonesia in Jakarta. Later, he helped to establish the Faculty of Letters at Udayana University in Denpasar, eventually becoming professor, dean of the faculty, and even rector of the university. Serving as governor of Bali for two terms from 1978 onwards, he directed the religious and cultural development of Balinese society. Towards the end of his life, he served as ambassador to India from 1989 to 1992.5 It is noteworthy that after the four Balinese graduates had returned to Indonesia, the interest of Balinese students to study in India declined rapidly. A general decline in the popularity of the scholarships among all Indonesians during the 1970s up to 1987, a time when Indonesians increasingly found it more attractive to study in the US or other Western countries, resulted in the reduction of the number of annual scholarships from eight to two on the part of the Indian government. In 1987 two Balinese students, I Made Titib and I Made Darmayasa, had obtained scholarships and went off to India. I Made Titib had served as an officer in the Indonesian Armed Forces from 1978 to 1985, subsequently occupying the position of vice-secretary of the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI) in Jakarta from 1986 to 1991. It was during his term as vice-secretary of the PHDI Pusat that he studied at the Vedic Department of the Gurukul Kangri University in Haridwar, where he acquired his PhD in 1993. After his return to Indonesia, I Made Titib became head of the Department for International Relations at the head office of the PHDI in Jakarta for one term (1991 to 1996). He then was appointed head of the PHDI in Bali, at the same time teaching the Vedas at

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various educational institutions in Bali.6 Today he is rector of the State College for the Hindu Religion (Sekolah Tinggi Agama Hindu Negeri, STAHN) in Denpasar. I Made Titib has been very active in educating the Balinese in Indian philosophy and spirituality without losing touch with the Balinese tradition. He has furthermore been trying to foster relations between Indian and Indonesian Hindu scholars and spiritual leaders. I Made Darmayasa studied Sanskrit at the Faculty of Letters, Delhi University, in New Delhi and lived for many years in India. Unlike I Made Titib, he has completely turned away from Balinese ritual customs and practices. Back in Indonesia, he has been advocating vegetarianism and the reverence of the cow, while also being involved in the Hare Krishna movement. Thereby he has regrettably alienated a number of people of the persuasion that studying Indian philosophy and culture means cutting oneself off from one’s own roots. Both I Made Titib and I Made Darmayasa, however, rekindled interest in India to such an extent that recently the government of India increased the number of scholarships to ten per year. Apart from providing scholarships to Indonesian students, the Indian government has also been sending professors and lecturers to Indonesian universities since 1950. The majority of Indian professors, who have been sent to the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, the Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, and Udayana University in Denpasar, have taught Sanskrit and Indian history. Professor Raghuvira and Professor Lokesh Chandra, in particular, have been very active in the field of comparative research on Indian and Hindu-Javanese arts, architecture, and literature in order to acquire a more accurate understanding of the ancient links between the two civilizations.

The influence of Narendra Dev Pandit in the 1950s Narendra Dev Pandit Sastri came to Bali from India in 1950, when he was twentythree years old, introducing modern Indian Hinduism to the Balinese people. He was funded by the Birla Mission, headed by a rich Indian entrepreneur who donated millions of Indian rupees for the promotion of the Hindu religion at home and abroad. The religious atmosphere in Bali today is very different from that of the early 1950s. Hinduism was not yet recognized by the Indonesian government as ‘one of the religions adhered to by the Indonesian people’. At that time, most Balinese still referred to their religion as Agama Tirtha or Agama Siwa-Buddha, many of them reticent to call themselves Hindu.7 Through Pandit Shastri, the Balinese for the first time received full information on modern Indian Hinduism. And Pandit Sastri eventually convinced them that they were indeed fundamentally Hindus, encouraging them to struggle unrelentingly for the recognition of their religion on the part of the Indonesian government. He himself worked closely together with I Gusti Bagus Sugriwa, an outstanding scholar of the classical Balinese literary heritage from the North Balinese town of Singaraja, to convince the government of Indonesia that the Balinese were fundamentally followers of the Hindu religion and that their system of belief had to be accepted as ‘religion’. It was Pandit Shastri who for the first time introduced the Gayatri Mantra to the Balinese. It was actually the first Vedic mantra that was taught to the Balinese,

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being one of the most important mantra in the Indian Catur Veda. Later on, he collected other mantras from the Tantra Pura¯ n.a and the Stotra. He named this collection Puja Tri Sandhya (Celebration of the Three Daily Prayers), which has been a successful tool in uniting all the Hindus of Indonesia. Nowadays, the Puja Tri Sandhya is performed by many Balinese Hindus three times a day as an individual prayer hitherto unknown in Bali. Pandit Shastri’s influence continues today, as he was the first person to try to unite all the Hindus of Bali in one organization. With the Vishva Hindu Parishad being established in India, he and I Gusti Sugriwa introduced the concept of a similar organization to the Balinese religious leaders. The idea was accepted and a central organization was founded, which in 1959 was named Parisada Dharma Hindu Bali. Nowadays the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia is the highest assembly of the Hindu community in Indonesia and has its central office in Jakarta. Pandit Shastri eventually took a Balinese wife and became an Indonesian citizen. He has been living in Bali ever since. In addition to being the author of several books on the Vedas, the Hindu religion in general, and Balinese culture, such as Bali Dwipa and other titles, Pandit Shastri was actively involved in setting up educational institutions in Bali, such as Dwijendra University and Saraswati University. He is considered to be a close associate of the late Dr Tamba, who was the actual founder of the Saraswati school system.

The Hare Krishna movement (International Society for Krishna Consciousness, ISKON) The International Society for Krishna Consciousness was founded in 1965 in New York by Swami Prabhupada, a spiritual teacher of the Vais.n.ava sect, in order to preach in the West the teachings of Lord Kr.s.n.a contained in the Bhagavad Gita and other texts. The Hare Krishna movement, as it was also called, soon became very popular, especially among young people. At the time of his death in November 1977, Swami Prabhupada had established more than 100 ISKON centres around the world. In 1977, shortly before his death, he visited Jakarta and met with many Indonesian Hindu leaders such as Tjokorda Rai Sudharta and others. Swami Prabhupada was not well received by the leaders of the PHDI, who found his teachings too sectarian. Soon afterwards, however, the activities of the Hare Krishna movement were the topic of many discussions among Indonesian Hindus. There was, for instance, the Jagannath Ya¯ tra¯, the voyage of devotees of Lord Jagannath from Orissa (India) to Bali in a traditional sailing boat, commemorating the ancient ties between Orissa and Bali. The Indian party was warmly received by Balinese followers of the Hare Krishna movement, who also revere Lord Jagannath, a form of Vis.n.u. Their activities during the visit of the Indian devotees attracted the attention of government officials both in Bali and in Jakarta. Many Balinese were afraid that the decidedly ‘Indian’ teachings of ISKON would seriously threaten the Balinese religious tradition. Consequently, the movement was banned by the Indonesian government. After having endured a long period of silence, it seems that the movement is once again active nowadays, especially since the beginning of the current period of reformation. Yet even with the more

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relaxed attitude towards ISKON on the part of the local government, Balinese society as a whole has still not fully accepted the organization. Nevertheless, there are presently more than 1,500 followers of the Hare Krishna movement in Indonesia. Its leaders – such as I Made Amir, Prabhu Sadasiwa, Sundaram, and others – still remember the long years during which their organization was formally banned and they congregated in secret. Today the movement enjoys more freedom and is able to appear in public. Apart from ISKON, there are other spiritual groups of Indian derivation in Indonesia, such as Satsang Vyas, Ananda Marga, Brahma Kumari, Transcendental Meditation, and the Art of Living. These have been introduced to Indonesia by Indian Hindus, and each has a very small number of Indonesian followers.

The Sai Baba mission Satya Sai Baba, a living ‘Mahar.s.i’ attracting thousands of devotees from all over the world to his main ashram in Puttapharty (South India), is believed to be an Avata¯ ra, an incarnation of God. The Sai Baba Mission first entered Indonesia in 1973 as an unofficial organization. In 1987, the first Sai Centre was established in Jakarta by an Indian community whose members are now Indonesian citizens. Soon after, centres were established in Bandung, Solo, Surabaya, Bali,8 and other islands. Presently, there are more than 6,000 Sai devotees in Indonesia. Sai Baba’s influence and his reported magical power have attracted not only Hindus but also many Muslims. Not surprisingly, this became a concern of the Indonesian Council of Islamic Scholars, or Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI), the highest Islamic authority in Indonesia. At the same time, Sai Baba attracted the attention of the Indonesian media. Professor Dr Wayan Jendra, one of the leaders of the Sai Centre in Denpasar, explained to me that the Indonesian government was eventually willing to tolerate the Sai Baba movement. The media, however, announced that all activities of the Sai Baba centres had been prohibited. Nowadays, the Sai Centre in Denpasar organizes open prayer (bhajan) sessions twice a week. These sessions attract a lot of people. Yet some Balinese hold that the Sai Baba Mission is threatening their traditional beliefs and practices. This fear is shared by officials in the Provincial Government of Bali (Pemerintah Daerah Bali). Some people even suspect that the Sai Baba devotees promote Indian customs and rituals, such as the agnihotra (fire ritual). Recently, a seminar was organized in order to discuss the issue of outside influence on the Balinese religious tradition, in which many important religious leaders like I Made Titib, I Wayan Jendra, and Oka Puniatmaja (who had recently been ordained a priest) took part. I Wayan Jendra refuted that the Sai Centre denounces Balinese ritual. Rather, the teachings of Sai Baba would enrich Balinese culture and religion. Presently, the Sai Centre is under the guidance of the PHDI and is no longer supervised by the Indonesian Ministry of Religion as before.

The influence of Mahatma Gandhi There are currently various organizations in Indonesia that all use the name of Mahatma Gandhi but are independent from each other. The two main organ-

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izations are found in Jakarta and Bali. The better known of the two is the Gandhi Ashram, which was established by the late Ibu Gedong Bagoes Oka in the village of Candi Dasa in the Karangasem Regency, Northeast Bali, in the 1970s.9 Ibu Gedong Bagoes Oka was a dedicated follower of Mahatma Gandhi for decades. Under the presidency of Abdurrahman Wahid, she served as a representative of the Indonesian Hindus at the People’s Representative Council (Majelis Perwakilan Rakyat) in Jakarta. In April 1999, the Gandhi Ashram dedicated a public monument to Mahatma Gandhi in the form of a life-size statue, which was erected in front of the ashram’s Denpasar branch office. This is the first monument in Indonesia honouring an Indian Hindu thinker. . Gandhi’s teachings on ahimsa¯ (non-violence) and satya (truth) have been very popular in Indonesia. Abdurrahman Wahid, for instance, the former leader of the large Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), who was president of Indonesia from October 1999 to mid-2001, has visited the Gandhi Ashram branch office in Denpasar many times. He has even stated that he himself is a follower of Gandhi. Similarly, some Christian pastors, such as Romo Sandyawan and the late Romo Mangunwijaya, have been very much influenced by the Gandhian teachings. The Gandhi Ashram of Ibu Gedong Bagoes Oka has thus been successful in conveying the message of Mahatma Gandhi in Bali and Java. Shortly before her death, Ibu Gedong Bagoes Oka, who entertained close relations with Javanese Christian intellectuals for many years, opened a new branch of her ashram in Yogyakarta. The second, lesser-known Gandhian organization was established in the 1950s by the Indian community in Jakarta in the form of a private primary and secondary school called the Gandhi School. Some time ago, the Gandhi School was subject to public discussion due to the quarrels that broke out within the organizing committee. These disputes resulted in a schism: one faction has maintained the Gandhi School in Jakarta, while another has opened its own school under the same name in Bali.

Tı¯rtha ya¯tra¯ – holy pilgrimages to India The tı¯rtha ya¯ tra¯, or holy pilgrimages, of Indonesian Hindus to India first started in late 1990 upon the initiative of I Made Titib. After he had obtained a PhD degree in the study of the Vedas at Gurukul Kangri University in Haridwar, Dr Titib returned to Indonesia and introduced the idea of pilgrimages to India to the Indonesian Hindu community.10 The travel company that handled the first tı¯rtha ya¯ tra¯ was Krishna Tours in Denpasar, headed by Drs Sarasastra, a lecturer at the Universitas Hindu Indonesia. Twenty-one Balinese pilgrims visited a number of holy places in India such as Haridwar, Rishikesh, Gangotri, Mathura, and Kurukshetra. The pilgrimage was a success, and the idea soon became very popular. Between 1993 and 1999, around 6,000 Indonesians, most of them Balinese, undertook the tı¯rtha ya¯ tra¯ to India. Earlier on, only Krishna Tours arranged the tours to India, but nowadays there are two travel agencies that arrange them twice a year. In response to the great demand for tı¯rtha ya¯ tra¯ to India on the part of the Balinese, Air India offered a special economy package tour from Bali to India in July 1999. This offer enabled many more Balinese to undertake the pilgrimage.

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Today, the Balinese generally think that these tı¯rtha ya¯ tra¯ are very important for them in order to learn more about the history of their ancestors and to meet renowned gurus who are believed to be living saints. Many Balinese government officials and other religious leaders have already made pilgrimages to India. This trend, as some people have predicted, is likely to develop into something similar to the annual hajj of Indonesian Muslims to Mecca. On the Indian side, however, the desire to travel to Bali has been feeble since no promotion of a trip to Bali has as yet taken place. Until today, only a few retired bureaucrats visit Bali for a holiday. Most Indians prefer to visit Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand rather than coming to Bali, which is largely due to the incomplete travel information available in India. The recently established air link between India and Bali on the part of Air India, however, holds some promise for the future.

Indian sponsored cultural events in Indonesia In 1989, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) established the Jawaharlal Nehru Cultural Centre in Jakarta to promote cultural relations between India and Indonesia. The extensive library of the centre comprises both English and Hindi books, journals, and magazines on traditional as well as modern Indian religion, philosophy, arts, and culture. It is open to the public, all being welcome to study in the library free of charge. At present, there are also teachers of Indian dance, music, yoga, and Sanskrit available at the centre. Moreover, every year India sends two or three large dance groups to Indonesia. Several traditional Indian dance performances that have been given in Jakarta, Bali, Surabaya, Medan, and Ujungpandang (now Makassar) have been enthusiastically received by Indonesians. In return, India also invited dance troops from Java in 1995 and from Bali in 1996 and 1997. Indian movies played an important role in promoting Indian culture in Indonesia in the 1960s. Later on, their influence decreased until two successful Indian television series, the Ra¯ ma¯ yan.a and the Maha¯ bha¯ rata, won the hearts of the Indonesians in 1993 and 1994. Since then, Indonesian television broadcasts Indian films twice a day. Similarly, modern Hindi films are shown by cinemas throughout the country. The Hindi film Kuch-kuch Hota Hai has even broken the record set by the film Titanic in the city of Medan, where it was continuously shown for six months. The Jawaharlal Nehru Cultural Centre has responded to the local enthusiasm for Indian films by organizing a film festival in co-operation with the Taman Ismail Marzuki in Jakarta. In addition, the community of Indian expatriates in Indonesia has founded two associations for Indian–Indonesian friendship, one in Jakarta and the other in Yogyakarta. These foundations, however, have not been very well organized even though some progress has obviously been made in recent years. They have, in any case, not been able to attract a large number of people. Although no such organization has as yet been founded in Bali,11 many Balinese intellectuals are very keen to know more about India and its people. In 1999, a national seminar and an international seminar were organized in Bali in order to discuss the relevance of

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the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore. Another seminar was organized by the Yayasan Dharma Yatra in Denpasar on J.C. Bose, a scientist who has proven that plants have consciousness. His findings were especially interesting for the Balinese thinkers who want to realign their Hindu-ness with modern science. All these activities to foster Indian–Indonesian relations, which I have described above, have boosted the awareness among both Indonesian and Indian Hindus that the Hindu religion is truly transcultural and transnational. It has thus proven its universal character, a fact that has been reassuring Indonesian Hindus in the inevitable process of transition necessitated by the current economic, cultural, and religious globalization.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

See also Ramstedt 2000a. cf. Agung 1990:23. Ibid.:29–78. Ibid.:193–4. See Prof. Dr. I. B. Mantra – Biografi Seorang Budayawan 1928–1995, Denpasar: Upada Sastra, 1998. See also, for instance, the biographical notes in Dr I Made Titib, Tri Sandhya, Sembahyang dan Berdoa, Surabaya: Paramita, 1997. See Michel Picard’s article in this volume. See also the previous chapter. See also Ramstedt 2000b. See also Dr I Made Titib, Pedoman Sembahyang dan Tirthayatra bagi Umat Hindu, Denpasar: Upada Sastra, 1997, pp. 41n. Preparations for the establishment of such a foundation are currently in progress.

Bibliography Agung, Ide Anak Agung (1990) Twenty Years Indonesian Foreign Policy 1945–1965, Yogyakarta: Duta Wacana Press. Bakker, F.L. (1993) The Struggle of the Hindu Balinese Intellectuals. Developments in Modern Hindu Thinking in Independent Indonesia, Amsterdam: VU University Press. Dutt, V.P. (1986) India’s Foreign Policy, Jakarta: University of Indonesia Press. Ramstedt, Martin (2000a) ‘Relations Between Hindus in Modern Indonesia and India’, IIAS Newsletter 23 (October 2000), pp. 8–9. –––– (2000b) ‘Two Balinese Hindu Intellectuals – Ibu Gedong Bagoes Oka and Prof. I Gusti Ngurah Bagus’, IIAS Newsletter 23 (October 2000), pp.12–13.

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16 HINDUISM, IDENTITY, AND SOCIAL CONFLICT The Sai Baba movement in Bali1 Leo Howe

Studies of nationalism in Europe tend to see nationalism as opposed to religion. It is conceived as part of the process of secularization and modernization, which is in harmony with science and rationality, while religion is not. As nationalism grew and became a collective phenomenon, religion declined and became privatized. But this dichotomy between religion and nationalism, or between religion and modernity, is open to question on several grounds. One concerns the forms of religious nationalism in India, Sri Lanka, parts of the Muslim world, and elsewhere.2 Another is the fact that the birth of nationalism in many European countries had very important religious dimensions, and continued to have them right into the twentieth century.3 And, finally, there are numerous new religious movements that appear to accommodate the rational, scientific, and modernizing trends of educated and professional sectors of urban populations.4 This chapter is not about nationalism, but about one such new religious movement in Bali, the devotional movement inspired by the South Indian ‘god-person’, Shri Sathya Sai Baba. My ethnography is about religious change, and the argument I develop concerns the reasons behind the emergence and relative success of this movement. The point I want to make is that while indeed some people become devotees because the movement is in tune with the discourses of modernity that many embrace, or because they feel a sense of alienation from more traditional forms of religion, they also join for reasons which have nothing to do with modernity. I think sometimes that we neglect this diversity of motives, tending to see such movements as more homogeneous than they often are, and concentrating too much on interpreting them within the constraining terms of the religion/modernity framework. Because a movement like that of Sai Baba stresses the individual over the collective, and because it both breaks with the past and maintains continuities with it, it provides ample space for meeting a wide variety of individual needs. A related argument concerns the movement’s critique of established and authorized forms of religion in Bali and, by implication, its hierarchical social organization. However, while many members invoke this critique as one of the reasons they remain devotees, often they joined initially for quite different reasons.

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Figure 16.1 A poster of Satya Sai Baba in the home of a Balinese devotee. Source: Photo by Martin Ramstedt

My point is that for many members the link between religion and modernity is an outcome of membership, not a cause. It is true that the Sai Baba movement in Bali can be seen as a religious vehicle for pursuing political change, but this interpretation tends to marginalize its more purely religious aspects. When Sai Baba began activities in Indonesia in 1980 it was considered a suspect movement and was closely monitored by the state. The first devotees joined at considerable risk but they did so more because of their religious convictions than their political principles.

The ‘Hinduization’ of Balinese religion But why did Sai Baba emerge in Bali? Its appearance, as indeed that of many other new religious forms in Bali, is a result of the gradual ‘Hinduization’ of Balinese religion that has been taking place for more than a century. Adat is the pre-colonial form of religion which, in modified form, continues to this day.5 It is a highly ritualized and priest-dominated form of ancestor worship. The Balinese are obliged to participate in it to retain membership in their

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local communities and descent groups, obtain divine protection for themselves and their children, and to ensure that their land is fertile. I call it a form of Hinduism not just because of the existence of brahmana high priests, a Sanskrit liturgy, and a hierarchical social organization, but also because this is how many Balinese now describe it. The attempt to transform adat by bringing it in line with Indian Hinduism was motivated by many reasons. It was a reaction to Dutch colonial policies, which denigrated the polytheism and ritualism of adat; it was seen by many Balinese themselves in an unfavourable light when compared to Christianity and Islam; and it was the product of a conflict in the 1920s between commoner intellectuals and members of the traditional elite who conceptualized the connection between religion and the ‘caste’ system in very different ways. Influenced by Western ideas of achievement, education, and democracy, these commoners wanted to disconnect the caste system from religion, and eventually to eradicate it, while their opponents, members of the traditional elite, wished to maintain the association because it underpinned their privileged positions.6 When Bali was integrated into the Indonesian state in 1950, the reform of Balinese religion continued. The state declared that only religions that professed universal principles, which were monotheistic, had a holy book, and were not restricted to a single ethnic group could be recognized and supported by the state. These world religions (Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Buddhism) boasted the Sanskrit label agama. At first Balinese Hinduism was excluded, which turned the Balinese into very unwilling targets for conversion. All other religious systems, the so-called aliran kepercayaan, were defined as the local beliefs and customs of particular ethnic groups and thus deemed superstition and backward. It was said of such groups, the Balinese included, that they ‘did not yet have religion’ (belum beragama). In order for Balinese religion to be recognized by the state it thus had to become an agama. This was accomplished by Balinese intellectuals studying in India and Indian scholars teaching in Indonesia. Balinese religion was also rationalized by simplifying and standardizing rituals, stressing doctrine and theology, and translating some Indian texts, particularly the Bhagavad Gita, into Indonesian. In 1958 this religion, now called Agama Hindu, was adopted as a state-supported religion.7 At the same time a religious agency, the Parisada Hindu Dharma, was instituted to administer its affairs8 and it began to publish books in which the more philosophical doctrines of Hinduism are described. While some of these teachings can also be found in Balinese palm-leaf texts owned by priests, most of them were largely unknown to ordinary Balinese, or known in a very different way.9 These doctrines now form the curriculum of religious education in Balinese schools (Geertz 1973; Parker 1992). In contemporary Indonesia, Agama Hindu thus represents the invention of a new religion with its own distinctive mode of knowledge. It resembles a freestanding ethical and theological system of doctrine that strives to standardize the religious beliefs and practices of all Hindus within the state. Agama Hindu is both similar and different to ‘adat religion’,10 but while adat is more an orthopraxy, Agama Hindu is more an orthodoxy.11 The latter is not necessarily opposed to

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the former since it is designed to underpin it, but when the two come into conflict it is usually adat that has to give way.12 Theoretically, between 1920 and 1960, Balinese adat religion was transformed from polytheistic and locally variable ritual practices within Bali to an agama with state-wide potential. In practice, however, most Balinese continue to perform their adat rituals without much concern for the doctrines of Agama Hindu, which are supposed to infuse them with meanings valid for the whole Hindu community in Indonesia.13 The debates that such reforms generated sensitized Balinese intellectuals to the fact that Indian Hinduism was not a unitary and integrated religion. Once the dialogue with India opened up, therefore, Balinese who were not content to let the Parisada and the high priests dictate the manner in which religious reform proceeded exploited the opportunities that now became available, and began to select forms of Hinduism more appropriate to their particular sentiments and interests. Consequently, a variety of religious beliefs and practices were imported from India: the reformist Hinduism of Tagore, Gandhi, and others, and the devotional movements of Sai Baba and Hare Krishna. State-sponsored efforts to create a standardized Hindu religion thus fostered the emergence of alternative religious ideologies. Balinese religion has thus fragmented into several forms of Hinduism that, in turn, have come to articulate patterns of social and political conflict. To avoid confusion in what follows, I use the term ‘Baba’ to denote Shri Sathya Sai Baba, since Balinese often refer to him in this way, and the term ‘Sai Baba’ to denote the devotional movement he has inspired.

New religious movements in Bali Reform Hinduism and devotional movements from India are just part of Bali’s new and changing religious landscape. At about the same time as Sai Baba appeared in 1980, a variety of indigenous new religious movements also began to appear. None of these movements (including Sai Baba) have official status as ‘religion’ (agama), but are instead defined as ‘streams of belief ’ (Ind.: aliran kepercayaan).14 Some have been tolerated by the authorities and have prospered, while others have created unrest and have been investigated by police teams. A few have occasioned violent incidents (arson, physical assault, and even murder) between adherents and opponents, and have been banned. The appearance of so many new and unofficial forms of religion strongly suggests that many Balinese find orthodox and authorized forms unsatisfactory. The devotional movement of Sai Baba is very different from the new indigenous movements. The latter build on Balinese traditions concerning the cultivation of ‘inner potency’ (sakti; Ind.: tenaga dalem),15 whereas Sai Baba denounces this and instead aims at the development of ‘spirituality’ (Ind.: kerohanian), a concept absent from traditional Balinese religion. Sai Baba was introduced from India into Bali, via Jakarta, in 1981. Its principal message is that there is only one religion, the religion of love; only one caste, that of humanity; only one language, that of the heart.16 While essentially Hindu in spirit, it is a universal theology preaching an inclusive doctrine of love, compassion, and

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individual spiritual development.17 It centres on a deeply personal relationship to a highly charismatic, miracle performing ‘god-man’, which is very different from the caste-based scribal, priestly, and ritual traditions of Balinese adat. As a consequence of its universalism, membership does not entail conversion. Baba recommends devotees to maintain adherence to their respective religions because these need to be brought back into the fold of ‘true’ religion. Shri Sathya Sai Baba was born in 1926 in the village of Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh. His early life was unremarkable, apart from the fact that he liked to sing devotional songs and that he mysteriously produced sweets and other items for his friends. When he was older he proclaimed himself the reincarnation of the nineteenth-century saint Shirdi Sai Baba, who lived in the village of Shirdi in Maharashtra, and whom Sathya Sai Baba claims was the first reincarnation of Kr.s.n.a. The link to Kr.s.n.a is therefore direct, which is the reason why the Bhagavad Gita is the movement’s most important holy book. His miracles became more dramatic and frequent, and he began to attract a large following of devotees. In 1950 he built an ashram in Puttaparthi, which has since grown massively to include a hospital, conference rooms, and extensive accommodation for the thousands of Indian and international devotees who visit the ashram. In front of a large crowd in 1963, he declared himself to be S´iva and S´akti in embodied form. He repeatedly claims himself to be all the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, and to be the deity of all religions.18 His devotees call him Bhagavan, that is, God. According to Babb the growth of Sai Baba in India stems from a sense of alienation from customary forms of life and religion. He notes that most Indian devotees of Baba come from the affluent, educated, urban middle class. He argues that many are culturally rootless and ‘distanced from their tradition by background and education’, and that Baba provides an identity that links their nostalgia for that lost tradition with their place in the modern world.19 Each devotee constructs a personal and spiritually fulfilling relationship with Baba to whom all one’s troubles can be divulged. Consequently, devotees find the movement does not contradict their modern values but rather secures these within an enchanted world whose existence is ratified by Baba’s divinity. The relation of Sai Baba to the Indonesian state is ambivalent. When the first centre opened in Jakarta it aroused both admiration and hostility. Some approved of it because it was authentically Hindu, while others considered its teachings dangerously close to Communism and condemned it as subversive. During the first decade of its existence in Bali it was very closely monitored by the state and its lay leaders were frequently taken into police stations for interrogation. Members speak of this time as a period of great stress and tension, wondering whether they would lose their jobs or even be imprisoned. Gradually, however, the movement acquired some powerful friends and, unlike the similar but very much smaller and more radical Hare Krishna movement, it was not banned. On the one hand, Sai Baba’s existence subverts state efforts to contain both religious pluralism and political democratization. Like other new religious movements and imported Indian doctrines, Sai Baba represents an unexpected, powerful, and imaginative challenge to the state’s directives concerning the definition of acceptable religion. On the other hand, the movement also espouses individualism,

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discipline, and social justice, values both embraced by Indonesia’s burgeoning middle class and in conformity with state rhetoric (if not state practice).

Religious practices in contrast Sai Baba has centres in many parts of Indonesia and in all the main towns of Bali. In Denpasar, Bali’s capital, devotion to Baba takes place principally in a large ‘temple’ called Tegeh Kuri. At the front are portraits of Baba surrounded by pictures of other Hindu deities and garlands of flowers. Musicians and lay leaders sit at the front during the singing of bhajan (devotional songs), while devotees sit cross-legged on the tiled floor, men on the right and women on the left. In direct contrast to Balinese temples, Sai Baba centres have no membership register, devotees attend or not as they see fit. Expenses are met entirely by voluntary and often anonymous donations, and rich members often pay large bills out of their own pockets. While Balinese temple congregations exist only to support the gods of each respective temple, Sai Baba centres have three broad programmes of activity: the development of devotees’ spirituality; religious education; and service to the community. Centres offer free classes in religious education in which Baba’s teachings are explained, and religious literature is sold at low prices. Members make charitable donations (money, materials, labour) to maintain, clean, and renovate hospitals, schools, Balinese temples, and other communal facilities. Sai Baba is a very open form of organization whose social outreach functions help its integration into mainstream society. Sai Baba services are also strikingly different from Balinese temple ceremonies. The special adat dress, compulsory for Balinese temples, is virtually never worn; devotees, men and women, wear a white shirt and trousers. Apart from some flowers and incense there are no material offerings at a service. Priests do not officiate because Baba is the only guru and all devotees approach Baba directly. The centrepiece of any meeting comprises the singing of devotional hymns, which allows members to surrender themselves to God by expressing their devotion, love, and subordination. While many emphasize its calming and soothing qualities, others stress the intense emotional experience it engenders. Following the singing a member gives a sermon, which is always in Indonesian, never in Balinese. The subject matter may be an account of the speaker’s visit to Baba’s ashram in South India; a sermon on the merits of discipline, vegetarianism, and self-sacrifice; an exegesis of Baba’s words; or a personal account of what led someone to become a devotee. The final act is the distribution of sacred ashes and holy water to the congregation. The ashes (wibuti) are miraculously produced from Baba’s hand and brought back to Bali by those who travel to India. Balinese temple festivals, by contrast, are replete with elaborate offerings. Priests recite prayers and litanies unintelligible to the congregation and often to themselves as well. Lay members really only take part in the ceremony at its climax when they perform acts of subordination to the assembled temple gods and receive holy water.

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It is important to recognize the tremendous emotional devotion to the person of Baba, which is also evident in devotees’ everyday lives. Devotees pray to Baba several times a day and interpret many aspects of their lives as miraculous outcomes of Baba’s intervention. Their homes are full of his pictures, and many devotees carry portraits of Baba on their person, in their cars, or on their motorbikes. Baba’s miracles are important in initially attracting interest, but it is the intense personal relationship that becomes crucial.20 Almost every devotee I have spoken to has dreamt of Baba,21 and they all express a great longing to see and touch him. This intimate, emotional experience is unlike anything expressed by Balinese towards the gods of their adat religion. Balinese gods are deified ancestors, who are impersonal and conventionalized, and prayers to them are formulaic, communal, and public.22

Who are the devotees? The active membership of Sai Baba counts perhaps some 5,000 people.23 Twiceweekly meetings at the centre in Denpasar attract between 300 and 500 devotees. Since devotees are scattered all over the island, and as there is no membership register, it is not possible to provide a full description of their socio-demographic characteristics. What follows is based on information received from interviews with fifty-three devotees at the main centre in Denpasar, and from general observations and conversations during many visits to the centre and to devotees’ homes. In terms of caste status the proportions are about the same as one would find them in the general population, which is to say that over 90 per cent of members are commoners. The sex ratio is about two to one in favour of men and there are few unmarried female members. There is a preponderance of young men between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, but older men are well represented. The most important feature of the membership is its high level of education. Many have, or are in the process of gaining a university education. Most of the prominent lay leaders of the movement are academics at Bali’s several universities, and the majority of members have finished secondary school. Such educational qualifications provide access to good jobs. Of the fifty-three people interviewed, twenty-eight describe themselves as civil servants, professionals, private officials, or entrepreneurs, with six more being students. The others are artisans, white-collar workers, ordinary employees, labourers, and a few unemployed. Given this profile it would be easy to characterize the movement as a religious vehicle for well-educated, urban-based commoners and intellectuals to pursue political change, in particular the eradication of hierarchy and its associated institutions. But there is more to it than this. For a start a significant number of devotees are poor, have little education, and are either unemployed or in unskilled jobs. They appear to be members for a variety of reasons other than those mentioned above (see following section). Moreover, while one would expect commoners to inveigh against expensive ritual, domination by high priests, and the structural inequalities of Balinese society, what is just as significant are the criticisms of religious intolerance, the autocratic control of Hindu religious orthodoxy by the Parisada,

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and the frequently voiced desire of all devotees to be better people and to establish in society a higher moral code of behaviour. As will become clear, the movement is indeed a reflection of wider social and political conflicts, but for many devotees the most important thing about membership is their relationship with Baba, their own spiritual development and happiness, and their desire to do good in the world. In short, while devotees’ desire for political reform in Bali, and Indonesia generally, is strong, they tend to see political change not as an end in itself, but as a means to securing and extending the influence of the religious truths revealed by Baba.24

Why do they join? People join Sai Baba for many reasons. Many are introduced by existing members because they have shown some interest, often through reading borrowed hagiographical accounts of Baba’s life, which recount his many miracles. Several members told me they were initially sceptical about Baba’s divinity but were highly impressed with the organization of the meetings and the sincerity of the followers. In some cases new devotees felt nothing during the first one or two bhajan sessions, but on the third or fourth occasion were unexpectedly overcome by emotion and spontaneously started crying. Several other members told me Baba had appeared to them when they were ill or in distress but only realized who he was, and that he had been calling them to him, after they had joined the movement. In other words joining is not always a matter of conscious choice but of Baba directing people to him. Potential recruits are also attracted by Baba’s renowned ability to perform miracles. Many are deeply impressed by the miracles others tell them about, or those they have themselves experienced. For example, the sister of one devotee, a hotel worker, was struck by black magic. When mantras were said over her and she was administered with holy water and the wibuti from a Sai Baba service, the afflicting spirit cried out in pain and begged them to stop. The spirit clung to her for most of the night as these ministrations continued, but finally fled when a photo of Baba was placed on her body. Since then she has become a committed devotee. Another commoner women, a seamstress, was suffering from a heart illness, and though examined and treated by several doctors, remained at death’s door. A close friend who was a devotee encouraged her to attend the bhajan sessions and to meditate on Baba. Slowly her illness subsided and she stopped taking medicine. She is convinced that it was Baba who cured her. Many of the miracles that devotees related are much less dramatic: the inexplicable and timely appearance of valuables thought lost, or the amazing ease with which complex travel arrangements to India have been finalized. But therein lies their significance. Because the mundane and the transcendent are connected by Baba’s permanent presence in both, the miraculous becomes part of ordinary everyday life. Many devotees are successful in academic and business life, but the miraculous does not contradict their modern rationalism. Baba’s love and protection inculcate and strengthen habits of discipline, hard work, and dedication so that both material success and miracles become the rewards of devotion.

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A third motive concerns those who are distressed but are restored to health by Baba. I speak here not only of potential suicides but also those leading aimless lives. Many young men described their recent past as a vicious circle of gambling, drinking, petty crime, parental conflict, and unemployment. Now they see Baba as a constant, protective companion who infuses their lives with new meaning by providing a fixed centre and a purpose beyond the mundane. Several devotees said that Baba helped them control strong feelings of fear, anger, desire, and jealousy, and that overcoming these ‘internal enemies’ has been a greater challenge to them than dealing with the malicious insults of outsiders who condemn the movement. Another attractive aspect of the movement is the ability and willingness of experts to explain the ‘real’ meanings behind adat ceremonies. Because this knowledge informs contemporary life, lay leaders explain that it should be widely distributed rather than retained as esoteric secrets. However, it is not so much the content of this religious knowledge that is significant but the attitude to it. What really matters is that the movement democratizes religious truth. Many devotees may not, in practice, be well informed, but they know that this knowledge is readily available to them. Moreover, it is not the more esoteric mysteries, the kind that academic devotees have written books about, that interest ordinary members. Rather, it is Baba’s simple maxims of selfless love, charity to others, and community service that devotees quote with sincerity and eagerness.25 One reason these social messages stand out for devotees is that they are absent from other Balinese religious traditions. Adat religion is dominated by ritual action, calculated reciprocity, and an absence of sermonizing, while Agama Hindu is characterized by abstract and esoteric theology that has little impact on everyday life.

Balinese religion as ‘deviant’ Most devotees describe their critique of adat religion and Agama Hindu as constructive rather than destructive. The aim is to improve and repair (Ind.: memperbaiki) it rather than exclude or destroy it. The point is to recover and promote a genuine religion that has been submerged under layers of secrecy and falsehood. Devotees acknowledge that Agama Hindu supposedly has the similar aim of restoring an authentic tradition, but they claim this is impossible while it depends on the caste system (sistim kasta) and high priesthood, the two institutions deemed most responsible for perverting it. By showing how adat and Agama Hindu have deviated from the path of true knowledge the movement claims to supply an essential corrective that brings Hinduism back to conformity with its original source. Members of new religious movements thus frequently picture themselves as being on a spiritual journey in quest of religious enlightenment. However, this is a claim that will later be questioned. Devotees frequently say they find it difficult to learn anything from their parents or priests about the fundamental meanings behind adat ceremonies. They repeatedly accuse adat religion of being embedded in an oppressive caste order, which emphasizes impersonal rituals, expensive offerings, and domination by priests, making it exclusive, secretive, and inaccessible. Why do we do this ritual? What

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is the purpose of offerings? What is the meaning of the priest’s actions? Why do we sacrifice animals? The standard response, ‘that is just how it is’ (mula kéto), smacks of evasiveness and ignorance, and is no longer acceptable. Balinese now want reasons, and the more rational the better. Low-caste temple priests (pemangku) are said to be ignorant, their knowledge confined to the proper conduct of rites. High-caste priests (pedanda), on the other hand, may possess religious knowledge but are unwilling to disseminate it. In restricting it to themselves, the argument goes, they exploit ordinary Balinese who have to buy their supposedly indispensable ritual services, and they also use it as a form of social control, since a priest may curse clients if they break off relations with him. According to many Balinese, priests cynically justify their monopoly of religious knowledge by claiming that an undisciplined distribution of the contents of sacred texts to the ritually unprepared is dangerous. Consequently, ritual is often described as automatic, mechanical, and as having lost sight of its true spiritual aims. Can enlightenment be obtained from school classes in religion? After all, these are based on the tenets of Agama Hindu, purportedly derived from sacred Indian texts. However, Balinese disparage this religious education. Teachers’ accounts of Hindu theology are said to be divorced from everyday experience and unrelated to village ritual activities, and teachers are denounced as hypocrites: after pontificating about the ills of gambling and drinking they go to a cock fight or a card game on their way home. Sai Baba’s relative egalitarianism also offers a criticism of Bali’s hierarchical social order.26 Its monotheism implies that all Balinese have the same relationship to God. This is profoundly different to adat practice in which members of tiered descent groups worship their own deified ancestors, and the worship of those from an inferior group leads to being ‘de-casted’ to the level of the latter. Although devotees are separated from Baba by an immense gulf, amongst themselves they are formally equal, and distinctions of caste within the movement are therefore irrelevant, both doctrinally and organizationally. In short, devotees maintain that Balinese Hinduism has strayed from the path of true religion. Eternal religious truth, based on original revelations by Hindu sages, is in Balinese palm-leaf texts. In the past it was available to all, and was explicit, but gradually it became overlain with the dross of ritual and buried beneath the venal and vested interests of priests and rulers working to bolster their privileges in the caste system. What passes for Balinese adat religion is a deviation from and a degradation of what it once was. Having said this, it is nonetheless difficult to argue that Balinese join Sai Baba just because of opposition to the hierarchy or the unsatisfactory nature of highly ritualized adat religion. This is because these reasons may sometimes be an artefact of obtaining data only from existing devotees. Several members told me they began to think more clearly about the deficiencies of traditional forms of religion only after they had joined. It is therefore likely, for some at least, that their rationalized perspective is an effect of membership rather than a cause. Once socialized into the movement their past may be reconceptualized as a spiritual quest in search of enlightenment or in terms of corrupt high priests, when in reality

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it was a function of personal troubles, a prior mystical experience of Baba, curiosity, or a chance encounter.

Sai Baba as a ‘deviant’ movement Many criticisms of Sai Baba are similar to those made generally about indigenous religious movements because opponents classify it as an aliran kepercayaan. For example, Parisada officials, priests, and others note an increasing enthusiasm for religion among all Balinese, even speaking of a ‘spiritual crisis’. But they are concerned that if sound instruction and direction is not provided they will fall into deviant movements. If this enthusiasm is not properly channelled people will become ‘absorbed’ (Ind.: larut) by the search for ‘inner potency’ (sakti), and this should be prevented because it is ‘very irrational’ (Ind.: sangat irasional).27, 28 The governor of Bangli, for example, instructed priests and religious officials to be more active in providing correct interpretations of official religion so that ordinary people are not ‘ensnared’ (Ind.: terjerat) by deviant movements that ‘lead astray’ (Ind.: menyesatkan).29 The accusation of deviation from true religion is therefore used by all sides. Such criticisms are expressed in another way. It is sometimes said that the Hindus of India are far ahead of Balinese Hindus in religious development and in their knowledge of sacred scriptures. Consequently, the Balinese are not ‘mentally ready’ (Ind.: tidak siap mental) to comprehend fully these teachings, and so great care must be taken in the religious instruction people receive and in who provides it. Officially only priests and the learned experts of the Parisada should teach, while religious education given by others, such as Sai Baba, is suspect. Similarly, Balinese are not yet ‘resolute’ (Ind.: mantap) in their religion, so that when they are confronted with conflicting teachings they become ‘confused’ (Ind.: bingung) and hence deviations (Ind.: penyimpangan) emerge. Despite their claim that they are only interested in spiritual development, members of Sai Baba are often accused of surreptitiously trying to increase their stock of ‘potency’. This is because practices of vegetarianism, meditation, and the recitation of mantras are easily interpreted as forms of asceticism that can be used to accumulate sakti. One devotee told me he had a hard time convincing his friends that he was not trying to learn ‘black magic’. In fact, devotees condemn the pursuit of sakti because, they claim, it is all about self-interest, separates one from God, and thus merely brings the illusion of happiness. Raising one’s spirituality, by contrast, draws one closer to God and brings real happiness. Because Sai Baba is individualistic, being concerned with each person’s separate spiritual development, its members are also often criticized for sowing dissension within their families. Vegetarianism and the refusal to slaughter animals means that their participation in communal ritual activities is problematic. Devotees have repeatedly told me that their refusal to eat meat has caused long-term battles with close kin, who worry about their sanity or that they will quit adat religion, an outcome that may bring social death. Younger members are frequently scolded by their parents and ordered to renounce membership. Vegetarianism is an issue that divides Balinese. The vast majority of Balinese are avid meat eaters, even if they consume only moderate amounts, and most

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offerings contain meat from sacrificed animals. For devotees of Sai Baba, vegetarianism is not an iron rule but it is expected that they avoid meat if at all possible. As regards the use of meat in religious offerings the movement’s lay leaders share the position taken by Agama Hindu and Parisada officials. This is that the sacrifice of animals is based on a misconception of what the ritual is supposed to accomplish. The real point of many offerings, they argue, is to symbolize the fact that humans need to suppress the unpleasant characteristics (gluttony, selfishness, etc.) they share with animals, and this can be successfully achieved by using animal shapes made of rice. For opponents of Sai Baba, animal flesh, blood, and alcohol are necessary to placate the spirits, which would otherwise possess people and make them act like animals. For the former, these spirits are mere metaphors; for the latter they are real. Similarly, devotees are often accused of undermining adat religion through their adoption of vegetarianism and refusal to use animal meat in offerings. But in their educational classes and through informal discussion they learn the ‘true’ meanings behind the numerous calendrical ceremonies celebrated by the Balinese. Consequently, devotees claim that they become more energetic, sincere, and knowledgeable practitioners of their village religion.

Sai Baba and a new identity The creation of Agama Hindu has allowed Balinese to differentiate themselves from Muslims and Christians by defining their ethnic identity in terms of Hinduism. However, the process of ethnic identity formation has been complicated by two factors: Hinduism is no longer exclusive to Bali; and the co-existence of competing varieties of Hinduism produces competing forms of identity. Because the Indonesian state forbids the exclusive association between an ethnic group and a religion, fearing that such a combination is fertile ground for political mobilization, it has promoted the universalization of Agama Hindu throughout Indonesia. Turning Hinduism into an ethicized theology detached from local Balinese ritual practices has enabled people in Java,30 Kalimantan,31 and other islands32 to convert to Hinduism rather than to Islam or Christianity. Consequently, there are now more members of Agama Hindu outside Bali than inside.33 The irony of this situation has been noted by Picard. As Balinese began to conceive of their ethnic identity as based on Agama Hindu, they discovered that this religion ‘owes its recognition precisely to the condition that it not be restricted to the Balinese alone’.34 The point I want to make here is that the recent rise of new forms of Hinduism has in part by-passed this process of ethnogenesis by creating conditions for other kinds of identity to emerge. While endorsing the definition of Balinese religion as Hindu, some Balinese have begun to ask what particular form of Hinduism is best suited to contemporary life in Bali. As a result of this, some Balinese no longer aspire to an ethnic identity based on a locally valid Agama Hindu, which is considered deficient anyway. Instead, devotees of Sai Baba, while valuing their Balinese identity in some contexts, are now constructing an identity that sees them, along with others of diverse nationalities,

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participating in a global movement that in part detaches them from parochial institutions. This identity is still grounded in a form of Hinduism but it is a much more universal faith than Agama Hindu. This new identity is about the individual in the world or, more precisely, the individual in his or her specific relationship to the universal God. It is an identity based on the essential self deep within oneself. Experienced and dedicated devotees frequently speak about improving and developing themselves, monitoring and reforming their behaviour, and policing their thoughts. In the talks at services members make frequent use of terms such as ‘universal’, ‘the world’, and ‘global’, and hardly mention ‘Bali’. Progressively this nascent identity is moulded by the changes in lifestyle that members undergo and is gradually filled with content through participation in educational classes, singing bhajan, listening to members’ talks, and even visiting Baba’s ashram in India. With its focus on the divinity of Baba, this identity expands its horizons outwards as members come to realize that they share an essential commonality with fellow devotees from India, Europe, Africa, and elsewhere. For many, of course, this remains partial and elusive, because they never leave Bali, but they do begin to experience it vicariously. This new identity gradually replaces or submerges the ‘delusory’ (Balinese) self, which used to be socially presented to others.35 Meditation, prayer, devotion, and singing are the activities that help the devotee discover, strengthen, and develop the previously hidden inner self. By modifying some of the ritual and communal connections with one’s fellow Balinese through a quest for personal realization, members create new spiritual relationships with others from very different cultural backgrounds, with Baba acting as the fixed centre drawing them into a community of equals. The creation of a transnational identity is therefore effected through a conversion of the essential inner self to a public outer self. It is as though the devotee is turned inside out, and indeed many claim they have been radically changed by Baba.

Conclusion The importance of Sai Baba, as part of a broad front of Hindu reform ideas in Bali, appears to lie in how it articulates and defines patterns of social conflict. For a century various Balinese institutions (high priesthood, hierarchy, elaborate ritual, polytheism, etc.) have been the object of criticism by the Dutch colonial regime, Islamic religious officials, Balinese intellectuals and reformers, and state religious agencies. One especially significant response to this has been the creation of Agama Hindu. However, this new religion has not been an unqualified success. Initially emerging from debates between commoners and members of the traditional elite in the early part of the last century, it subsequently developed into an orthodoxy shaped and controlled principally by state institutions, such as the Parisada. Attempts to educate the Balinese population into this religion – through the school curriculum, standardization of religious practice, directives on how to stage important ceremonies and calendrical festivals, and the publication of books detailing its doctrines – have generated some unexpected responses.

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Agama Hindu’s rejection of the notion of sakti, an idea central to village and court traditions, has coincided with the emergence of religious movements (aliran kepercayaan), which many ordinary Balinese have joined and in which the pursuit of sakti is a main, if not explicitly advertised aim. In addition, because the tenets of Agama Hindu are esoteric and unfamiliar, many Balinese have difficulty in applying them to customary activities, and hence they remain tangential to everyday life. Equally significant is the rise of devotional movements such as Sai Baba. Members of these movements endorse Agama Hindu’s substitution of spirituality for inner potency, its opposition to excessive ritual and the ritual use of animal flesh, and its attempts generally to re-interpret the meaning and purpose of ritual activity along ethical lines. Despite this, Agama Hindu is considered very unsatisfactory. Its theology and its high God are impersonal and abstract; its spirituality lacks substance and a focus, and its strictly controlled orthodoxy is inimical to religious liberty and pluralism. Moreover, the continuing support given by the Parisada, which is still dominated by high priests and high castes, to a modified ideology of hierarchy has alienated many commoner Balinese. Joining Sai Baba provides the unique combination of a personal and loving relationship with a living God together with a relatively egalitarian theology and social organization, which help maintain the struggle against the inequalities embedded in Balinese institutions. However, the matter cannot be left there, because interpreting devotion to Baba as a reflection of how religious ideologies articulate forms of political conflict is too mechanical. I have noted that a rationalized perspective may be an effect of membership rather than a cause; that many people join because of problems related to purely personal circumstances; that the challenges faced by members have often more to do with overcoming strong and debilitating emotions than with opposition to the hierarchical structures of Balinese society; and because there is a simple desire to be good Hindus, better people, and to enhance the general good of society by establishing a higher moral code. As a result, Sai Baba cannot be seen just as a religious vehicle for pursuing political ends. For many devotees it is more a matter of adopting particular religious convictions that enhance their own lives.

Notes 1 Fieldwork on the Sai Baba movement was conducted for three months in 1997 and 1999 in Denpasar, Bali. I would like to thank the Evans Fund of the University of Cambridge for financial assistance. I am very grateful to Susan Bayly, Freek Bakker, Prof. Dr Gusti Ngurah Bagus, Michel Picard, Dr Gede Pitana, Declan Quigley, and Martin Ramstedt for their generous help in preparing this chapter for publication. 2 See Van der Veer 1994; Van der Veer and Lehmann 1999. 3 See Colley 1996; Van der Veer and Lehmann 1999. 4 See Babb 1986; Heelas 1996. 5 Indigenous words from the Indonesian language are indicated by the abbreviation ‘Ind.’; all other foreign words are either Balinese or derive from an Indian language. 6 cf. Picard in this volume. 7 The process through which Agama Hindu was created is now reasonably well understood, even if some of the precise details are still unclear. For more information on this topic

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8 9

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see Bagus 1975; Bakker 1993; Geertz 1973; Picard 1995; Ramstedt 1995 and forthcoming; Swellengrebel 1960; and Vickers 1989. For a detailed account of the context of religious change in twentieth-century Bali, see Howe 2001. See Bagus in this volume. Many of the Parisada’s publications of this period provided synoptic accounts of a wide variety of important Hindu concepts such as karma, samsara, moks.a, avatara, renunciation, and so forth (Upadeca 1968; Punyatmadja 1976a, 1976b). However, most of these ideas are quite alien to customary village religion (adat). While forms of asceticism are practised, the lifestyle of the Indian renouncer is completely unknown. While reincarnation is a widespread belief, it is largely confined to the idea that one is reborn into one’s own descent group, ideally into the body of one’s great grandchild, and never as an inferior form of life. I use the term ‘adat religion’ in order to express my conviction that we do, indeed, deal here with a form of ‘religion’, if we apply a more scientific definition to the phenomenon, as anthropologists, sociologists and religious studies scholars have done. Hence, the term ‘adat religion’ challenges the official Indonesian as well as the Christian and Muslim notion of religion. cf. Geertz 1973:186. cf. Bakker 1993:290. Parker notes that in the Balinese school curriculum religion is taught in a very intellectualized manner. ‘In real life the main “religious” activity undertaken by girls is the making and presentation of offerings; yet these are barely mentioned in textbooks’ (Parker 1992:111). Much of the material presented is in the form of codifications and lists, for example, of the ‘five gods’, types of sacred places, the ‘five techniques of self-control’, and the ‘seven darknesses or evils’. Most of these ideas have no place in village religious practice. cf. Supartha 1994:vi. As far as I know no one has yet done any research on these movements. Supartha (1994) has edited a collection of articles and press clippings about them and provided some information on Balinese responses to their emergence. The Balinese press also carries regular reports on various movements, especially when they have resulted in violence and scandal. cf. Klass 1991:103. While Sai Baba states that all religions are one, Hinduism is privileged as providing the clearest and surest path to God. cf. Babb 1986:166. cf. Babb 1986:191. See Babb 1986. Many devotees have related dreams of Baba to me. Often he appears very large and beatific, and devotees feel a great wave of love and affection emanating from him. Others mentioned that they dreamt of such a person before they even knew who he was, particularly when they were ill or in a very difficult situation. Only later, when they became devotees, did they realize he was calling them to him, and protecting them. If Balinese display little emotional investment in their gods during a collective temple ceremony, they are increasingly doing so in the confines of their own homes. In recent years Balinese have more and more taken to private prayer in their household temples, where, according to several friends, they address God in a more intimate manner by recounting their woes, asking for help, and requesting peace of mind. More recently, the Parisada has encouraged new religious practices in line with reformist Hinduism, such as meditation, private prayer, collective recitation of mantras, priestly sermons, and pilgrimages – all of which create overlaps between adat, Agama Hindu, and devotional Hinduism (Ramstedt forthcoming). Some of these passive followers are reticent to publicize their association by open attendance on the grounds that they might jeopardize their career prospects in government jobs. Others are strongly attracted to the religious message and speak of themselves as devotees, but find the regular sessions of bhajan singing somewhat wearisome and unnecessary.

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24 See also Anderson 1977:21; Hefner 1997:111–12. 25 If the religious classes provide a more systematic description and explanation of Baba’s ideas and how these relate to Balinese ritual practices, the talks at services convey much more straightforward social messages. These are usually encapsulated in maxims such as ‘love all, serve all’; ‘help ever, hurt never’; ‘duty without love is deplorable, duty with love is desirable’; ‘the secret of success is to have the right priorities’; etc. These are sometimes presented in English and followed by extended explanations and examples in Indonesian. Other favourite topics include the need for discipline, ‘optimal use of time’, introspection, and the importance of vegetarianism. For information on interpretations of Balinese Hinduism by supporters of Sai Baba, see Jendra 1996; Titib 1994; and Wiana 1995. 26 According to Babb (1986:172–2), Baba holds very conservative views concerning India’s social and economic institutions, including caste. While others should be treated with decency and charity, Baba does not advocate reform of existing hierarchies. In Bali, it is true, no explicit doctrine of equality is propounded by the Sai Baba movement, and a significant number of devotees are of high caste. However, the organization of Sai Baba, the format of its meetings, and its universal and fundamentalist message all contribute to a markedly egalitarian orientation when compared to ‘traditional’ religion. In other words it is egalitarian not so much in its conception but in its effects and in its relationships to other forms of Hinduism in Bali. 27 Bali Post, 23 July 1997. 28 It is important to recognize both the differences and similarities between adat and Agama Hindu. The statement that the search for ‘potency’ (sakti) is ‘irrational’ marks a major move away from adat traditions for which this has been a central idea. Like Sai Baba, Agama Hindu wishes to substitute ‘spirituality’ for ‘potency’. But there is also a striking structural continuity. Traditional Balinese religious practices were directed from the top by rulers and high-caste priests, with the priests’ power and authority based on long immersion in sacred texts and on rituals of purification. Underneath this, however, more direct and illicit methods (gifts from god, dangerous rituals, spirit possession) have always existed for low castes to acquire independent sources of power with which to resist those who dominated them (Connor 1982). What is emerging now are new but nevertheless similar methods of obtaining power quickly and directly by joining movements in search of sakti. From the perspective of powerful state institutions, which define orthodox religious teachings, members of the modern Hindu bureaucracy again denounce such new methods as illegitimate. The insistence on a religious and theological orthodoxy stemming from the centre, and its concern over a too-easily obtained and dangerous ‘power’ acquired by those from below, parallels the power structure of ‘traditional’ Bali. 29 Bali Post, 25 April 1994. 30 See Beattie 1999. 31 See Schiller 1997. 32 See Persoon 1998. 33 cf. Ramstedt 1995:6. 34 Picard 1995:17. 35 cf. Babb 1986:191.

Bibliography Anderson, B. (1977) ‘Religion and Politics in Indonesia since Independence’, in: B. Anderson, M. Nakamura, and M. Siamet (eds) Religion and Social Ethos in Indonesia, Clayton, Australia: Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, pp. 21–32. Babb, L. (1986) Redemptive Encounters: Three Modern Styles in the Hindu Tradition, Berkeley: University of California Press. Bagus, I G.N. (1975) ‘Surya Kanta: A Kewangsan Movement of the Jaba Caste in Bali’, Masyarakat Indonesia 2, pp. 153–62.

279

L E O H OW E

Bakker, F.L. (1993) The Struggle of the Hindu Balinese Intellectuals, Amsterdam: Vrije University Press. Beattie, A. (1999) Varieties of Javanese Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Colley, L. (1996) Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837, London: Vintage. Connor, L. (1982) In Darkness and Light: A Study of Peasant Intellectuals in Bali, Sydney: PhD diss., University of Sydney. Geertz, C. (1973) ‘ “Internal Conversion” in Contemporary Bali’, in: C. Geertz The Interpretation of Culture, London: Hutchinson, pp. 170–89. Heelas, P. (1996) The New Age Movement, Oxford: Blackwell. Hefner, R. (1997) ‘Islamization and Democratization in Indonesia’, in: R. Hefner and P. Horvatich (eds) Islam in an Era of Nation-States, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pp. 75–127. Howe, L. (2001) Hinduism and Hierarchy in Bali. Oxford: James Currey. Jendra, I.W. (1996) Variasi Bahasa Kedudukan dan Peran Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba dalam Agama Hindu, Surabaya: Paramita. Klass, M. (1991) Singing with Sai Baba: The Politics of Revitalization in Trinidad, Boulder: Westview. Parker, L. (1992) ‘The Quality of Schooling in a Balinese Village’, Indonesia 54, pp. 95–116. Persoon, G. (1998) ‘Isolated Groups or Indigenous People: Indonesia and the International Discourse’, Bjjdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 154, pp. 281–304. Picard, M. (1995) Adat, Budaya, Agama: the Discourse of Kebalian between National Integration and Tourism Promotion, Sydney: paper presented at the Bali in the Late Twentieth Century conference, Sydney University, 3–7 July. Punyatmadja, I.B.O. (1976a) Cilakrama. Denpasar: Parisada Hindu Dharma Pusat. –––– (1976b) Pancha Cradha. Denpasar: Parisada Hindu Dharma Pusat. Ramstedt, M. (1995) Preliminary Reflections on an Ambiguous Relationship: Agama Hindu Bali vis-à-vis Hindu Dharma Indonesia, Sydney: paper presented at the Bali in the Late Twentieth Century conference, Sydney University, 3–7 July. –––– (forthcoming) ‘Indonesianisation, Globalisation and Islamisation: Parameters of the Hindu Discourse in Modern Indonesia’, International Journal of Hindu Studies. Quebec: World Heritage Press. Schiller, A. (1997) Small Sacrifices: Religious Change and Cultural Identity among the Ngaju of Indonesia, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Supartha, W. (ed.) (1994) Memahami Aliran Kepercayaan, Denpasar: P.T. Bali Post. Swellengrebel, J.L. (1960) ‘Introduction’, in: J.L. Swellengrebel (ed.) Bali: Studies in Life, Thought and Ritual, The Hague: W. van Hoeve, pp. 3–76. Titib, I.M. (1994) Ketuhanan Dalam Weda, Denpasar: P.T. Pustaka Manikgeni. Upadeca (1968) Upadeca: tentang Ajaran-Ajaran Agama Hindu, Denpasar: Parisada Hindu Dharma Pusat. Vickers, A. (1989) Bali. A Paradise Created, Berkeley: Periplus. Veer, P. van der (1994) Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India, Berkeley: University of California Press. Veer, P. van der, and H. Lehmann (eds) (1999) Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Wiana, I.K. (1995) Yajna dan Bhakti dari Sudut Pandang Hindu, Denpasar: P.T. Pustaka Manikgeni.

280

1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 13111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44 45 46111

INDEX

Aceh 121–2, 163 see also Karo: land and people Ada’ Mappurondo 185, 189, 191, 194–208, 214, 216–17 adat (tradition) agama distinction 58, 67–8, 112, 234–5, 244–5 Bali 61–2, 265–6 Karo 234–6 kiniteken distinction 239 Sai Baba 273–4 Toraja 196 vegetarianism 275 Adriani, N. 165 Advaita Veda¯ nta 40–1 agama ardi (religion of the earth) 18 Agama Bali Hindu 61–4 Agama Hindu 68, 251, 266–7, 272–6, 277 Agama Hindu Bali 13, 14, 18, 56–75 Agama Khonghucu (Confucianism) 18, 119 Agama Nunusaku (Nunusaku religion) 127–8, 134, 137 Agama Pemena 232–4 agama (religion) adat distinction 58, 67–8, 112, 234–5, 244–5 Balinese religion 56–7, 61–3 Christianity 62–3, 232 Karo 232 pela relationships 126 Pemena status 239 Sanskrit meaning 9 agamasasi (religionization period) 97, 98 Agastia, Ida Bagus Gde 88 agnosticism 97 Akademi Pendidikan Guru Agama Hindu (APGAH) 81

Akademi Pendidikan Guru Agama Hindu Negeri (APGAHN) 184, 185 akas´a concept 41 akasha concept 41 aliran kepercayaan (belief systems) 9–11, 53, 195, 266–7, 277 Alle den Volcke (GZB monthly) 164–5 Aluk To Dolo 161, 177, 185, 195–208, 210–11, 216–17 Alukta see Aluk To Dolo Ambon Island 126–43 Ananda Marga 87 animism 59, 126, 202, 238, 244–5 Anshari, H. Enang Saifuddin 6 apathy, political 85–7 APGAH see Akademi Pendidikan Guru Agama Hindu APGAHN see Akademi Pendidikan Guru Agama Hindu Negeri arat sabulungan (traditional Siberut religion) 146, 147, 152, 157 art 17, 116–18 Aryans 37 asas tunggal 53 Asian Development Bank 153, 156 Association of Indonesian Hindu Youth see Ikatan Pemuda Hindu Indonesia Association of Karo Hinduism (PAHK) 236, 238, 240 Association of Muslim Indonesian Intellectuals see Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia atheism 97, 192, 195, 199, 205, 245 see also communism Atkinson, Jane 9 Baba see Sai Baba, Shri Sathya babanten (offerings) 78, 79, 81

281

INDEX

Babb, L. 268 Badan Penyelidik Usaha-Usaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia (BPUPKI) 2 Bagus, I. Gusti Ngurah 84–92 Bahaism 149–50, 151 Bahasa Betawi 48 Bahasa Indonesia 2 Bahasa Melayu Rendah 51 Balai Pustaka Adat Merga Si Lima (BPAMSL) 232–3, 235–40 Bali adat 61–2, 265–6 Agama Hindu 266–7 Agama Siwa-Buddha 258 aliran kepercayaan 10–11, 266, 267, 277 Balinese religion 41, 56–7, 61–8, 87, 265–7, 272–4 Biblical art 117–18 Christianity 58–9 education 76–92, 266 elites 99–100 Hare Krishna movement 259–60 Hindu education 76–92 Hinduism 58–9 Indian relations 10–12 Indonesian Hindu bureaucracy 209 intelligentsia 59–61, 62–3, 66, 67–8 Javanese Hindus 103 Muslim Java 7 political apathy 85–7 Sai Baba 260, 264–80 Sulinggih education 80–1 Theosophy 41–2 tourist industry 88–9 true Hinduism 250–1 vegetarianism 274–5 Yogyakarta conversion 100 Bali Adnjana 60–1, 63–4 Bali Darma Laksana 65, 67 Balinese identity 61–2 migration to Luwu 186–7 Balinese Hindus 274 Balinese-ness 61 Balinization (penjajahan adat) 209, 214 Banawiratma, J.B. 114–15 Bartels, D. 127–8, 132, 134 Batavia Buddhist Association 51 Batoa, Uwaq 205–6 Beasant, Annie 10, 35, 36, 39 Belief in God Almighty organization 201

beliefs aliran kepercayaan 9–11, 53, 195, 266–7, 277 kepercayaan 5, 56–7, 145, 146 kepertjajaan 56–7 kiniteken 235–6, 239 Berastagi 234–5, 238, 240 Bhagavad Gita 11, 12, 13 bhakti 248–9, 252 bhikkhu ordinations 52 Bigalke, Terance William 162, 163, 167–8 bikin panas pela ceremonies (to heat up the pela) 127, 133, 135–9, 141 bio-diversity 153, 157 Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna 3, 35, 36, 41, 46–7 Borobudur temple 49–50, 52, 53 Bosch, F.D.K. 59 BPAMSL see Balai Pustaka Adat Merga Si Lima BPUPKI see Badan Penyelidik UsahaUsaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia Brown, Iem 45–55 Buddhism 45–55 Mahayana 48, 49, 219 Buddhist Theosophical Society 46 Budha, I. Wayan 184–5, 186, 187, 215 Budi Utomo 2–4, 13, 41 Bugis 168, 192, 194, 197, 202, 206–7 Cachet, Lion 110–11 candi temple to Jesus 116–17 cara-cara sindekah (the old ways) 239 caste 38, 61, 104, 196, 247 Catholic Church ‘Eurasian’ Javanism 120–1 Javenese wisdom 114–16 Mentawaians 154 political neutrality 113–14 Protestant conversions 148 Sadrach affair 109, 111 Siberut Island 148–9 Central Moluccas 126–43 Chinese Buddhist revival 47–8, 50–1 Christianity 118–20 Confucianism 18, 119 Mahayana Bhuddism 219 Theravada tradition 119 tourist industry 213 Christian Toraja 186, 199, 213

282

INDEX

1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 13111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44 45 46111

Christianity agama 62–3, 232 Bali 58–9, 63 Chinese 118–20 nationalist movement 112 pela 137 Tana Toraja 210, 212 wayang kulit 111, 116, 117 Church of the Indies 163, 164 cloths, sacred 197 communism atheism 205 purges 15, 192, 195, 199 Trotskyite Party 236 Yogyakarta 99–100 Confucianism 18, 119 conscience concept 114 conscription 38–9, 42 Cooley, F.L. 128, 137–8 Crawfurd, J. 58, 62 crony capitalism 20 Dachlan, K.H. Mohammad 201 dakwah organizations 94, 95, 151–2 Darmawijaya, Stanislas 114–16 Darmayasa, I. Made 257–8 Darsana, Nyoman 116–18 Darul Islam (DI ) Bugis recruits 202 Christian Toja 186 paganism 204 rebellion 197–8, 204–5 South Sulawesi 197–8 suppression 16 Toraja 169–71, 173–6, 186 DDII see Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia de-Sanskritization 24, 25 deata (different deities) 196, 197 deities 103, 196, 197 Demokrasi Terpimpin (Guided Democracy) 14 Departemen Agama, DepAg see Ministry of Religion devotion concept 249–50, 251 Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia (DDII) 20, 94, 151–2 dharma wacana (religious discourse) 76, 79, 80–1 DI see Darul Islam Directorate of Hindu Affairs 246 Dirjen Bimas Hindu dan Buddha 196, 208, 209, 213–14 discrimination 20

divinities 247–8 Djatajoe journal 65, 66 Djono, Mas 41 dress issues 103 Dutch Reformed Mission see Gereformeerde Zendingsbond East Timor 85, 106 education Bali Hindu 76–92, 266 Hindu Aluk To Dola 212–13 Panasilia person 17 Parisada Hindu Dharma 93 Polmas 214–15 Sai Baba membership 270 state funding cuts 94 sulinggih 80–1 egalitarianism 38 elites, Balinese 99–100 enlightenment 273 era reformasi (reformation era) 85, 126, 135 essentialism, identity 161–2, 177 ethnic composition Buddhist community 51–3 Indonesian Hindus 14–15, 85 Protestant Christianity 119–20 ethnic identity 144–59, 160–83 ethnic nationalism 112 ‘Eurasian’ Javanism 120–1 European Buddhists 45–6, 52 European Orientalists 12, 25, 58–9 European Union 156 evangelism 250 FCHI see Forum Cendekiawan Hindu Indonesia feudalism 3, 204–5 first belief (s´ raddha¯ ) 216–17 five principles see Pancasila Forum Cendekiawan Hindu Indonesia (FCHI) (Forum of Indonesian Hindu Intellectuals) 88 Forum Penyadaran Dharma (Forum for Raising the Consciousness for Religious Matters) 90 Forum Permerhati Hindu Dharma Indonesia (FPHDI) 89 Foundation for the Maintenance of Religion 88 four-five group 101–2 FPHDI see Forum Permerhati Hindu Dharma Indonesia Friederich, R.H.Th. 58, 62 funding 209, 211

283

INDEX

Gandhi Ashram 261 Gandhi, Mahatama 13, 39, 40, 256, 260–1 Garuda 196–7 GBKP see Karo Batak Protestant Church Geertz, Clifford 57, 98 Geldorp, Theodorus see Hartoko gelong (orally transmitted knowledge) 210, 211 George, Kenneth 194 Gerakan Pemuda Sulawesi Tengah (GPST) 174 Gereformeerde Zendingsbond (GZB) 163–4, 165, 166, 198–9 Gereja Batak Karo Protestan (GBKP) 234–7 Gereja Kristen Indonesia (GKI) 118, 119–20 Gereja Kristen Jawa (GKJ) 118, 119–20 Gereja Kristen Protestan Mentawai (GKPM) 144, 146–8, 153 Gereja Pentacosta (Pentecostal Church) 212 Gereja Toraja (Toraja Church) 170 GESTAPU 15, 195 Ginting, Juara R. 226–41 GKI see Gereja Kristen Indonesia GKJ see Gereja Kristen Jawa GKPM see Gereja Kristen Protestan Mentawai global religions 109 Golkar (Golongan Karya) Aluk To Dolo 199 Bali 85, 86 Hindu Dharma 18, 195–6, 209 Parkindo 199 PHDI 86 To Wani To Lotang 208 Golongan Karya see Golkar Goris, R. 59 GPST see Gerakan Pemuda Sulawesi Tengah Grooter Toradja (Greater Toraja) 160–83 Guided Democracy 14 GZB see Gereformeerde Zendingsbond Habibie, B.J. 88, 121–2, 187 Hare Krishna movement see International Society for Krishna Consciousness Hartoko, Dick 120–1 Hatta, Mohammad 5 Hefner, Robert W. 3, 93–108, 201–2 High Javanist tradition 3, 202 Hindu Aluk To Dola, education 212–13

Hindu Council 78–9 Hindu Dharma 18, 22 Hindu Dharma Bali 12–13 Hindu Dharma Indonesia Ada’ Mappurondo 195–208, 214, 216–17 Aluk to Dolo 161, 195–208, 216–17 Golkar 200, 209 Karo Hinduism 238–41 South Sulawesi 208–15 Toani tradition 216–17 To Wani To Lotang 195–208 Hinduism, true 242–5, 250–2 Hinduization 22–3, 57–8, 184–225, 247–8 Hindu Karo movement 249–50 Hindu sects, South Sulawesi 208–9 Hindu Tamils 14–15 hindutva movement 252 Hinloopen, Dirk van 39–40 Hohe, Tanja 126–43 holy water (tirtha) 77, 81, 244, 269 Howe, Leo 264–80 humanism, universal 120–1, 255 Huwaë, S. 128, 137–8 ICCR see Indian Council for Cultural Relations identity Balinese 61–2 Bugis 192 Chinese-Indonesian Christians 119 essentialism 161–2, 177 ethnic 144–59, 160–83 Indonesianization of Christian 121–2 multiple 121 negotiation 1–34 pela 129, 134, 136–7 Sai Baba movement 264–80 transnational 275–6 see also ethnic identity IHD see Institut Hindu Dharma Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia (ICMI) 88, 95, 187 Ikatan Pemuda Hindu Indonesia (IPHI) 88 imam (inner faith) 106 India Indonesian Hindus 209 La Galigo religion 206–7 modern interaction with Indonesia 255–63 neo-Hinduism 218 Theosophical Society 40

284

INDEX

1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 13111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44 45 46111

Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) 257, 262–3 Indian Hinduism 21, 25, 65–6, 237–8, 247, 265–6 Indian Islam 256 Indian thought, dissemination 40–2 Indië Weerbaar controversy 38–9 Indonesian army 186 communist purges 97 Communist putsch 232–3 religious minorities 94–5 religious tolerance 20–1, 187 Tana Toraja 174 Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals see Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia Indonesian Association of Muslim Scholars see Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia Indonesian Christian Party see Partai Kristen Indonesia Indonesian Christians 109–25 Indonesian Communist Party see Partai Komunis Indonesia Indonesian Constitution 5–9 Indonesian Council of Islamic Scholars 260 Indonesian Council for Muslim Mission see Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia Indonesian Forum of Those Concerned about the Hindu Religion see Forum Permerhati Hindu Dharma Indonesia Indonesian identity, Buddhism 52 Indonesian Independence Movement 85 Indonesianization 121–2 Indonesian nationalist movement 2 Indonesian Nationalist Party see Partai Nasional Indonesia Indonesian Protestant Party see Partai Kristen Indonesia Indonesian Union of Churches see Persekutuan Gereja Indonesia Injili Christian assemblies 109 Institut Hindu Dharma (IHD) 82 intellectuals see intelligentsia intelligentsia associations 88, 95, 187 Balinese 59–61 civil movements 91 pluralism within Parisada 105–6 Interfidei organization 106

International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKON) 87, 259–60, 268 inter-religious dialogue 106 inter-religious harmony decrees 201 IPHI see Ikatan Pemuda Hindu Indonesia Iqra 88 ISKON see International Society for Krishna Consciousness Islam Balinese conversions 63 Chinese Indonesians 118–19 colonial Sulawesi 163, 164, 165 Dutch East Indies 46 first penetration 45 Indian 256 Indonesianization of Christian identity 121–2 Mentawaians 154–5 Minangkabau 145, 147, 150–1, 152 Muslim-Christian conflicts 126–43 revival 93, 95, 100–1 Siberut Island 147–5, 149, 150–1 To Wani To Lotang 189, 190, 201–8 Islamic Army of Indonesia 198 Islamic High Court of Justice 6–7 Islamic law see syariat Islamic state 56, 113 Islamic State of Indonesia see Negara Islam Indonesia Islam sultanate, Hindu conversion in 95–9 jaba (commoners) 60–1, 63, 64 Jakarta Charter 4, 5, 7, 8, 13 Japanese occupation 39, 52 Java Hindu reform in Islamizing 93–108 Muslim Java 7 rural 53 TS membership 38 Java Buddhist Association 48, 51 Javanese Christians 110–11, 118–20 Hindus 103 Muslims (santri ) 201–2 wisdom 114–16 Javanism, Eurasian 120–1 Javanists (kejawen) 201–2 Jawaharlal Nehru Cultural Centre 262 Jinarkkhita, Ashin 52

285

INDEX

karma concept 41, 46 Karo land and people 226–41 Tamil struggle 242–63 Karo Batak Protestant Church see Gereja Batak Karo Protestan Karo Folk Army see Pasukan Hililintar Karya Bhakti newspaper 82 kasta (caste) privileges (Bali) 61 ke-Bali-an (Balinese-ness) 61 kebatinan sects 3, 51, 94, 98, 201 Suharto 16–17 ke-Bugis-an 202 kejawen (Javanists) 201–2 kemajuan (modernization) 152 kepercayaan (beliefs) 5, 56–7, 145, 146 see also aliran kepercayaan Kepercayaan Terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa 201–2 kepertjajaan (beliefs) 56–7 kerei (Mantawaian priest) 144, 145, 153 kerohanian (spirituality) 267 kerukunan antar-agama (inter-religious harmony) 201 kesetiaan (loyalty) concept 115–16 kiniteken (belief) 235–6, 239 Kitab Suci (Holy Book) 67 Klaten 99, 100 klenteng (Chinese joss-houses) 49 Kongres Pemuda Indonesia (Indonesian Youth Congress) 2 Koran 9 KOSTRAD 15 Kraemer, Hendrik 59, 111–12, 119 Kruijt, A.C. 165 Kwee, Tek Hoay 48–51, 52 Labberton, Dirk van Hinloopen 36, 38–9 La Galigo religion 202, 206–7 Leadbeater, C.W. 40 Lebensraum 167–71, 175–6 Lijf, J.M. van 169 Liong, Liem Sioe 118 loka pala sraya (duty of Sulinggih) 80–1 Loosdrecht, A.A. van de 164 Lorenzo II, Don 113–14 loyalties, Indonesian Christians 109–25 loyalty (kestiaan) 115–16 Lutat affair 176–7 Luwu 160–83 Lyon, Margaret 100 Magnis-Suseno, Franz 121–2 Mahãsivarattiri 242–4

Mahayana Buddhism 48, 49, 219 Majapahit 1, 64, 197, 255–6 Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (MPR) (Indonesian Parliament) 109 Makatonan, Pendeta 194 Malay language 60 Maluku 106 Mamasa-Toraja 194, 196, 198, 200, 213–14 manacika (attainment of a pure mind) 77 Mantra, Ida Bagus 86, 87, 257 marriage 128–9, 137–8, 203–4 Marriot, McKim 23 Mbuah Page 243–4, 249, 251 Medan Tamils 242–63 media 79, 100–1, 117–18 Mentawaian Protestant Church see Gereja Kristen Protestan Mentawai Mentawaians of Siberut 144–59 merga (clan groups) 226, 235–6 Messawa temple 215 Minangkabau 145, 147, 150–1, 152 Ministry of Religion 6–7, 200–1 aliran kepercayaan 9–10 conversions 195 Hinduism 105 inter-religious harmony decrees 201 Islamic missionary work 152 Perwalian Umat Buddha Indonesia 53 recognition requests 12–13, 56, 68, 202–6 temple construction 93 miracles 271–2 modernity India 256–7 Indonesian Hindus 25 religious education in Bali 76 true Hinduism 251–2 modernization (kemajuan) 152 modin, Islamic 102 Moestika Dharma 48–9, 52 Moluccan identity 137–41 monotheism 97 MPR see Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat Muslim Java 7 Muslims Christian conflicts 126–43 Christian dialogue 121–2 Constitution 8–9 Jakarta Charter 5–6 Muzakkar, Kahar 198 myths 79, 129–32

286

INDEX

1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 13111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44 45 46111

Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) 15, 261 Nala, Ngurah 76–92 name controversy, Balinese religion 61–4, 67–8 Nasa, Ktoet 60–1, 63–4 nationalism 2, 99, 112, 264 Negara Islam Indonesia (Islamic State of Indonesia) 197–8 Nehru, Jawaharlal Pandit 256–7, 262 Neo-Hinduism 3, 14, 19, 25, 218 Netherlands Indies Civil Administration (NICA) 85–6 New Order (Orde Baru) Buddhism 53 de-ideologization policy 15–16 PHDI 86 service industry 84–5 To Wani To Lotang 205 tourism promotion 200 Trotskyite Party 236 see also Golkar NICA see Netherlands Indies Civil Administration North Sumatra Hinduism 226–41 Tamil and Karo struggle 242–63 NU see Nahdlatul Ulama Nunusaku religion 127–8, 134, 137 Oka, Ibu Gedong Bagoes 261 Olcott, Henry 35, 36, 46 Ong, Soe Aan 49–50 Orde Baru see New Order Organisai Pemuda Peradah (PHDI youth section) 88 pa-ca sraddha 216 paganism 65, 204 PAHK see Association of Karo Hinduism Pali texts translations 45–6, 48 panakawan (servant concept) 115 Panca Wali Krama ritual 90 Pancasila (five principles) 53, 81, 200–1 Ada’ Mappuriondo 217 One Almighty God principle 5, 56 person 17 Sukarno 4, 5 pandita priests 79, 80 Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI) 77, 84–91 Aluk To Dolo 211 Balinese 77, 85 Great Assembly 89–90 Hindu education 78–9

Java 93, 104–5 Karo Hinduism 238 Maha¯ sivarattiri 242–3 Messawa 214 new name 17 New Order 86, 87 non-Islamic areas 94 paraseda 88 Pemena 241 Polmas 215 publications 82–3 sulinggih 80–1 Tana Toraja 211 Yogyakarta converts 98–101 Parisada Hindu Dharma (PHD) 195–6, 266 Parisada Hindu Dharma Karo (PHDK) 238, 239, 240 Parkindo see Partai Kristen Indonesia Parliament, Indonesian 109 Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (PDI) 15–16 Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) 15, 86, 96–7, 195, 232–3 see also communism Partai Kristen Indonesia (Parkindo) 170, 171–2, 198, 199 Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI) 8, 86, 205 Pasukan Hililintar 236 PBL see Perhimpoenan Boenga’Lalan PDI see Partai Demokrasi Indonesia pedanda (priests) 66–7, 87, 273 pela Ambon Island 126–43 bikin panas pela 127, 133, 135–9, 141 pela gandong 129–30, 132–3, 135–6 pela keras 129, 130–2, 133 pela tempat sirih 129, 131–2 pela tuni 129, 130–2, 133 Pelras, Christian 197, 202, 206 Pemena 235–41 see also Agama Pemena pemena (pioneers) 228, 231 pencak silat contests 190 Penda rituals 238 Pendidikan Guru Agama Hindu (PGAH) 81, 185 penjajahan adat 209, 214 Pentecostal Church see Gereja Pentacosta Peradah 215–17 peranakan community 47–8, 50–1 Perhimpoenan Boenga’Lalan (PBL) 166 Perhimpunan Buddhis Indonesia 52 Permesta movement 174, 175–6

287

INDEX

Persaudaraan Upasaka Upasika Indonesia (PUUI) 52 Persekutuan Gereja Indonesia (PGI) 109 Perserikatan Toraja Christen (PTC) 166–7, 170 Persoon, Gerard A. 144–59 pertentangan kasta (caste conflict) 61 Perwalian Umat Buddha Indonesia 53 PGAH see Pendidikan Guru Agama Hindu PGI see Persekutuan Gereja Indonesia PHDI see Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia Piagam Jakarta 4 Picard, Michel 56–75, 275 pilgrimages 261–2 pinandita priests 79, 80 PKI see Partai Komunis Indonesia pluralism 2, 3, 93–108, 268 PNI see Partai Nasional Indonesia political apathy 85–7 political neutrality 113–14 Polmas 214–15, 216 possession cults 244–6, 275 Protestant Church 109–12, 118–20, 148, 153 Protestantism 104, 146–8 PTC see Perserikatan Toraja Christen Puniatmaja, Ida Bagus Oka 86 Puputan Margarana (Indonesian Independence Movement) 85 Pura Girinatha temple 187 Pura Tambunalitaq temple 212 Puttaparthi ashram 268 PUUI see Persaudaraan Upasaka Upasika Indonesia Rachmatullah, Muhadji 149 Radjiman Committee 3, 4, 5 Raffles, J.T. 58 Rais, Amien 121–2 Raka, I Gusti Putu 86 Ramstedt, Martin 1–34, 184–225 Ranteallo, Puang Ketua 187–8, 197 Ratulangie (Ratu Langie), Sam 113–14 Redfield, Robert 23–4 reformation era 85, 126, 135 reincarnation 41, 46 Reksosusilo, Dr S. 114 religion diversity 235–6 of the earth 18 freedom 5, 7, 8 nationalism 264

questioning of role 87 revealed 18–19 tolerance 20–1, 187, 201 tradition distinction 67–8, 112 see also agama religionization period 97, 98 Remijsen, Bert 126–43 revealed religion 18–19 Ricklefs, Merle 97 rights of indigenous peoples 156–7 rituals Ada’ Mappurondo 194 Balinese religion 62, 66, 76–7, 196 Hinduization 216–17 improper use 88–9 Javanist culture clash 103–4 marriage 203–4 Medan Tamils 247 Panca Wali Krama 90 pela relations 132–4 PHDI 88–9 To Wani To Lotang 203–4 Toraja 196 Roth, Dik 160–83, 192, 193, 199 rural Java 53 Saathof, D. 164–5 sacrifice 248–9 Sa’dan highlands 167–8 Sa’dan-Toraja 185, 209–10 Sadrach affair 110–11 Saefuddin, A.M. 187 Sai Baba movement 87, 264–80 Sai Baba, Shri Sathya 267, 268, 276–7 Sakaliou Mentawaians 155 sakti (inner potency) 274, 277 Salim, Sudomo see Liong, Liem Sioe Sam Kauw Hwee 51, 52 Samad, A. 205–6 Samuel, Simon 185, 187, 188, 210–11 Sando, Nek 187, 196, 197, 213 Sanskrit 9, 45–6, 48 Sanskritization 23, 255 Santi association 60, 63 santri (Javanese Muslims) 201–2 Sarekat Islam 60 Sastri, Narendra Dev Pandit 258–9 satua (secular folk tales) 78 Satya Sai Baba see Sai Baba Schmutzer brothers 116–17 Schuurman, Barend 111–12 secularization 121

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1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 13111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44 45 46111

Sekolah Tinggi Agama Hindu Negeri (STAHN) 81–2 self 114, 251 see also identity separatism 14, 121 serati (offerings experts) 79 servant concept 115 service industry 84–5 Setiti Bali 60 shadow plays 13, 78, 111, 116, 117 Siberut Island 145–53, 157 Singaraja 60 Singer, Milton 23–4 sipulung (coming together ceremony) 189–90, 195, 203, 205 social conflict, Sai Baba movement 264–80 Society of the Three Religions 51 Soeita Gama Tirta 60 Soelo (GZB paper) 166 Soeriokoesoemo, Raden Mas Soetatmo 2, 38, 41 Sole Principle of the Pancasila 53 solidarity 137–41 Sose, Andi 170, 171–2 South Sulawesi 160–225 spirits 245, 246–7 spirituality (kerohanian) 267 sraddha 216–17 Sri Lanka 46, 49–50 Srinivas, M.N. 23 STAHN see Sekolah Tinggi Agama Hindu Negeri state bureaucracy 99–100 State High School for the Hindu Religion 82 Steenbrink, Karel 109–25 students, pela concept 135–9 Sudharta, Tjokoda Rai 86 Sudiarso, Bagong 116–18 sudra (caste) 38 Suharto, President communism purge 15 crony capitalism 20 Darul Islam 16 Golkar 196 Islam 16, 19–20, 94, 201 Javanese Hindus 94–5 kebatinan 16–17 Sukarno, President 4, 5, 12–13 sulinggih (Hindu priests) 80–1 Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX 95–8, 99 Sumandi, Pak 101–2 Sumarorong, Peradah 215

Sumartana, Thomas 112 Supersemar 201 supra-national movements 2–3 Surapranata, Kiai Sadrach (Sadrach) 110–11 Suriakusumo, Raden Mas Sutatmo see Soeriokoesoemo Surya Kanta 61, 63 Sutji, Mangku 186–7 syariat (Islamic law) 4, 113, 121 syncretistic mysticism 5–6, 94, 96, 98, 112, 152 see also kebatinan Tagore, Rabindranath 10, 40, 64, 255–7, 263 Taman Siswa movement 6 Tambing, W.L. 170, 172, 175 Tamils 14–15, 242–63 tanah Toraja 166 Tanaja, Tjakra 60–1, 64 Tana Toraja (Tator) 17–18, 160–83, 192, 210 tatwa (esoteric philosophy) 87 tembang (traditional Javanese poetry) 78 temples Borobudur 49–50, 52, 53 Hindu 93 Karo 238–9 Messawa 215 Ministry of Religion 93–4 Pura Girinatha 187 Pura Tambunalitaq 212 Yogyakarta 102–3 Tengger 17, 94 Tengger Javanese 93 Theosofich Maandblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië 36, 37 Theosophical Society (TS) 3, 13, 35–44, 46–7, 50–2 Thera, Narada 49–50, 52 Theravada tradition 48, 49, 119 time 41, 161–2 tirtha (holy water) 77, 81, 244, 269 tı¯rtha ya¯ tra¯ (holy pilgimages) 261–2 Titib, I. Made 257–8, 261 Tjatoer Wangsa Derja Gama Hindoe Bali 61 Toani tradition 206, 216–17 Tollenaere, Herman de 35–44 tominaa (Aluk To Dolo priests) 185, 213 Toraja Darul Islam 169–71, 173–6 etymology 196

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identity 167–77, 192 Majaphit 197 see also Mamasa-Toraja Toraja Raya 160–83 tourism Bali 88–9 Javanese labourers 20 New Order 200 Siberut Island 152–5 Toraja 161–2, 194, 199, 213 West Sumatra 144 To Wani To Lotang 17, 18, 25, 185, 188, 189–190, 191–5, 201–8, 215, 217 tradition see adat traditional pela 126–34, 141 translations, Pali and Sanskrit texts 45–6 transnational identity 275–6 tri kaya parisudha instruction 77 tri sandhya 216–17 Trisila 4 triwangsa (Balinese nobility) 60–1, 63, 64 Trotskyite Party 236, 240 true Hinduism 242–5, 250–2 TS see Theosophical Society Tumakaka, J.K. 173–4 UGM see Universitas Gadjah Mada uma (communal house) 145, 155 umang people 234 UNHI see Universitas Hindu Indonesia unity in diversity 1–2 universal humanism 120–1, 255 universalism, Sai Baba 268, 276 universalization 1–2, 22–7 universal religion 67–8

Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) 96, 105–6 Universitas Hindu Indonesia (UNHI) 82 Universitas Pattimura (UNPATTI) 135–6 Universitas Udayana 82 urung (village land) 226–7, 228, 229 van Lith, Frans 111, 116 Vedas 79 vegetarianism 217, 274–5 video 117–18 Vignato, Silvia 242–63 village land 226–9 Vivekananda, Swami 40 von Tengnagell, Baron 36 Wahid, Abdurrahman 20–1, 109, 121, 261 Waisak 52, 53 Warta Hindu Dharma 82–3 wayang kulit (shadow plays) 13, 78, 111, 116, 117 Way of Life see Aluk To Dolo Weber, Max 22–3 West Sumatra see Siberut World Bank 156 Yayasan Dharma Yatra (Foundation for the Maintenance of Religion) 88 Yogya Hindus 101–2 Yogyakarta 94, 95–104 youth movements 2, 88, 215–17 Zuhri, K.H. Saifuddin 200–1, 208

290