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Hinduism in Indonesia

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A Hindu pooja ceremony at the Besakih Temple, Bali, Indonesia.
Paco Pater · CC BY-SA 4.0

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Through Hinduism, Java and Animism

Hinduism was the dominant religion in much of the Indonesian archipelago prior to the spread of Islam and remains one of the six officially recognised religions of the Indonesian state. Hindu ideas reached Indonesia from around the 1st century CE through trade and cultural exchange with the Indian subcontinent. Over time, these ideas blended with local Austronesian traditions and, from around the 6th century, with Buddhist influences, giving rise to a syncretic form of Hindu–Buddhist religious culture.

This religious synthesis flourished under major pre-Islamic polities such as the Srivijaya and the Majapahit empires. From the 14th century onward, the spread of Islam through coastal trade networks led to a decline of Hinduism across much of Indonesia, though it remained deeply rooted in Bali. In the modern period, Hinduism has also re-emerged in other regions, including parts of Java, through revival movements that draw on Majapahit-era traditions, Shaivism, and Javanese spiritual philosophy.

In addition, several indigenous belief systems and traditional religions outside Bali have been administratively classified as forms of Hinduism in order to meet Indonesian legal requirements for religious recognition, which mandate belief in a supreme deity and formal religious structure. As a result, Indonesia today has one of the largest Hindu populations in the world, despite Hinduism being a minority religion nationally.

History

The indigenous peoples of the Indonesian Archipelago believed in animism and dynamism, practices commonly shared among many tribal peoples around the world. In the case of the first Indonesians, they especially venerated and revered ancestral spirits; they developed a belief that certain individuals’ spiritual energy may inhabit (or be reincarnated in) various natural objects, beings and places, such as animals, insects, trees, plants, stones, forests, mountains, or any place deemed sacred. This unseen spiritual entity and supernatural knowledge is identified by the ancient Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese as "hyang", which can mean either “divine” or “ancestral”. In modern Indonesian, "hyang" tends to be associated with the notion of God.

Arrival of Hinduism

Hindu influences reached the Indonesian Archipelago as early as the first century. In tales like the "Kidung Harṣa Wijaya" one reads that "rata bhaṭṭāra Narasingha" supposedly was a scion in the lineage of Hari, and that Hari is another word for "Vishnu". Early translators of Kavi manuscripts misunderstood the "being a son of" and assumed that Vishnu actually had human offspring and so on. Here however one must conclude a belonging to a religious school of thought, Vaisnavism. Therefore, early Hinduism on Java, Bali, and Sumatra consisted of both main schools of Hinduism. Thus, historical evidence is not entirely unclear about the diffusion process of cultural and spiritual ideas from India. Java legends refer to Saka-era, traced to 78 CE. Stories from the Mahabharata Epic have been traced in Indonesian islands to the 1st century; whose versions mirror those found in southeast Indian peninsular region (now Tamil Nadu and southern Andhra Pradesh). The Javanese prose work Tantu Pagelaran of the 14th century, which is a collection of ancient tales, arts and crafts of Indonesia, extensively uses Sanskrit words, Indian deity names and religious concepts. Similarly ancient Chandis (temples) excavated in Java and western Indonesian islands, as well as ancient inscriptions such as the 8th century Canggal inscription discovered in Indonesia, confirm widespread adoption of Shiva lingam iconography, his companion goddess Parvati, Ganesha, Vishnu, Brahma, Arjuna, and other Hindu deities by about the middle to late 1st millennium AD. Ancient Chinese records of Fa Hien on his return voyage from Ceylon to China in 414 AD mention two schools of Hinduism in Java, while Chinese documents from 8th century refer to the Hindu kingdom of King Sanjaya as Holing, calling it "exceedingly wealthy," and that it coexisted peacefully with Buddhist people and Sailendra ruler in Kedu Plain of the Java island.

The two major theories for the arrival of Hinduism in Indonesia include that South Indian sea traders brought Hinduism with them, and second being that Indonesian royalty welcomed Indian religions and culture, and it is they who first adopted these spiritual ideas followed by the masses. Indonesian islands adopted both Hindu and Buddhist ideas, fusing them with pre-existing native folk religion and Animist beliefs. In the 4th century, the kingdom of Kutai in East Kalimantan, Tarumanagara in West Java, and Holing (Kalingga) in Central Java, were among the early Hindu states established in the region. Excavations between 1950 and 2005, particularly at the Cibuaya and Batujaya sites, suggests that Tarumanagara revered deity Wisnu (Vishnu) of Hinduism. Ancient Hindu kingdoms of Java built many square temples, named rivers on the island as Gomati and Ganges, and completed major irrigation and infrastructure projects.

Several notable ancient Indonesian Hindu kingdoms were Mataram, famous for the construction of one of the world's largest Hindu temple complexes - the Prambanan temple, followed by Kediri and Singhasari. Hinduism along with Buddhism spread across the archipelago. Numerous sastras and sutras of Hinduism were translated into the Javanese language, and expressed in art form. Rishi Agastya, for example, is described as the principal figure in the 11th century Javanese text Agastya parva; the text includes puranas, and a mixture of ideas from the Samkhya and Vedanta schools of Hinduism. The Hindu-Buddhist ideas reached the peak of their influence in the 14th century. The last and largest among the Hindu-Buddhist Javanese empires, Majapahit, influenced the Indonesian archipelago.

Hinduism in the colonial era

Sunni Muslim traders of the Shafi'i fiqh, as well as Sufi Muslim traders from India, Oman and Yemen brought Islam to Indonesia. The earliest known mention of a small Islamic community midst the Hindus of Indonesia is credited to Marco Polo, about 1297 AD, whom he referred to as a new community of Moorish traders in Perlak. Four diverse and contentious Islamic Sultanates emerged in north Sumatra (Aceh), south Sumatra, west and central Java, and in southern Borneo (Kalimantan).

These Sultanates declared Islam as their state religion and fought against each other as well as the Hindus and other non-Muslims. In some regions, Indonesian people continued their old beliefs and adopted a syncretic version of Islam. In other cases, Hindus and Buddhists left and concentrated as communities in islands that they could defend. Hindus of eastern Java, for example, moved to Bali and neighboring small islands. While this era of religious conflict and inter-Sultanate warfare was unfolding, and new power centers were attempting to consolidate regions under their control, European colonialism arrived. The Indonesian archipelago was soon dominated by the Dutch colonial empire. The Dutch colonial empire helped prevent inter-religious conflict, and it slowly began the process of excavating, understanding and preserving Indonesia's ancient Hindu-Buddhist cultural foundations, particularly in Java and western islands of Indonesia.

Hinduism in modern era

After Indonesia gained its independence from Dutch colonial rule, it officially recognized only monotheistic religions under pressure from political Islam. Further, Indonesia required an individual to have a religion to gain full Indonesian citizenship rights, and officially Indonesia did not recognize Hindus. It considered Hindus as orang yang belum beragama (people without religion), and as those who must be converted. In 1952, the Indonesian Ministry of Religion declared Bali and other islands with Hindus as needing a systematic campaign of proselytization to accept Islam. The local government of Bali, shocked by this official national policy, declared itself an autonomous religious area in 1953. The Balinese government also reached out to India and former Dutch colonial officials for diplomatic and human rights support. A series of student and cultural exchange initiatives between Bali and India helped formulate the core principles behind Balinese Hinduism (Catur Veda, Upanishad, Puranas, Itihasa). In particular, the political self-determination movement in Bali in mid 1950s led to a non-violent passive resistance movement and the joint petition of 1958 which demanded Indonesian government recognize Hindu Dharma. This joint petition quoted the following Sanskrit mantra from Hindu scriptures,

Om tat sat ekam eva advitiyam

Translation: Om, thus is the essence of the all prevading, infinite, undivided one.

— Joint petition by Hindus of Bali, 14 June 1958

The petition's focus on the "undivided one" was to satisfy the constitutional requirement that Indonesian citizens have a monotheistic belief in one God. The petitioners identified Ida Sanghyang Widhi Wasa as the undivided one. In the Balinese language this term has two meanings: the Divine ruler of the Universe and the Divine Absolute Cosmic Law. This creative phrase met the monotheistic requirement of the Indonesian Ministry of Religion in the former sense, while the latter sense of its meaning preserved the central ideas of dharma in ancient scripts of Hinduism. In 1959, Indonesian President Sukarno supported the petition and a Hindu-Balinese Affairs section was officially established in the Ministry of Religious Affairs under the Djuanda Cabinet.

Indonesian politics and religious affairs went through turmoil from 1959 to 1962, with Sukarno dissolving the Konstituante and weakening the impact of communist movement in Indonesia along with political Islam. Nevertheless, officially identifying their religion as Hinduism was not a legal possibility for Indonesians until 1962, when it became the fifth state-recognized religion. This recognition was initially sought by Balinese religious organizations and granted for the sake of Bali, where the majority were Hindu. Between 1966 and 1980, along with Balinese Hindus, large numbers of Indonesians in western Java, as well as parts of South Sulawesi, North Sumatra, Central and South Kalimantan officially declared themselves to be Hindus. They politically organized themselves to press and preserve their rights. The largest of these organizations, Parisada Hindu Dharma Bali, changed its name to Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI) in 1986, reflecting subsequent efforts to define Hinduism as a national rather than just a Balinese concern.

While Hindus in Bali, with their large majority, developed and freely practiced their religion, in other islands of Indonesia they suffered discrimination and persecution by local officials as these Hindus were considered as those who had left Islam, the majority religion. However, the central government of Indonesia supported the Hindus. In the 1960s, Hinduism was an umbrella also used by Indonesians whose faith was Buddhism and Confucianism, but when neither of these two were officially recognized. Furthermore, Hindu political activists of Indonesia worked to protect people of those faiths under rights they had gained at the Indonesian Ministry of Religion.

To gain official acceptance and their rights in a Muslim-dominated country, Hinduism in Indonesia was politically forced to adapt. Currently Hindu Dharma is one of the five officially recognized monotheistic religions in Indonesia.

Folk religions and animists with a deep concern for the preservation of their traditional ancestor religions declared their religion to be Hinduism, considering it a more flexible option than Islam or Christianity, in the outer islands. In the early seventies, the Toraja people of Sulawesi were the first to realize this opportunity by seeking shelter for their indigenous ancestor religion under the broad umbrella of 'Hinduism', followed by the Karo Batak of Sumatra in 1977. In central and southern Kalimantan, a large Hindu movement has grown among the local indigenous Dayak population which lead to a mass declaration of 'Hinduism' on this island in 1980. However, this was different from the Javanese case, in that conversions followed a clear ethnic division. Indigenous Dayak were confronted with a mostly population of government-sponsored (and predominantly Madurese) migrants and officials, and deeply resentful at the dispossession of their land and its natural resources.

Compared to their counterparts among Javanese Hindus, many Dayak leaders were also more deeply concerned about Balinese efforts to standardize Hindu ritual practice nationally; fearing a decline of their own unique 'Hindu Kaharingan' traditions and renewed external domination. By contrast, most Javanese were slow to consider Hinduism at the time, lacking a distinct organization along ethnic lines and fearing retribution from locally powerful Islamic organizations like the Nahdatul Ulama (NU).

Several native tribal peoples with beliefs such as Sundanese Sunda Wiwitan, Buginese Tolotang, Torajan Aluk Todolo, Tenggerese Budho, and Batak Malim, with their own unique syncretic faith, have declared themselves as Hindus in order to comply with Indonesian law, while preserving their distinct traditions with differences from mainstream Indonesian Hinduism dominated by the Balinese. These factors and political activity has led to a certain resurgence of Hinduism outside of its Balinese stronghold.

Inn February 2020, President Joko Widodo issued a presidential regulation elevating the status of Hindu Dharma State Institute in Denpasar, Bali into the country's first Hindu state university, named I Gusti Bagus Sugriwa State Hindu University. This institution of Hindu higher study started out as a state academy for teachers of Hindu religion in 1993, before being converted into the Hindu Religion State College in 1999, and then into the Hindu Dharma State Institute in 2004.

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