Relations Between Hindus
in Modern Indonesia and India
In order to appreciate the relations between Hindus in modern India and Indonesia, we have to recall the fact that 'Hinduism' was unknown in the archipelago until European orientalists and theosophists (see Herman de Tollenaere's article in this theme issue) projected it onto Old Javanese and Balinese culture. It was in the nineteenth century, at a time when European orientalists were constructing 'Hinduism' as a 'world religion' together with their Brahmin informants in India, that British, Dutch, and German scholars discovered traces of ancient Indian 'Hinduism' and Buddhism in the Old Javanese literature, in the newly discovered temple ruins in Java and Bali as well as in the contemporary Balinese culture. In the West, Bali came to be known as the 'last Hindu enclave in the archipelago', whereas the Balinese on their part had hitherto regarded themselves as the heirs of the Old Javanese empire of Majapahit and its culture, and had not even known the term 'Hindu'.
By MARTIN RAMSTEDT
When Bali was conquered by the Dutch between 1846 and 1908, colonial orientalists started to thoroughly investigate the Balinese literary and religious tradition as a blurred mirror of ancient India. While the various descent groups in Bali traced their origin back to different ancestral priests and noblemen originating from ancient Java, European scholars reconstructed a supposed Indian invasion and subsequent conquest of various locations in the archipelago from approximately the fourth to the ninth century AD, including ancient Java and perhaps Bali. This scholarly model, proposed to explain the dissemination of Indian influence in the Indoensian archipelago, has come to be known as the ksatriya-theory. With increasing knowledge about the sophisticated yet idiosyncratic 'Hindu' and Buddhist architecture of ancient Java that showed considerable independence from Indian prototypes, and with the absence of definite proof of Indian colonies in the archipelago, scholars began to question the ksatriya-theory modelled after the dissemination of Dutch influence in the archipelago. They now considered the possibility of a peaceful dissemination of Indian influence through Indian merchants. This model has come to be known as the so-called vaisya-theory. A more sophisticated elaboration of this theory was proposed by Van Leur. It credited the pre-Indianized archipelago with highly developed chiefdoms or petty kingdoms that had established trade relations with Indian counterparts on their own initiative. The leaders of these precursors of early-state societies in Indonesia were supposed to have invited Indian Brahmins and Buddhist priests to their courts in order to upgrade the administration of their native polities as well as to provide them with a new religious legitimacy.The history of the early Indianization of the archipelago has still not been fully elucidated. It is, however, safe to assume that Indians had settled in Indonesia but had not necessarily come as conquerors. With the Islamization of India and Southeast Asia, large-scale cultural contacts with non-Islamic Indian civilization were severed. Yet economic relations with both northern as well as southern Indians of various backgrounds have continued through the ages until modern times (see also Silvia Vignato's article). It is interesting to note that once European scholars had discovered traces of Indian influence in the Old Javanese literature and temple ruins as well as in 'the last Hindu enclave' Bali, some Indian scholars started to turn their gaze to Java and Bali too. One of them was Ananda K. Coomaraswamy who had fully embraced the so-called ksatriya-theory when writing on Indian and Indonesian art in a book published in Germany in 1927. Was it that he was just influenced by the dominating paradigm of the day or was it the evolving Indian chauvinism that lead him to speak about Indian colonization without any shade of doubt? We cannot tell for sure, but it felt strange for me to see how members of the Indian upper class, Indian administrators, Indian Hindu leaders, intellectuals and artists, whom I have interviewed both in India as well as in Indonesia throughout the last three years, persistently echoed the ksatriya-theory when reflecting on the development of Hinduism in Indonesia. An Indian professor in Bombay is currently trying to raise funds so far unsuccessfully for a project similar to that undertaken by Thor Heyerdal to prove the trans-pacific migration by the ancestors of the native South Americans. The Indian professor on his part wants to rebuild a ship from the time of the South Indian Chola Dynasty and send it on its voyage to Sumatra to foster the theory of a Chola invasion. It seemed a strange coincidence that when I proposed a paper on 'Hinduism in Modern Indonesia' for the recent Quinquennial Congress of the International Association for the History of Religion in Durban, the conveners placed it in a panel on 'the Hindu diaspora'.
Elitist notion
While colonial orientalists praised Bali as a storehouse of ancient Indian survivals, and theosophists acknowledged its culture as an offspring of the Aryan invasion, Muslim and Christian missionaries claimed that the religious practices of the islanders were neither 'Hindu' nor 'religion'. Not disputing the fact that the social hierarchy of the Balinese (a derivation of the Indian 'caste' or rather varna system), the literary tradition of their Brahmin priests and some of their religious practices were indeed remnant of ancient India, the missionaries classified the elaborate ritual system of the majority as native 'animism' (adat) on the grounds that it differed widely from the Hindu practices in contemporary India. This criticism, the influence of theosophy, and the visit of the widely known Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore to Java and Bali in 1927 inspired some Balinese intellectuals to scrutinize the 'Hindu-ness' of their tradition. Several religious reform organizations were formed with the goal to purify, to foster, and to safeguard the 'Balinese Hindu religion'. The progressive organizations tried to rid Balinese culture from obsolete customs not in conformity with a notion of 'Hinduism' that was very much inspired by Rabindranath Tagore, whose father, Devendranath Tagore, had been comrad-in-spiritual-arms of Rammohun Roy, the founder of the Brahmo Samaj. The conservative organizations tended to cling to an elitist notion of 'Balinese Hinduism' that was still very much traditionally Balinese and less 'Neo-Hinduized'. In some respects, it was much more compatible with Dutch colonial theosophy than with Indian reform movements.
Immediately after World War II, many Indonesian nationalists most of whom were Javanese along with a comparatively small number of Balinese felt greatly inspired by India's achievement of independence. Moreover, India was fervently supporting Indonesia's own struggle for independence. When in 1950, the unitary Indonesian nation state had finally obtained international recognition, Indian Prime Minister Nehru was the first head of state of a foreign country to visit free and independent Indonesia. In spite of the Treaty of ('unalterable') Friendship that was signed a year later, the relationship between the two countries began to deteriorate when Krishna Menon replaced the able and amiable Sir Benegal Rau as the leader of the Indian delegation of the Afro-Asia group within the United Nations. The late Ide Anak Agung Gde Agung, one of Indonesia's distinguished diplomats, attributed the growing mistrust against India to Menon's 'arrogance and impatience in dealing with the other delegates'. The situation was aggravated by Nehru's paternalistic behaviour during the Bandung Conference of 1955. When Nehru's claim to the leadership of the non-aligned countries clashed with Soekarno's own aspiration, the foreign policies of the two countries became increasingly irreconcilable. In the context of the violent Indian-Chinese border dispute, the emergence of the so-called Jakarta-Beijing axis during the late 1950s did not help to bridge the growing rift. Official relations had deteriorated to a point of no return when India was supporting Malaysia against Soekarno's 'crush Malaysia' policy and Indonesia was growing close to Pakistan.
Relations with India were, however, retained in Bali where people had been forced to align themselves with a 'world religion' due the religious policy of the new Indonesian state. The Indonesian Ministry of Religion had classified the religious practices and beliefs of the Balinese as 'native currents of belief' (aliran kepercayaan) a euphemism of 'animism' as opposed to 'religion' (agama)'. Only monotheistic 'world religions' were acknowledged as agama, which was why initially only Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism were represented by the Ministry. Since Indonesia is not a secular country the Indonesian Constitution is based on the 'Belief in the One, Almighty God' (Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa) -, every citizen had to become a member of an acknowledged religious community. Hence, Bali was declared to become a target for Muslim and Christian prosyletization. The Balinese responded by announcing their island as an 'Autonomous Religious Area' and turning to India to reformulate their religious beliefs in accordance with the requirements of the Ministry of Religion. At the beginning of the 1950s, the Arya Samaj sent the Indian scholar Narendra Dev Pandit Shastri to Bali who took a Balinese wife and settled permanently there. Other Indian scholars and religious teachers came to Bali on short-term visits. Besides, some Balinese went to India to study at the Shantiniketan Vishva Bharaty University, founded by Tagore, the Benares Hindu University, and Raghu Vira's International Academy of Indian Culture. Direct and indirect contacts were established with the Gandhi Peace Foundation (see also my article below), the Divine Life Society of Swami Shivananda, and the Ramakrishna Mission.
'Neo-Hinduism'
In a joint effort, the leaders of several Balinese religious reform organizations, Pandit Shastri, the Balinese who had returned from their studies in India, and a Dutch turned Indonesian orientalist, Roelof Goris, succeeded in formulating a new Balinese theology both along the lines of Indian 'Neo-Hinduism' (V. Stietencron) as well as in conformity of the required monotheism of the Indonesian institution. While Indian-Indonesian foreign relations were continuously deteriorating, 'Hinduism' was finally acknowledged as 'one of the religions adhered to by the Indonesian people' between 1958 an 1962. Three factors facilitated the official recognition: (1) the growing irritation on the part of Sukarno with the separatist and Islamist Darul Islam movement; (2) the fact that many members of the circle around Sukarno were influenced by theosophy; and (3) the coincidence that Soekarno's mother was Balinese. Strangely, the newly established Parisadha Hindu Dharma, sole representative organ of the Indonesian Hindu community modelled after the Indian parisad, did not include Pandit Shastri, who was to be further marginalized as time went on. He continued to exert some influence, though, through a book on Hindu Dharma for which he also received an award of the Birla Foundation in India.
During Soeharto's 'new order' regime, relations with India normalized, even though India had lobbied in vain to have South Asia included within ASEAN. However, since Soeharto discouraged identification with a transnational religious community that would hamper the development of a strong national identity, contacts between Indonesian and Indian Hindus remained relatively limited until the 1980s. By then, the rapid modernization of Indonesian society and the increasing intellectualization of the officially prescribed Indonesian religions had gradually undermined traditional spirituality on one hand, and raised the need for a new kind of spirituality on the other hand, especially among the urbanized modern middle class. Among the Indonesian Hindu community, more and more people started to get interested in new Indian spiritual movements like the Hare Krishna movement, the Satya Sai Baba movement, Ananda Marga, Brahma Kumaris, Shri Shri Ravi Shankar, and Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh). Besides, the 'New Age' culture was beginning to make an inroad into the Javanese and Chinese community. When Soeharto started to court the Muslim community at the end of the 1980s in order to increase mass support for his regime, the rapid Islamization of public discourse lead to serious disadvantages of the minority religions in Indonesia. In response to the official promotion of a modern Muslim Indonesian identity, Hindus were beginning to develop a stronger sense of being part of a transnational religious community, looking to India for inspiration how to be a modern Hindu in a modern world. Since 1993, several travel agencies in Bali have organized annual pilgrimages to India.
Having lost its main trade partner, the Soviet Union, in 1989 India has been increasingly orienting itself towards the Asia-Pacific market, as Christophe Jaffrelot has recently pointed out in a paper. Since 1995, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) has annually provided ten scholarships for Indonesians to study Indian culture at an Indian university. These scholarships were exclusively given to Indonesian Hindus who have studied Indian philosophy, Hindi, and Sanskrit in Dehli, Agra, or other Indian cities. The ICCR has furthermore donated complete sets of Vedantic literature to two Balinese temples. Besides, Indian expatriates working in Indonesia like, for instance, the general manager of the Balinese Oberoy Hotel, have been sponsoring the building of Hindu temples and the publication of Hindu literature in Indonesia as well as providing grants for underprivileged members of the Hindu community outside Bali to study Hinduism at one of Indonesia's Hindu colleges.
In October 2000 the Indian Ambassador to Indonesia, the Balinese Governor and other Balinese and Indians living in Indonesia jointly established the Foundation for Balinese-Indian Brotherhood (Yayasan Persaudaraan Bali-India) in Denpasar and a Hindu Study Centre at the Universitas Udayana. In November 2000 a delegation of Balinese Brahmin priests will visit India on the invitation of the Indian government. A meeting with the Shankaracarya of Kanchipuram has also been arranged for this occasion. It is planned that the Shankaracarya will then repay the visit of the Balinese priests at the beginning of next year. This will then be the first time that a Shankaracarya has left the sacred soil of India. *
Dr Martin Ramstedt is an ESF / Alliance fellow and is stationed at the IIAS in Leiden.
E-mail: mramstedt@let.leidenuniv.nl