Followers of traditional beliefs feel like outcasts

JAKARTA: Growing up on the Indonesian island of Java in the 1970s, Dewi Kanti practiced an ancient form of indigenous traditional beliefs whose origins predate the arrivals of Christianity, Buddhism and Islam here by centuries.

Ironically, Dewi notes bitterly, those traditional beliefs make her a religious outcast in her own country today, where the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion but the government recognises only six: Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Protestantism, Catholicism and Confucianism.

“The point here is how there is no justice,” she said. “Why can these big global religions spread and be recognised, but the original religion of Indonesia cannot?”

It is a question she and others are still waiting to see answered, despite a landmark ruling in November by the Constitutional Court that affirmed the rights of followers of traditional beliefs outside of the six recognised religions.

The ruling came amid signs of growing intolerance of religious minorities in Indonesia, which is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, and objections from some Islamic groups.

Five months later, the Indonesian government has yet to implement the Constitutional Court ruling, although officials say they are working on it.

In a country where religion plays a large part in public life, followers of traditional beliefs, known generally as aliran kepercayaan, hope the ruling will finally end decades of unofficial discrimination that makes it difficult for them to get permits to open gathering places, obtain marriage licences and get access to public services such as health care and education. It also complicates efforts by those believers to get military, police or civil service jobs, or even burial plots.

There are hundreds of different forms of aliran kepercayaan spread across the vast Indonesian archipelago. In Java, the most populous island, it is often a mix of animist, Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic beliefs.

Forms of kepercayaan can include certain periodic religious observances, such as communal meals or acts that could be compared to Muslim men praying together on Fridays or Sunday Christian services. It is estimated that at least 20 million of Indonesia’s 260 million people practice local traditional beliefs, but the numbers could be much higher.