Prambanan Temple and Indonesia’s journey with Hinduism | Explained
The story so far: Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the historic Prambanan Temple near Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Standing alongside Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, he offered prayers
The story so far: Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the historic Prambanan Temple near Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Standing alongside Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, he offered prayers at the 9th-century UNESCO World Heritage Site, the largest Hindu temple complex in the country, which houses the trimurti of Vedic Hinduism — Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. The temple signifies the assertion of Hinduism as a monotheistic religion to meet the legal standard in the country for official recognition, which it secured in 1962, after a period of turmoil and uncertainty following the country’s independence in 1945. The trimurti is presented as the manifestation of one supreme god. Incidentally, the Christian concept of the trinity is also premised on one supreme god. The temple combines the antiquity of the faith and traditions with the modern, innovative repurposing of the inherent polytheism of Hinduism as monotheistic. How does Indonesia balance state-mandated monotheism and religious freedom? In Indonesia’s legal system, two concepts are in tension — mandatory monotheism and the guarantee of religious freedom. The country’s national identity itself is deeply tied to adherence to religion. The country has a national identity card with a mandatory column on religion, which is of considerable consequence for civic life. Marriage registration, birth certificates, school religious education tracking, civil service promotion, and even burial rights are tied to a person’s declared religion. To date, Indonesia does not recognise agnosticism or atheism, and blasphemy remains illegal. Indonesia also guarantees religious freedom. To reconcile this, the state recognised six religions — Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism — as agama, formalised in 1965.
Hinduism’s evolution within Indonesia’s monotheistic mandate The founding principle of the modern Indonesian state has five components (Pancasila), and the first is monotheism, or faith in one supreme god. When this was mandated as state policy, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism were considered legitimate by default. Hinduism could not meet the three criteria set in 1952 for a community to be recognised as a religion — it had to be strictly monotheistic, possess a recognised holy scripture, and be founded by a prophet. The application for Hindu recognition was formally turned down by the Indonesian Ministry of Religion in 1952. Reformers organised under the banner of the Parisada Hindu Dharma (later Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia, PHDI), founded in Bali in 1959, and reframed Balinese practice around a single supreme deity, Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa, recasting a richly polytheistic tradition into something that could satisfy the monotheistic test. PHDI is the body that holds this together — the principal representative body for Hindus in Indonesia, defining theology, issuing religious guidance, and standardising ritual practice for the whole category. What is the concept of Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa? To satisfy the state’s monotheism requirement, Balinese reformers took the Hindu monistic concept of Brahman (the impersonal ultimate reality) and personified it as a single supreme god-concept, Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa — sometimes equated with the Trimurti (Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva) fused into one, sometimes identified with the abstract Acintya (”the inconceivable”). The concept evolved across three distinct phases to become Indonesia’s definitive monotheistic deity.
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