ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the challenges in Indonesia's multiculturalism, by first contextualizing it in historical dimension, and then by looking at the key issues in Indonesia's cultural diversity and complexity. It argues that while people-to-people cross-cultural interaction and the creative localization or translation of trans-border influences have been uninterrupted characteristics of Indonesian multiculturalism, Indonesia's management of diversity. The contradiction of political conquests and cultural flexibility, which characterized cultural diversity in the pre-colonial era, was a significant feature which would have implications for Indonesian multiculturalism and trans-border multiculturalism in the modern era. The future of Indonesia's multiculturalism still remains to be seen, but as the third largest democratic nation in the world, the success, failure, and problems of Indonesia's handling of its complex diversity will be most crucial to humankind. The chapter shows that throughout history there have been fluid trans-border and cultural exchanges between peoples within Indonesia as well as its neighboring Southeast Asian countries.
