Introduction

I would like to start the introduction to this volume by invoking the well-known motto of the Indonesian Republic ‘Bhțineka Tunggal Ika’, usually translated as ‘unity in diversity’. Just like the national heraldic beast, the garuda, vehicle of Lord WiṮṇ, it was taken from the Hindu-Javanese heritage by Indonesia's founding fathers to inspire national unity. More precisely, it was taken from the Kakawin Sutasoma, a fourteenth-century Buddhist epic, which was created by one of the foremost Hindu-Javanese poets, Mpu Tantular, in the heyday of the East Javanese kingdom of Majapahit. ² I found the motto a befitting opening for a volume on Hinduism in modern Indonesia, not because I wanted to argue for the continuity of the Hindu-Javanese court culture of Majapahit up to present-day Hindu Dharma Indonesia. Notwithstanding the fact that the Javanese nationalist imagination of Majapahit as the precursor of the modern Indonesian nation-state did indeed have an impact on the development of modern Indonesian Hinduism, my intention was rather to point to the still unresolved issue of ‘unity in diversity’ , namely an ongoing situation in which cultural and religious pluralism (emphasizing ‘diversity’) is pitted against cultural and religious homogenization (emphasizing ‘unity’), ³ as the most important determinant for the past and future development of Hindu Dharma in the modern Indonesian nation-state. In this respect, it is important to note that ‘unity in diversity’ has not only been a difficult issue for the Indonesian nationalization process. It has also remained an unresolved problem in the ongoing universalization of Indian Hindu Dharma as ‘world religion’, a process which started in the nineteenth century, and of which the emergence and development of Hindu Dharma Indonesia has been an inseparable part.