Indigenous Religions of Indonesia by Nihayatul wafiroh

Last Friday I attended at Grebekan Sekaten in Alun-alun Utara. I saw that thousands people from around Yogyakarta and outside Yogyakarta joined in this ritual. I understand that the meaning of Sekaten already changed. Right now, for young generation Sekaten is just like communal party (pesta rakyat) rather than religious and cultural ritual. However, when the day of Sekaten on Friday 26, 2010, I was able to figure out that for many people Sekaten is still an important ritual. Many people tried to get such vegetables from gunungan that was provided by Kraton. They do believe that it will bring them on blessing life. I am sure that most of them are moslems. I could see that they wore Jilbab which is the symbol for Moslem women. From this picture, what Stephen C Headley points out is true. Religion in this case Islam in Java still cannot be separated from the Javanese cosmology.

Actually, I can say that the influences of Javanese cosmology do not only occur in kingdom areas such Yogyakarta and Surakarta. In other parts of Indonesia such Banyuwangi. I do believe that religions do not come in an empty room. There is already having cultures. When Islam came to archipelago, there were already some indigenous religions. According to Barbara Watson Andaya who is the professor in University of Hawaii at Manoa and the director of Southeast Asian Studies at UHM and Yoneo Ishi, they discuss about the religious development in Southeast Asia. It is interesting to study religions in SEA because many religions can embody in SEA’s cultures, and each religion could grow well. According to them, actually before Islam came to SEA, the religion already appeared in SEA although the forms of this religions were not as Abrahamic religions. Indigenous religion already existed before Islam had been introduced in SEA, particularly in archipelago. However, the symbol of spirit was to be the central of ritual. For instance, they believed that mountain had sacred spirit, so they did ritual in mountain.

From these arguments, I think that it becomes clear that religions in Java, particularly, still run with keeping Javanese tradition. So the question in my mind is that right now the Javanese rituals become weak, and modernism leads as the king in every aspect of life, but in reality some people still keep the rituals, is it indication that religion cannot fulfill their needs such as happiness, peacefulness, etc?