Indigenous Religions of Indonesia: Stephen C. Headley, Durga’s Mosque: Cosmology, Conversion and Community in Central Javanese Islam

Tri Harmaji
History of Religions in Indonesia Part II: from c. 1900 to the Present
Indigenous Religions of Indonesia: Stephen C. Headley, Durga’s Mosque: Cosmology, Conversion and Community in Central Javanese Islam (Singapore: ISEAS, 2004).
To read this book makes me conscious that we have actually our own philosophy, our own religion where we can find explanations about this world and life and where we can make a good life based on it. In Indonesia now just a few people that still recognize this treasure as well as who still practice it. Almost in every ethnic communities in Indonesia there is one particular religion that different each other, a treasure that have been forgotten by the long history of Islam and Christian penetration in this country. Now the people consider them as Islam, Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist; all five religion that acknowledged by the government.
When I read the book I begin to realize that especially amongst the Javanese the philosophy of life was so high. It is right the philosophy does not bring the people into high technology like what had happened in Christianity, but it is undeniable that the religion had brought the people close to the nature to life in harmony with it. Something that after great destruction caused by what people admire as high technology has become a hot issue that is being pursued for one more time by many. Now we have arrived in the consciousness of its goodness and so many researches is being done in this subject. But my question is what can we get from such researches other knowledge? And what the knowledge is for other than to fill our libraries collection?
I wonder why the founding fathers of this country just include those five foreign religions as Indonesian official religions. Are they infected by evolutionism theory so they thought that indigenous religion was still animistic that inferior than the monotheism ones? But whatever the reason behind this decision the not-included of indigenous religion as official in the first days of this country has become the main factor of its later complete extinction, like Headley also imply when he describes about Durga ritual in the village of Krendawahana (p. 256). From another reading I read about one indigenous religion in Sulawesi I know that after this decision the people that still adhere their traditional religion was considered as backward and stupid, as the people of the mountain that was isolated from urban advancement. Even the term agomo at that time was just used for those five official religions while the traditional religions were just called as beliefs.
But back to my question before, what then we have to do for this indigenous religions? Is it enough just to document this religion and keep it in the library or something more like do a real act to preserve and keep the religion to go alive in its own land???