When can we say that ‘indigenous religions’ in Indonesia are ‘indigenous’ and ‘religion’?

By MUCHA Q ARQUIZA
01 March 2010

Indigenous. Religion. These two words when used together confuse rather than clarify a category because heuristically they are loaded with many assumptions.

Indigenous. This word does not even properly lend itself to be used as a noun. How does one define ‘indigenousness’ or being indigenous? Does being indigenous imply being original, authentic, pure, pristine or primitive? If these are to be the meanings of being indigenous then many so-called indigenous religions in Indonesia can not be indigenous for there can never be a control group to compare what being not original, not authentic, and impure religions are (i.e. does this imply that the opposite of ‘indigenous religion’ is ‘true religion’?). That leaves out ‘pristine’ and ‘primitive’ as possible remaining definitions. Does ‘indigenousness’ necessarily bear an implication of time or chronology, that is, connoting antiquity or at least a history that can be traced way, way back such as dating to pre-history or prior to the coming of a ‘true’ religion? Does indigenousness mean ‘old-ness’? Is it possible to date religions to know if this is indigenous or not? This definition does not seem to hold as a modern person may claim to be indigenous yet not actually belonging to or having memory of the ‘old-ness’ or antiquity. Does ‘indigenousness’ mean minoritiness? Marginality or peripherality? Anomalous and abnormal? We will go back to this question later.

The second word is ‘religion’ and is equally ambiguous. If we are to take the common definition that religion is a system of beliefs, practices and values particularly associated with a faith or belief in a divine, supernatural power or a belief/faith in a supreme creator and originator of existence or a higher will other than the self which is the ultimate ideal and goal of human perfection; and from that we also believe that religion as a system requires a regular and unambiguous pattern, which pattern is organizeable into structure; structure into system; then many of so-called ‘indigenous’ religions might also be disqualified as many are not even regular or permanent patterns let alone autonomous structures (e.g. some indigenous practices can be classified into many patterns, some are permanent structures that overlap with other structures or sometimes containing characteristic of the ‘true’ and structured religions). On the other hand, some patterns of beliefs and spiritual practices may not be considered by the believers and practitioners themselves as religion or a system in a manner that ‘true’ religions is held to satisfy the requirements of a religion and a system.

The above questions are, of course, asked from the point of view of the ‘mainstream’ and do not really provide satisfactory answers to what indigenous religion is. To understand what ‘indigenous religion’ means, I propose to reframe the question by taking the vantage point of the indigenous community. Taking the Indonesian case for instance, there are at least two lines of arguments that can be useful in understanding ‘indigenous religion’, and these lines are actually parallel because these can be brought as one concern within the issue of minoritiness or ‘minor politics’.

The government of Indonesia has defined five recognized religions and none of these are what we now agree to mean ‘indigenous religions’. To be identified with any one (i.e. only one, in fact) of these five state-recognized religions means that one must belong to either Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Confusian, Hindu or Buddhist faith traditions and communities. The key words here are ‘identifiability’ and ‘belongingness’ which are important concerns of minoritiness. These two are the points of parallel debate mentioned.

In Indonesian government’s requirement for citizenship, one must belong to any one of the five religions. This requirement presupposes that, to be citizen and therefore to legally ‘exist’, one has to be: 1. part of a whole, 2. belong to a mainstream and centered, and not to be in the periphery, and 3. ‘identifiable’ and not to be invisible, obscured (i.e. to be clear/able to be delineated and classified), or ambiguous (i.e. dual or multiple). The problem with this arbitrary classification is that it does not recognize the existence of a possible group in society who might not be part of a whole; not belonging to a mainstream; and not possible to be identifiable because they are invisible, multiple, or unclassifiable, and that they may have chosen the right to remain so. And such are the scattered minor faith groups that, for want of better term, we call the ‘indigenous religious communities”.

The trouble with the totalizing attitude (i.e. a tendency mostly of those coming from the majority stream) is that it never interrogates the issue of ‘identity’ and ‘belongingness’. It assumes that ‘identity’ and ‘belongingness’ are necessarily positive and desirable by all. Two questions have to be asked:
1. Do all groups that purport to profess a certain common ‘beliefs, practices and values particularly associated with the existence of a divine, supernatural power or a supreme creator and originator of existence or a higher will than the self which is the ultimate ideal and goal of human perfection’ actually consider it relevant to ‘belong’?
2. Does it really matter to the minority communities if those ‘outside’ their group (i.e.or others) are able to identify them? Or better yet, does it make any difference to them?

Contrary to most impressions, these are not necessarily ideological question although ideological groups have been asking them, especially those claiming power through identity. These are questions that indigenous ethnic communities themselves such as the sea-nomadic Bajau or Sama Dilaut in Sulu waters ask back in reply to the query if they should consider sendentarized lifestyle and ‘integrating’ into the mainstream so that they may belong. The perplexing question thrown at has been: ‘They are different. We are different. Why do we need to belong?’ Why, indeed.

All along in this discussion we have been assuming ‘indigenous’, here, as pertaining to a minority community. There are, of course, societies where the indigenous community is the majority, and in which case, if they are all practicing ‘indigenous religion’, or even if on a fraction but a majority of them do, it doesn’t make sense to say that their religion is ‘indigenous’ religion because what is beheld by others (outside) as ‘indigenous’ is actually a ‘true’ and majority religion for them in the sense that we are saying ‘true’ as the mainstream. So indigenous community that is at the same time a minority may exhibit ‘indifference’ and ‘non-identification’ with the majority, and this is an exercise of minoritiness or ‘minor politics’ (see Deleuze and Guattari). According to this politics, the minoritiness/indigenousness is an autonomous identity marker and is not a bipolar opposition to majoritiness so it is not relevant to ‘mirror’ one’s identity with the majority (i.e. minor politics is also referred in some literature as ‘autonomist’ politics see Negri). As far as these indigenous communities are concerned they belong to their own communities, an identity that is autonomous and one that in fact does not include the ‘outsider’ who wants to identify them or rather demands that they identify themselves so that they may ‘belong’ and be part of the field of view of the ‘outsider’. For many of these indigenous communities, the primary basis of belongingness is primordial connections of kinship and social commonalities such as language, economic system and way of life, that taken together social anthropologists call ‘ethnicity’ (i.e. gender politics is also considered a form of minor politics). Not all of these indigenous communities would be happy to ‘extend’ that ‘belongingness’ to include the alien outsiders, who are not of their blood-relations or have different language, economic system and way of life. And to be Indonesian citizen might be precisely what that ‘extended belongingness’ means, which is alien to them.

Second is the issue of integration into the mainstream. According to the view of those in the majority, the mainstream or the center is the system of life of the majority. The state, for instance the Republic of Indonesia, which represents the majority politics, demands that the communities of so-called ‘indigenous religion’ must identify themselves with any of the five recognized religions not only to belong but also to be part of a whole, and be within the purview of the mainstream, because the state considers insistence on one’s minoritiness (i.e.indigenous) as a social anomaly. A state structure that wants to manage and normalize its citizens considers the periphery and margins as abnormal. Again, this point of view must be investigated. If we are to look from the vantage of the minorities and use the lenses of minor politics, indigenous minorities are not marginal or peripheral because their world-view and cosmology is the center. Mainstreaming or integration into a ‘whole’ does not make sense, for they are, according to their world-view already whole and central.

The same argument can be raised when talking about religion as a system. Religion as a system presupposes and requires that ‘religion’ has to be made of parts and can be grouped into patterns of behavior. And among the parts of religious system is the concept of reality (cosmos), the self (or human), and god (or supernatural and supreme existence). The religious system that is ‘true’ requires that at least these three elements are well defined and well-delineated such that the claims by ‘indigenous religions’ that self or human is one with god and that god is manifest in nature does not make sense to ‘true’ religion. Moreover, the ‘true’ religion becomes ‘truer’ and ‘truer’ the more it advances the idea that human/self is autonomous and independent from both the cosmos and the highest Will or God, in fact, according to the ‘true’ religion, the religious duties of the human self is to seek to be closer or to be one with a separated God and to comprehend and make sense of reality (i.e. to conquer and tame nature so as to ‘know’ reality fully). However, ’indigenous’ believers have no such claim as the adherents can not imagine themselves, i.e. human/self as outside of the cosmic unity of nature (i.e. reality) and separated from the one who created them (i.e.god). Because the ‘true, truer and truest’ religion considers this attitude as a form of rejection and refusal, the ‘indigenous’ belief is then categorized by the ‘true, truer and truest’ religion as a form of ‘non-religion’, dismissing them as ‘animist’, ‘pagan’, pantheist, polytheist, sometimes even as atheist. Worse, the beliefs of ‘indigenous’ religion is branded as ‘false’ and categorized as mere ‘superstition’.

All in all, the above views are mere personal conjectures, opinions that I may not always be able to produce concrete proofs of. Neither am I interested to debate nor depend their truths. #