Borneo Tribe Practices Its Own Kind of Hinduism:
In this village near the heart of Borneo’s great, dissolving rainforest, Udatn is regarded as a man of deep spiritual knowledge.
Of all the people in this tiny settlement, he speaks better than any other the esoteric language of the Sangiyang, the spirits and ancestors of the upper world, known simply as “Above.” His is a key role in the rituals of Kaharingan, one of a number of names for the ancestor-worshipping religion of Borneo’s indigenous forest people, the Dayak.
“In the beginning, when God separated the darkness and the light, there was Kaharingan,” said Mr. Udatn, as he sat smoking a wooden pipe on the floor of his stilt home. (Like many Indonesians Mr. Udatn uses only one name.)
The Indonesian government thinks otherwise. The world’s most populous Muslim-majority country is no Islamic state, but it is a religious one. Every citizen must subscribe to one of six official creeds: Islam, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Confucianism or Hinduism. Kaharingan, like dozens of other native faiths, does not officially exist.
Even in this village, a frontier where land clearing and mining is fast erasing ancient forest, people have long seen their faith under threat from officialdom.
“When I was in school I was a Catholic,” said Mr. Udatn. “For us, if someone wanted to keep going to school then they had to convert to another religion.”
Now, however, things are changing, and the missionaries are being held at bay. That is because villagers have seized on a strategy being used by many Dayak: They are re-branding. On paper at least, most of the people of Tumbang Saan are now followers of Hinduism, the dominant religion on the distant island of Bali. Few here could name a Hindu god or even recognize concepts, like karma, that have taken on popular meanings even in the West. But that is not the point. In a corner of the world once famed for headhunters and impenetrable remoteness, a new religion is being developed to face up to an encroaching modern world and an intrusive Indonesian state. The point, in short, is cultural survival.
In mainland Southeast Asia alignment with Christianity has also been a way that minorities can preserve their own customs and identity against assimilation into the Theravada Buddhist majority. Also, note that the Indonesian government mandates that all religious be monotheistic. So Hinduism, Confuncianism, and Buddhism, all espouse a monotheistic god in the islands nominally.