designed to restore lost traditions and identities by combin-
ing Western and Javanist-Hindu-Buddhist values. Taman
Siswa schools taught the Javanese arts to encourage the child
to express its inner identity, and they encouraged a family
like school community in which students and teachers were
mutually involved as “brothers in learning.” By 1940, De-
wantara had succeeded in building some 250 schools
throughout the islands, some of which survive today.
A third major Hindu-Buddhist movement is really
many movements and cannot be reduced to any single date
of founding. These are known as kebatinan, from the Java-
nese word (of Arabic origin) batin, meaning “inner.” Some-
thing in the range of one thousand different kebatinan sects
now flourish, primarily on Java, most founded since the be-
ginning of the twentieth century but rooted in practices and
beliefs that go back to the beginnings of the Javanese Hindu-
Buddhist civilizations in the eighth century CE.
The aim of Javanese kebatinan is to mute the crude feel-
ings and perceptions of the material world in order to experi-
ence the underlying reality that is simultaneously god, self,
and cosmos. The techniques are ascetic practice (abstinence
from food, sleep, or sex), philosophical and psychological
speculation, and meditation. Guidance in kebatinan meet-
ings is provided by a teacher who is believed to possess charis-
matic and sacral qualities. The objective is not only to reach
ultimate truth but also to balance and unify the self and, in
this way, the wider society and world. Some kebatinan move-
ments, such as Subud, have established branches in the West,
while others, such as Sumarah, have attracted Westerners to
Java; but, on the whole, kebatinan movements remain a
quintessentially Javanese phenomenon.
While Budi Utomo, Taman Siswa, and kebatinan are
primarily Javanese movements, Balinese Hinduism has been
an important stimulus for a revival of Hindu traditions as an
organized movement spreading through Java as well as Bali.
Associated with this Neo-Hinduism is a Neo-Buddhism that
claims as a root the only surviving folk-Buddhist population,
the Tengger, who live near Mount Bromo on Java. The In-
donesian Buddhist Association claims to have built ninety
monasteries and acquired fifteen million adherents since
1965 (when, following the massacre of an estimated half-
million so-called Communists, all Indonesians were required
to declare some explicit religion or risk being branded atheis-
tic and, therefore, Communist). These revivals, which hold
massive celebrations at such revered monuments as Lara
Janggrang and Borobudur, combine indigenous Bali-Java
traditions with Hindu-Buddhism.
MUSLIM MOVEMENTS. Where the Hindu-Buddhist move-
ments of insular Southeast Asia have been confined primarily
to Java and Bali, the Muslim movements have ranged more
widely: throughout the three thousand miles of Indonesian
islands and into Singapore, Malaysia, and the southern Phil-
ippines. The stimulus for these movements was the opening
in 1870 of the Suez Canal and associated increase in steam-
ship travel, which encouraged great numbers of Southeast
Asian Muslims, many of whom remained in the Near East
for study, to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. By the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, several Malay, Indonesian,
Arab, and Indian citizens of insular Southeast Asia had come
under the influence of the proponent of Islamic modernism,
Muhammad Abduh of Cairo’s al-Azhar center of learning.
Returning to Singapore or other ports of embarkation and
disembarkation to the Near East, these students founded
schools, journals, and associations that spread through the
islands and were known as the Kaum Muda (“new faction”)
of Southeast Asian Islam.
Pressing for a return to the fundamental truths of text
and tradition, the QurDa ̄n and the h:ad ̄ıth, while rejecting the
authority of teachers, scholars, and the ornate speculations
of medieval Islam, modernists extolled the method of itjiha ̄d:
analysis of the original Arabic scriptures in order to read for
oneself the word of God. Paradoxically, the return to scrip-
ture stimulated an advance to modernity, at least in certain
respects. Folk practices that were not in the text were excised,
while proper reading was held to demonstrate an Islamic
basis for modern economics, science, medicine, and law. In
what they themselves termed a “reformation” (reformasi), the
devout Muslim could rediscover a pure identity and inspira-
tion while equipping himself for the challenges of modernity.
Gaining impetus first in Singapore, where returning
scholars founded such still-existing schools as Alsagoff, the
Kaum Muda encountered resistance in Malaya but spread
rapidly throughout the islands of Indonesia. Of the many In-
donesian organizations standing for the Kaum Muda view-
point, the most successful is the Muh:ammad ̄ıyah, founded
in 1912 by Kiai H. A. Dahlan, in the court city of Jogjakarta,
Java. Muh:ammad ̄ıyah worked not only to purify Islamic
practice to accord with QurDa ̄n ic teaching but also in educa-
tion and welfare, building a large system of schools as well
as clinics, orphanages, and hospitals. Muh:ammad ̄ıyah has
been notable, too, in the strength of its women’s movement,
Aisjajah. Having survived periods of turmoil and repression,
Muh:ammad ̄ıyah now boasts some six million members.
In reaction to Kaum Muda, the so-called Kaum Tua
(“old faction”) took steps to cement its cherished traditions,
which the reformers threatened to sweep away. In Malaya,
where Islam was identified with the state, the old could be
buttressed simply by stiffening the established hierarchy of
Islamic officialdom. In Indonesia, lacking such an establish-
ment, reaction took the form of a counterreformation. In
1926, Indonesian traditionalists founded the Nahdatul
Ulama (“union of Muslim teachers”) to withstand the threat
of reformism. Ruled by a dynasty centered around a famous
religious school in East Java, Nahdatul Ulama has out-
stripped Muh:ammad ̄ıyah in gaining support from the rural
masses. While Nahdatul Ulama’s membership is larger, its
organization is looser, and this organization has not equalled
Muh:ammad ̄ıyah in educational and welfare activities.
CHRISTIAN MOVEMENTS. Although significant Christian
populations are found in Indonesia—especially among theSOUTHEAST ASIAN RELIGIONS: NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN INSULAR CULTURES 8653