Yale Indonesia Forum - "Inside the Javanese Religion: The story of Eyang Bonokeling’s followers in Pekuncen Village, Banyumas, Central Java, Indonesia"

This talk exposes the internal dynamics of a relatively small adherent, around five thousand families,
of an indigenous religion in Java. This indigenous religion is centered on one figure, known by its
followers as Eyang Bonokeling that is believed to be their ancestor and the attention of their religious
rituals. From the data and information gathered through observation, interview and participation in
the community’s life during several intermittent visits between 2016-2017; despite some similarities
as a variant of Javanese belief system, this community reveals a particular complex dynamic
resulted from their long processes of adaptation and resistance to both internal and external
pressures, they experience. The endurance and resiliency of this local community in preserving their
core religious values through different historical contexts and political regimes provide an important
lesson to be learned, among others on (1) the form and configuration of their religious life, (2) the
relationships with their wider majority religious groups, (3) their receptions on the various state
policies, (4) their location in the discourse of religion and politics, and (5) their likely futures given the
recent changing state policy on indigenous religion. This paper offers an example of the endurance
of an indigenous Javanese religious community in the rapidly changing wider Indonesian society.

Riwanto Tirtosudarmo is a social demographer by training, obtained his doctorate degree from School of
Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra Australia. He is born in a smalltown in the north
coast of Central Java, Tegal. In the last twenty years researching on the various ethnic and minority groups in
Indonesia, particularly in Java, focusing on their belief system as the core of their source of social and cultural resilience against the exogenous influences. The endurance that is manifested in their adaptation and
resistance over the long history of conquest and subjugation under the name of colonialism, nationalism,
modernity and development; is a living testimony of the still practice of an old faith of ancestor worship
traditions that could be found not only in Java but also around the globe.