In August 2014, I helped organise a national seminar in Magelang, Central Java, that celebrated the 200^th anniversary of the supposed “discovery” of the temple of Borobudur by the then British lieutenant governor-general of Java, Sir Stamford Raffles. Archaeologists, historians, and conservation experts convened to discuss what could be done to preserve Borobudur for another 200 years. Later that year, and still in the spirit of this celebration, the Indonesian Postal Service issued 20,000 unique postage stamps showing the Borobudur temple foregrounded by a painted portrait of Raffles. The stamp design was officially launched in the courtyard of Borobudur by Puan Maharani, then Coordinating Minister for Advancements of Human and Culture, accompanied by Rebecca Razavi, the British Consul General to Indonesia and Timor Leste, and Ganjar Pranowo, then the governor of Central Java.

Read any historical book on Borobudur today, and you will most certainly find this narrative of “discovery”. But while adoration for Raffles prevails, it is remarkable that—contrary to what is depicted on those 20,000 stamps—he did not personally go to see the temple in 1814. He was indeed the first European scholar to describe the ancient site in his widely recognised 1817 book, The History of Java, recently translated and re-published in Indonesian language. But this account was based on reports and drawings from the Dutch engineer Hermanus Christiaan Cornelius, whom Raffles had assigned to survey the area following a tip-off from an unnamed local official. Moreover, the description of the Javanese temples in his book fixated on the notion that Hindu and Buddhist monuments had been abandoned and lost their meanings following Javanese conversion to Islam in the early 16th century—a contested colonial narrative that continues to reverberate in Indonesian archaeology and heritage-making today.

But Raffles’s book was thankfully not the only text produced in this period to contain accounts of the ancient Javanese temples and their later significance. The 1815 manuscript Centhini Kadipaten—an exceptional version of a Javanese text broadly known as the Serat Centhini—provides dramatised accounts of visits by Javanese santri (students of Islam) to a handful of Hindu and Buddhist temples across Java during the reign of Sultan Agung of Mataram (1613–1645). Its 12 volumes and 3,500 stanzas compile and retell accounts from older court manuscripts dating back as far as 1616, interlaced with stories borrowed from other Javanese texts and oral traditions beyond the court’s walls. The Centhini Kadipaten manuscript contests the dominant colonial narratives of “abandonment” and “discovery”—and a close reading of its contents tells a different story altogether about the shifting values of ancient Javanese temples.

The colonial gaze in the archaeology of Indonesia

Authorised heritage-making for ancient sites in Indonesia often gravitates towards memorialisation of colonial narratives. In part, this has been driven by the colonial assumption of rupture in localised attitudes towards ancient monuments in Java following conversion to Islam. This assumption can be traced back to Raffles. In his own words:

The natives are still devotedly attached to their ancient institutions, and though they have long ceased to respect the temples and idols of a former worship, they still retain a high respect for the laws, usages, and national observances before the introduction of Mohametanism. [Emphasis added]

“Idols” here connotes figural representations, or statues, of gods from Hindu and Buddhist traditions, such as the tiered complex of Buddha statues at Borobudur.

Borobudur drawing by Cornelius, c.1814 © The Trustees of the British Museum

Another example can be found in Penataran, a Javanese Hindu temple built in the 12th century, which is also said to have been “discovered” by Raffles in 1815 after a long period of purported neglect. This false yet pervasive impression of “abandonment” was manufactured by colonial scholars such as Raffles by ignoring Islamic (re)production of knowledge and (re)appreciation of Hindu and Buddhist monuments. Until today, accounts from local Muslim communities, particularly those recorded in early modern texts, have never been appropriately acknowledged and considered in the official historiography.

Underpinning this particular heritage construction is the field of archaeology (and, to some extent, art history), in which the primary attitude is to privilege a monument’s original functions and meanings at the time of creation. Hindu-Buddhist sites and materials are then frozen into the period when the local population is thought to have primarily observed them, between the 4th and 15th centuries. Later appropriations in the Islamic context, which may include newly created meanings for these materials, and even those inspired by past values, are mostly deemed ineligible for scientific study within archaeology.

There is a political dimension to why archaeology sustains the colonial framework, seeking to glorify ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples and their original functions. Soekmono, one of the first generation of local archaeologists and known today as the “father” of Indonesian archaeology, was convinced that:

… the period of ancient history also yields a very large number of remains, other than written documents, which are important evidence of the glory of a culture (its architecture), and it is these remains which provide inexhaustible material for archaeology.

This framework helps produce an imagination of past grandeur, especially in the service of history-writing geared towards a particular brand of national identity. Southeast Asian nations tend to engage in archaeology for identity-making by giving prominence to “monumental architecture”.  In Indonesia, this architecture includes ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples. Through the process of heritage-isation, these temples are used by the nation-state to celebrate premodern cultural achievements, giving an impression of historical rootedness for the national identity.

Apart from being nurtured along by nationalistic fervour, the framework has also been perpetuated by disciplinary constructions of periodisation and specialisation, with divisions of expertise created along sectarian and chronological lines. This periodisation-cum-specialisation has driven knowledge about broader Javanese cultures to be divided into pre- and post-16th century blocs: Islamic perspectives are exclusively applied in the study of post-16th century materials, while almost never being considered in the study of the pre-16th century Hindu-Buddhist period. Due to this periodisation, rich cultural texts like the Centhini Kadipaten are largely absent from both archaeology and heritage-making for Java’s Hindu-Buddhist monuments.

Islamic stories of Hindu-Buddhist temples

The dramatised narrative of the Centhini Kadipaten manuscript retells the journeys of three descendants of Sunan Giri, one of the “Nine Saints” (Wali Sanga) believed to have introduced Islam across the island of Java, as well as a fourth figure who married into the family. Siblings Jayengresmi, Jayengsari, and Ni Rancangkapti were forced to disperse across Java after Sultan Agung of Mataram attacked their home, the palace of Giri, a theocratic city-state on the northeast coast. From ransacked Giri, Jayengresmi went on his journey and visited the ruined capital of Majapahit, the temples in Panataran, and the remains of the Padjajaran kingdom along the way. Meanwhile, his brother Jayengsari and sister Ni Rancangkapti were told stories about nearby temples while spending their nights in the Dieng plateau in central Java. The fourth figure in the tale, Mas Cebolang, travelled mainly in the southern region of central Java, where he encountered the temples of Borobudur, Mendut and Prambanan. He would later meet and marry Ni Rancangkapti.

The 1815 manuscript relates to a Javanese genre of literature called santri lelana (wandering Islamic student or scholar). The genre generally concerns a santri scholar exploring life outside the court walls in a vague geographical setting while accumulating new knowledge through encounters and debates with other spiritual figures. In a departure from this style, the Centhini Kadipaten is the first manuscript of its kind to give its stories an existent temporal and spatial setting.

It is also the first to include descriptions of Hindu and Buddhist temples in Java. Many scholars have remarked on these descriptions, yet none have considered them important sources for historical and archaeological studies on Hindu and Buddhist temples. This is partly because the narrative is set during the reign of

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Time and place details in the Centhini Kadipaten have compelled comparisons to European travel accounts, and so have attracted some scholarly appreciation. Less appreciated is that the manuscript also has much to teach us about the internalisation of local knowledge, and how it is purportedly written to showcase how the distant past of Java should have been recorded and understood. In many ways, the production of the Centhini Kadipaten became a means to perform Javanese identity against the backdrop of socio-political turmoil in early the 19th century. Its production can be understood as a moral and metaphysical defiance, creating a court-endowed Javanese history in response to then ongoing European-driven knowledge production. It was composed during a time of political disorder in Surakarta, Central Java, prompted by a four-way power contestation between the ruler Pakubuwana IV, the crown prince Mangkunegara III, the British authority in Java (led by Raffles), and the Sepoy troops employed by the British, who planned a failed rebellion in 1815. It should be noted that while Surakarta’s court scribes penned the Centhini Kadipaten, the study of Javanese antiquities by British colonial scholars, including publications such as Raffles’ History of Java, was in full swing.

Considered in this context, the Centhini Kadipaten might have a more tangible link with The History of Java than one would imagine. Foregrounding his discussion on Java’s ancient history, Raffles noted that he was indebted to accounts provided by a few local aristocrats, among them the secretary of Pangeran Adipati of Surakerta (Surakarta). It would be safe to assume that Raffles was referring to Kangjeng Gusti Pangeran Adipati Anom Mangkunagara III, a noble of the Surakarta court, and his “secretary”, or court poet at the time, Yasadipura II. According to tradition, Yasadipura II was one of the principal scribes of Centhini Kadipaten, alongside two other poets, Ranggasutrasna and Sastradipura. If this assumption is correct, then one of Raffles’ important sources for his book was actually involved in producing the Centhini Kadipaten.

Curation of knowledge

Reflecting on questions of remembering and forgetting, one specific episode in the Centhini Kadipaten manuscript can serve as a case study: when Jayengresmi visits the candhi (temple) of Penataran in Blitar, East Java. The visit happens after a sojourn in Trowulan, the capital of Majapahit, where Jayengresmi is accompanied by his two santri-servants, Gathak and Gathuk. In the complex of Penataran, the group observes the relief narrating the Ramayana story at the main temple, and the numeral inscription in one of the smaller temples, recognised today as Candi Angka Tahun (literally the Temple of the Year Numeral). This can be found in lines 29–33 of stanza 20 in Centhini Kadipaten, as below in Modern Javanese transcription and English translation:

After walking far, 
they finally arrived at the candhi of Panataran in Blitar, 
at the foot of Kelud mountain. 
The candhi was made of black stones, 
each stone was big, and, 
from bottom to top, 
was carved with images from the wayang (shadow puppet play).

Raden (Jayangresmi) immediately climbed the candhi, 
seven levels to reach the top, 
then went down slowly. 
Gathak and Gathuk crawled, 
their hearts trembling, 
and after they arrived at the bottom Gathuk asked, 
“Gathak, what were those images from before?”

“Those carved at the edge of the candhi, 
decorated by flower petals, 
looked like the wayang monkey giant,” Gathuk guessed, 
“it was a picture of Rama building a dam, 
as we could see from his monkey army carrying something.” 
Then there was a small heirloom temple.

Resembling a grave’s structure, 
above its entrance door, 
the script of Buda was inscribed, 
and Gathuk said, 
“Please excuse me Raden (Jayangresmi), 
what is this, 
this writing here, 
jumbled and unclear?”

Raden (Jayangresmi) spoke softly, 
“this Buda script is to commemorate the temple, 
it is read as one thousand two hundred and ninety one, 
which is the year when the candhi was made.” 
In that place of worship, 
Gathuk and Gathak were nodding.

The word candhi has been adopted by the Indonesian language (candi) to refer to ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples. It comes from the Old Javanese lexicon, primarily denoting a holy sanctuary where gods descend upon worship. Yet in Modern Javanese, the word can gloss over multiple meanings, including a cemetery, tomb, and mausoleum. In a Javanese–Dutch dictionary published in 1901, candhi is described as “the stones, between and under which the ashes of the burnt corpse of a deceased person were ordered in olden times; a cemetery or mausoleum built over the ashes of a deceased person; a stone temple of ancient times.’’ These meanings may reflect 19th-century Javanese perspectives on the remains of Hindu and Buddhist temples. A closer reading of the word candhi could then reveal how meanings were accumulated over time, with original understandings perhaps at times manifestly forgotten, even while lingering obscurely in the collective memory, which could be recollected and reinterpreted through various forms of knowledge.

Numeral inscription of 1291 of Javanese Era (1369 CE) at Candi Angka Tahun, Penataran. (Photo: author)

Another notable term from the passage above is buda, which generally signifies the distant pre-Islamic past in Java. While derived from the word Buddha, buda typically stood for the hybrid Hindu-Buddhist religion, but also at times included animism in Java. The use of this term in the early 19th century appears to signal the beginning of Javanese fascination with the pre-Islamic past. The term buda then seems to encompass all things that happened before Islam took hold of the Javanese spiritual imagination, starting from the 16th century. The term is notably used in the passage above to refer to the type of script used in the numeral inscription on the temple. We know that the script here is Old Javanese, known as kawi by later Javanese literati. Older texts like Ramayana and Bharatayuddha are written in kawi. Mastery of such texts was considered paramount for court elites to understand Islam in Java, giving one an authoritative voice within the court. This is implied in the passage above when the one who reads aloud the numeral is Jayengresmi, a prince from the theocratic city-state of Giri. We should also note that the numeral “1291” is read correctly, thus debunking the colonial presumption that 19th-century Javanese people could not read Old Javanese inscriptions.

Two panels portraying Rama’s monkey army building a dam, Penataran. Photo by Anandajoti Bhikku (CC BY 2.0)

The passage further reveals that early modern (Islamic) Javanese could understand the stories represented on reliefs in ancient temples. This may be helped by the fact that the Old Javanese Ramayana is one of the pre-16th-century texts to have been copied by the court of Mataram in the second half of the 18th century. At Penataran, it was Gathuk, one of the servants accompanying Jayengresmi, who recognised the panel describing the monkey army’s construction of a water bridge. Considering Gathuk’s lower social status, this episode may reflect the popularity of Rama’s story, frequently retold in public recitals and wayang performance. The connection between the relief and its wayang portrayals is evident in that the figures are portrayed in the carving in the style of shadow puppet figures. While other older tales might have been left forgotten, this continued remembering of Ramayana speaks to early modern Javanese and Islamic curation, in terms of what knowledge from the past is still considered necessary, despite originating from distinct sectarian practices.

Towards inclusive heritage

Keeping this reading of Centhini Kadipaten in mind, the “abandonment” narrative that has been embedded into heritage-making around Java’s Hindu and Buddhist temples becomes a more ambiguous colonial and postcolonial framework. From the early 19th century onwards, colonial administrators-cum-scholars co-opted

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Re-introducing local texts is one strand in the decolonisation of thinking about the narratives of ancient temples in Indonesia. This strand does not intend to excavate something pre-colonial, but instead aims to retrieve localised knowledge from the cracks and fissures born out of local-colonial tensions. In order to better grasp nuanced historical contexts, local texts and artistic manifestations must be read closely. By studying history in this way, with sensitivity to political, social, and cultural contexts at the time of production, we relocate and observe what is in those cracks and fissures. It is through localised knowledge, such as the stories attested in the Centhini Kadipaten, that we can see how Hindu and Buddhist temples in Java were never truly “dead”, and that local people continued, and still continue, to re-create meanings and values around them. This new understanding should engender a more inclusive heritage practice, by acknowledging the diverse ways of interpreting ancient sites.

• • • • • • • • • •

This post is part of a series of essays highlighting the work of emerging scholars of Southeast Asia published with the support of the Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific.

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Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto surprised many on 11 June 2025 when he mentioned in a speech at the Indo Defence Expo & Forum that according to a study purportedly published a few weeks earlier, “the Netherlands took resources from Indonesia valued at US$31 trillion in today’s terms during their colonisation of our country”. He explained that this was equivalent to almost 18 times Indonesia’s current GDP of around US$1.5 trillion.

The number of US$31 trillion reverberated in Indonesian social media. By contrast, in The Netherlands only the Jakarta correspondent of De Volkskrant reported it, adding that the origin of the number puzzled historians of Indonesia.

It is unclear why Prabowo mentioned this number. It appears he intended to justify Indonesia’s additional military expenditure to safeguard Indonesian sovereignty and prevent his country from ever being colonised again. It is also unclear what study the president referred to. An extensive online search yielded no trace of a publication that accounted for the extraordinary amount of US$ 31 trillion The Netherlands may have taken from Indonesia.

If there is such a study, it would be a significant intervention in an ongoing international discussion among scholars of international law, history, and international relations about the need for former colonising countries to pay retribution for the colonial past. This discussion was partly informed by the 2012 book Why Nations Fail, by the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics, Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson. They argued that “extractive institutions” related to slavery and colonialism had lasting and debilitating consequences for many countries’ later economic development.

In 2017 an article in Third World Quarterly by the political economist Bruce Gilley, “The Case for Colonialism”, also prompted considerable discussion about the demerits of colonial rule. Contributing to the discussion too was a 2017 study by Indian historian Utsa Patnaik concluding that British colonisation of India between 1765 and 1938 had benefited the United Kingdom by US$45 trillion. All this energised opinion that European states should pay reparations to the countries they had colonised in the past—though this debate was largely grounded in ethical objections to past practices of slavery and colonialism, rather than about how to quantify the damage caused by such institutions in order to establish the size of retribution to be paid.

During 2025 this debate was stepped up several notches. In February, the African Union Heads of State meeting set “Justice for Africa and People of African Descent through Reparations’ as its annual theme. This echoed earlier calls for reparations articulated by Caribbean members of the Caricom Reparations Commission. A submission to the UN General Assembly in September from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reiterated the call for “reparatory justice for legacies of enslavement … colonialism and successive racially discriminatory policies and systems”, calling for “adequate, effective and prompt reparation”.

Recent statements from international organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International support the call for reparations for colonialism and slavery. The UN Special Advisor on Africa is organising an “Africa 2025” conference in December with a key session “on reparations, broadening the lens beyond compensation to embrace a vision of structural justice”.

What about Indonesia?

Although this flurry of debate in 2025 is focused on Africa, earlier publications on India indicate that it may just as well apply to parts of Asia subjected to slavery and colonialism in the past. But unlike India, Indonesia hardly featured in this debate. As far as there was public discussion about Indonesia’s colonial past during those years in Indonesia and/or The Netherlands it related to Indonesia’s independence war (1945–1949), especially regarding what was considered to have been “extreme violence” (extreem geweld) on the part of Dutch armed forces during this conflict. It informed the Dutch King’s apologies delivered during a visit to Indonesia in March 2020—not for the entire colonial past, but for the “extreme violence”.

The Netherlands offered apologies and paid compensation to family members of victims of extreme violence in West Java and South Sulawesi. It also financed an extensive study project that in 2022 published multiple volumes on the Dutch involvement in Indonesia’s war of independence 1945–1949 and the use of extreme violence.

Even in that context, there were no attempts to link the Dutch apologies to the broader issue of the effects of Indonesia’s colonial past on Indonesia’s development prospects. That was possibly because the evidence for the broader negative effects of colonial rule on Indonesia’s economy may be difficult to muster.

For example, a study by economists Melissa Dell and Benjamin Olken in 2020 used the methodology developed by Acemoglu and Robinson to examine the lasting consequences of the “extractive institution” of the Cultivation System in Java. From 1820 to 1870, the colonial government required the farming population of Java to contribute labour and land for the cultivation of export crops, particularly sugar, as a tax in kind. Dell and Olken found that villages that were in the 1850s were involved in sugar cane production are in the 2010s “more industrialized, have better infrastructure, are more educated, and are richer than nearby counterfactual locations”—in other words, the Cultivation System did not have lasting detrimental consequences for Java.

Nevertheless, President Prabowo mentioned that The Netherlands extracted US$31 trillion from Indonesia during the colonial years. Where did this number come from? How was it approximated? And will it be the basis for an Indonesian claim for reparations payments from The Netherlands?

“Colonial drain”

Identifying the cumulative effects or costs of colonisation on colonised countries is a long-discussed issue. It is captured by the term “colonial drain”, first articulated by Indian scholar and Member of the British parliament Dadabhai Naoroji in 1901. He argued that British rule in India had led to a transfer of wealth to Great Britain to the detriment of economic development in British India.

Studies sought to quantify this “colonial drain” from India, although an unambiguous definition of the term remained elusive. Analysing the evidence, prominent Indian economic historian Kirti Chaudhuri in 1968 found the “drain” argument “by no means true”. His colleague Tirthankar Roy in 2022 concluded that Patnaik’s 2017 estimate of “colonial drain” of US$45 trillion was based on “dreadfully bad economics”. Despite the lack of conclusive evidence, the term is still widely used in explanations of India’s economic underdevelopment.

By contrast, the “colonial drain” phrase was hardly used in past studies of the relations between The Netherlands and colonial Indonesia. Indonesia-born economist Arnold Berkhuysen first explored its relevance in his 1948 PhD thesis at the University of Leiden. Using a balance of payments perspective, he established that funds flowing from colonial Indonesia were mostly payments related to Dutch investments in Indonesia. He argued that those investments would not have taken place without the overseas payments of interest and dividends.

The University of Groningen Professor of Development Economics Angus Maddison in 1989 used the commodity trade surplus of India and of Indonesia as a proxy for the “colonial drain”. He identified an annual average “drain” of 0.7% of Indonesia Net Domestic Product (NDP) during 1698–1700, rising to 10.6% during 1921–1938, compared to an annual average of 1.5% of India’s NDP during 1868–1938.

In 1993, while I was a PhD student of Maddison’s, I used more detailed balance of payments data to argue that Indonesia since independence in the 1940s also had a commodity trade surplus, because it continued to be a net importer of services. Particularly, the services of foreign loans and foreign investments required overseas remittances of interest and dividends, while Asian and European expatriate employees working in Indonesia remitted their savings. After reducing the commodity trade surplus with these factor payments, he estimated an annual average “drain” of 2.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during 1823–1938 and 2.4% during 1949–1990.

FIGURE 1: GDP per capita in colonial Indonesia with and without “colonial drain”, 1823–1941 (Source, Pierre van der Eng, 1993. “The Colonial Drain from Indonesia, 1823-1990”, Working Paper, Australian National University)

In 2010, University of Utrecht Professor of Economic History, Jan Luiten van Zanden analysed the impact of “colonial drain” on the economy of Indonesia’s main island of Java during the 19th century. The Cultivation System led to significant annual net transfers of funds from Java to The Netherlands. Van Zanden assumed that Java’s net transfers to the Netherlands during 1820–1879 were a minimum estimate of “drain”, while the commodity trade surplus during 1822–1880 was a maximum estimate. He found that on average during 1820–1880 Java’s GDP was “drained” by a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 7% per year, on average 5.5%.

US$31 trillion?

Van Zanden’s 2010 article is readily available online and may have been used in the publication to which President Prabowo referred on 11 June 2025. Maybe this publication applied the annual average of 5.5% of GDP during 1820–1880 to all years of Dutch colonial rule. Many in Indonesia believe that to have been 350 years, but maybe it only started in 1619 when the Dutch East India Company established itself in Jakarta. And maybe it ended in 1942 when Japan occupied Indonesia. These 322 years multiplied by an annual 5.5% results in an estimated accumulation of “colonial drain” equivalent to 1,771% of Indonesia’s GDP.

Rounded up, this is the same as the 18 times of Indonesia’s GDP that Prabowo’s figure implies. Except that Indonesia’s GDP in 2024 was US$1.36 trillion, not the US$1.5 trillion the president mentioned. Maybe Prabowo expects higher economic growth during 2025. However, even with an implausible 10% growth during 2025 to reach a GDP of US$1,500 billion, 18 times that amount adds up to US$27 trillion, not to US$31 trillion—maybe a miscalculation in the publication to which the President referred.

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Firstly, there is no evidence that either net transfers or the trade surplus from Java during 1820–1870 are a suitable proxy for the “colonial drain” over all of the 322 (or 350) years of Dutch presence in Indonesia.

Secondly, the current value of the accumulated amount of “colonial drain” has to be estimated with Indonesia’s past GDP, not its GDP in 2024 or 2025. Indonesia’s GDP during the colonial years was a lot smaller. For example, corrected for price changes, Indonesia’s GDP in 1880 was just 1% of GDP in 2024 and in 1941 just 4%. Therefore, the value of the estimated “drain” must be between 1% and 4% of US$31 trillion as well. That would make it between US$310 and US$1.24 trillion—still a significant sum.

Thirdly, the assets of the colonial government and of foreign companies (Dutch, British, American, etc.) accumulated particularly in colonial Indonesia during the period between 1890 and 1940, financed with investments in the shares of these companies, reinvested excess earnings of companies and acquisitions of company and government bonds. Such investments gave rise to increasing remittances of dividends and interest on foreign investment—which explain Indonesia’s trade deficits that were part of the ways in which Maddison and Van Zanden’s estimated the “colonial drain” from Indonesia.

But the investments in the tangible assets of the colonial government and of foreign companies—agricultural estates, factories, railways, port facilities etc.—never left Indonesia. Ownership of public assets were transferred from the colonial government to the government of Indonesia in December 1949. And President Sukarno nationalised the assets of most foreign companies between 1958 and 1965.

Will Indonesia claim reparations payments?

It seems unlikely that the number mentioned by President Prabowo will lead to an Indonesian claim for payments from The Netherlands. In part because a claim of US$ 31 trillion is impossible to substantiate. But mainly because any claims of Indonesia on The Netherlands have already been formally settled. First when

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In addition, a claim could sour bilateral relations and have consequences for the constructive elements of those relations. Including, Dutch companies again holding sizeable investments in Indonesia worth US$ 21 billion at the start of 2024, according to the International Monetary Fund. And perhaps more importantly, including that the recruitment of players with Indonesian heritage and coaches in The Netherlands contributed to the success of Indonesia’s national team in international football, which only just missed out on qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. After all, President Prabowo is a proud supporter of Indonesia’s national football team.

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On 29 September 2025 a multi-story musala (prayer space) collapsed at Pesantren Al-Khoziny in Sidoarjo, East Java, killing at least 61 people. A similar tragedy occurred again about a month later on 29 October, when the roof of a female student dormitory collapsed at Pesantren Syekh Abdul Qodir Jaelani in Situbondo, East Java, claiming the life of one student.

The level of anger and breadth of debate that followed—from demands for criminal investigations and critiques of pesantren governance structures to reflections on how pesantren constitute a distinct subculture within Indonesia’s educational and social systems—illustrate common perceptions about the importance of pesantren in Indonesian society. Observers have argued that pesantren occupy a key role in shaping grassroots political outcomes, whether through the political socialisation of santri (students), the broader authority of pesantren networks in local governance and policy debates, or the general political influence of kyai (religious leaders).

Without denying the significance of these findings, we nonetheless lack some basic empirical foundations for systematically measuring the social and political effects of pesantren. Claims about the importance or uniqueness of pesantren often rest on a handful of notable—and likely atypical—cases, such as Pesantren Tebuireng, which produced national leaders like Gus Dur and Ma’ruf Amin, or Pesantren Al-Mukmin in Ngruki, associated with allegations of terrorism. To more systematically understand the place, role, and effects of pesantren in Indonesian society as a whole, we first need answers to fundamental questions: how many pesantren are there? Where are they located? What are their organisational affiliations? Without such baseline information, it remains difficult to ascertain how prevalent pesantren truly are and how far-reaching their influence extends.​

This piece takes a step forward by providing systematic, nationally representative background information on Indonesia’s pesantren landscape. Rather than engaging in an in-depth look at few pesantren, it embraces a bird’s-eye view of pesantren across the archipelago. The analysis addresses key descriptive questions about the number, location, organisational affiliation, and growth of pesantren over time, and offers preliminary evidence on how pesantren presence correlates with political outcomes.

Data for this exercise was scraped from the Ministry of Religious Affairs’ (MORA) Education Management Information System (EMIS). First introduced in the early 2000s, EMIS is a MORA’s effort to monitor and supervise religious educational institutions, which include pesantren and madrasah. School administrators enter data into the system following specific forms tapping into different information. Information recorded from each institution includes the number of educators, the number of students, available classrooms and other facilities, founding year, and affiliation, among others.

Interested users may access a subset of this dataset on my website. This dataset includes records on all pesantren, but omits several columns such as bank account information and staff contact details.

Number, location, and affiliation

The simplest analysis to do with the dataset would be to understand how many pesantren are there and where they are located. This question turns out to be more complicated than it looks.

The EMIS website indicates that there are 42,391 pesantren. However, 20 of these records are duplicates and, out of the non-duplicates, 23 have broken links, which means their data could not be retrieved. We can thus reasonably assert that there are at least 42,348 pesantren in Indonesia. Figure 1 visualises the distribution of these pesantren at the district (kabupaten/kota) level. Some districts are shaded grey, which means that I was unable to link location information of the pesantren data with the GADM (Global Administrative Areas) map I used to create the choropleth.

Figure 1: Number of Pesantren at District (Kabupaten/Kota) Level (click to enlarge)

One notable pattern in the figure concerns how districts in West Java and Banten tend to have the most pesantren. Is it simply because districts there are more populated than other districts in the country?

Figure 2 offers a more nuanced picture by showing the density of pesantren—that is, how many pesantren there are for every 10,000 Muslim residents in the district. The latter information was based on the 2010 census. The general pattern remains the same. Banten and West Java districts have the highest pesantren densities. However, districts in Aceh have darker shades than they are in Figure 1. In other words, even though there are fewer pesantren in Aceh than in Banten or West Java, once we account for population size, Aceh districts are generally comparable to West Java ones (though perhaps not Banten ones) in how prevalent pesantren are.

Figure 2: Pesantren Density at District (Kabupaten/Kota) Level (click to enlarge)

The next interesting exercise would be to unpick the affiliations of these pesantren. One notable feature of EMIS is that it asks pesantren to indicate their organisational affiliation. Overall, about 77.5% of pesantren indicate affiliation with Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and about 15.6% indicate that they are independent or unaffiliated. The remaining 7% indicate various affiliations, such as with Muhammadiyah (1.54%), Nahdlatul Wathan (0.84%), and the Persatuan Tarbiyah Islamiyah (PERTI, 0.42%).

Figure 3 presents the proportion of NU pesantren in each district. In the vast majority of districts, the pesantren landscape is dominated by NU. However, some interesting exceptions are evident. In Aceh, NU pesantren tend to be less dominant. Of all pesantren in Aceh, only 23.3% indicate an affiliation with NU. The vast majority (64.9%) indicate being unaffiliated. PERTI also has a quite significance presence in the province, accounting for about 4.4% of the pesantren there.

Independent pesantren are also dominant in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) and Central Sulawesi, where they account for 46.3% and 34.6% of the pesantren, respectively. The most popular affiliations differ in NTT and Central Sulawesi, however. In NTT, after NU at 29.3%, Muhammadiyah (12.20%) and Hidayatullah (4.9%) are the most popular affiliations. In Central Sulawesi, after NU at 27%, the most popular affiliations are Al Khairaat (18.05%) and DDI or Darud Dawah wal Irsyad (6%).

Figure 3: Proportion of NU Pesantren at District Level (click to enlarge)

Growth

Having examined spatial variation, we can also look at temporal variation or how the number of pesantren grew over time. EMIS asked pesantren to indicate their founding year in both international and Islamic calendars. Unfortunately, many of the entries look implausible, and judgment calls have to be made to keep only pesantren with plausibly valid information about their founding year in the dataset.

First, I removed 3,010 pesantren that indicated founding years earlier than 1475 AD. This is the founding year of Pesantren Alkahfi Somalanguk, which some regard as the oldest pesantren in Indonesia. Second, I removed 33 pesantren that indicate founding years after 2025—the current year.  Lastly, I removed 7,628 pesantren whose founding year in the international calendar does not match its founding year in the Islamic calendar. Such a mismatch makes it impossible for an analyst to decide whether to use information from the international calendar or the Islamic calendar. It might also indicate sloppy data entry. Overall, 29,305 pesantren have information about founding year that I consider valid.

Figure 4 draws from this information and presents the cumulative number of pesantren between 1966 and 2024. I treat this growth chart as a disrupted time series and draw two regression lines, one for the New Order era and the other for the post-Suharto era. This allows us to compare the pattern of pesantren-building during the two eras.

Two patterns are evident from this figure. First, it is obvious that the growth rate of pesantren in the post-Suharto era is higher than the rate during the New Order, as evidenced by the steeper slope of the post-Suharto regression line. This conforms to what we know about how Indonesia’s democratisation was accompanied by a religious resurgence.

Second, we can actually observe a minor spike in the number of pesantren starting in early 1990s. There, the number of pesantren is higher than what the New Order regression line predicts. This nicely reflects Suharto’s growing affinity with Islam at the time, evidenced among others by the founding of the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI) in 1990 and Suharto’s hajj pilgrimage in 1991.

Figure 4: Growth in the Number of Pesantren (click to enlarge)

Figure 5 breaks down this growth by organisational affiliation. It is evident that much of the growth was driven by the proliferation of NU pesantren. At the start of the New Order, NU pesantren numbered 1,428 and non-NU pesantren 258. By the time Suharto was removed from power in 1998, there were 7,764 NU and 1,833 non-NU pesantren. By 2024, these numbers grew to 20,620 NU and 6,134 non-NU pesantren. It seems that, at least when it comes to pesantren building, the religious resurgence that followed Indonesia’s democratisation has not affected all Muslim organisations equally.

Figure 5: Growth in the Number of NU and Non-NU Pesantren (click to enlarge)

Pesantren and politics

Lastly, it is interesting to measure whether the presence of pesantren may correlate with electoral outcomes. It goes without saying that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. But ascertaining how pesantren density may be associated with electoral outcomes is a foundational step in understanding how pesantren are significant not only socially but also politically.

I start by examining how the number of pesantren in a district correlates with the vote share of Joko Widodo (Jokowi) in the 2014 and 2019 presidential elections. The presidential elections were often portrayed as a competition between Jokowi’s nationalist camp and Prabowo’s Islamist supporters. To the extent that pesantren correlates with religious sentiment and identity, we should observe a negative correlation between the number of pesantren and Jokowi’s vote share.

Figure 6 shows exactly this pattern. Each dot reflects a district. The X axis represents the logged number of pesantren in the election year and the Y axis represents Jokowi’s vote share. The negative correlations indicate that the more pesantren a district had, the lower the vote share of Jokowi in that district.

Interestingly, the correlation was weaker in 2019 than 2014. This might be a result of the Ma’ruf Amin effect. By having Ma’ruf, a popular NU cleric and former chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulama (MUI) as running mate, Jokowi was able to weaken Islamist voters’ opposition against him.

Figure 6: Pesantren and Jokowi’s Vote Share (click to enlarge)

Figures 7 and 8 approach the question from the perspective of party competition. Figure 7 plots the correlations between the number of pesantren and the vote share of Islamic parties in the 2019 parliamentary election. Counting only the United Development Party (PPP), the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), and the Crescent Star Party (PBB) as Islamic parties, the correlation is a modest (r=.243). The higher the number of pesantren in a district, the higher the vote share of Islamic parties. Adding the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the National Awakening Party (PKB) strengthens this correlation. But even then, the correlation is not particularly strong, as the number of pesantren only explains about 13% of Islamic parties’ vote share.

Figure 7: Pesantren and Islamic Parties’ Vote Share (click to enlarge)

Figure 8 breaks down the vote share of Islamic parties into individual party’s vote share. Given how pesantren are predominantly NU-affiliated, it is unsurprising that the correlation between pesantren and vote share is strongest for PKB, widely regarded as an NU-linked party. The correlation with PPP is also relatively unsurprising, considering it was the product of a fusion of Islamic parties in 1973 (including the former NU party) and has ties with traditional Muslims.

Perhaps the most surprising pattern from Figure 8 is the respectable correlation between pesantren and PKS’s vote share. As a party that grew out of student movements and urban Muslims, PKS is not generally associated with pesantren and their traditionalist Islamic networks. However, the modest correlation suggests that the party has successfully made inroads into pesantren-based and traditionalist Muslim voters.

Figure 8: Pesantren and the Vote Share of Individual Islamic Party

Conclusion

My analysis provides background information about pesantren in Indonesia, offering new foundational empirical insights for systematically studying the social

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Other findings are less intuitive, for example about how the predominance of NU pesantren varies across provinces and about how PKS’s vote share is quite strongly related to the number of pesantren in a district. These analyses are preliminary and relatively basic. As mentioned, without making any claims about the accuracy of this data, I have made the data available for public use at my website.

Combining this dataset with other available data on Indonesia, researchers may explore deeper questions about Indonesia’s political and religious landscape. For example, researchers may combine pesantren data with survey data to examine how pesantren density correlates with public opinion about the role of Islam in public affairs. Alternatively, researchers may also combine pesantren data with that which measures religious tolerance and examine how the two may be related. All of these exercises will help us understand the roles and significance of pesantren in shaping Indonesia’s social and political life.

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On 23 September 2025, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto offered an audacious speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Reiterating Indonesia’s commitment to the two-state solution in the Israel–Palestine conflict, he gave the expected overtures from the largest Muslim-majority country in the world toward the plight of Gazans and the need for humanitarian support. However, it came with a twist: “We must also recognise, we must also respect, and we must also guarantee the safety and security of Israel. Only then we can have real peace.” In a time when leaders of Arab and Muslim-majority countries are competing to offer the strongest condemnation of Israel’s purported genocide in Gaza, President Prabowo chose to strike a more balanced tone, to the surprise of domestic and international observers.

This raises the question: what has caused Indonesia’s divergence in rhetoric on Israel–Palestine from the rest of the Muslim world at the UNGA, especially considering not even a year ago it was one of the strongest pro-Palestinian voices on the international stage? I argue the answer lies in the Indonesian government’s successful handling of Islamist forces that have held authoritative sway over a key ideological commitment—Indonesia’s steadfast support for Palestine.

From advocacy to conciliation

Former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration was one of the strongest champions of the Palestinian cause, especially since the horrific attacks of 7 October 2023 and Israel’s ensuing brutal war against Hamas. Jokowi’s foreign policy team dedicated significant rhetorical energy to demonstrate Indonesia’s support for the Palestinians during the Gaza war, making the country one of the leaders in the pro-Palestinian cause in the Global South and the Islamic world during his administration.

Jokowi and his foreign minister Retno Marsudi were leading advocates for Palestine and some of the strongest critics of Israel in the international fora. Right after the 7 October attacks, Jokowi cited Israel’s 56-year occupation of Palestinian territory as the root cause of the conflict, rather than explicitly condemning Hamas for killing civilians and holding Israelis hostage. During a bilateral meeting with Joe Biden on 13 November 2023, Jokowi implicitly criticised American support for Israel’s assault on Gaza: “So, Indonesia appeals to the US to do more to stop the atrocities in Gaza. Ceasefire is a must for the sake of humanity.” In her last appearance to the UNGA in September 2024, former foreign minister Retno gave a particularly scathing speech on the injustice enacted by Israel on the Palestinians. She expressed scepticism about Israel’s commitment to peace, reiterated Indonesia’s solidarity with Palestine, and called the international community to exert pressure on Israel until it reverts to the two-state solution.

The positions expressed by Prabowo as president stand in contrast with his predecessor’s. Despite having Jokowi’s son Gibran Rakabuming Raka as his vice president, Prabowo has diverged from the previous administration on Israel-Palestine both in rhetoric and policy. Not only is Prabowo taking a personalistic and flexible approach to Indonesia’s international relations, but he has also demonstrated a pragmatic departure from the deeply institutionalised ways in which Indonesia’s foreign policy establishment has traditionally expressed its position on Palestine.

President Prabowo’s shifting tone on Israel—from condemnation to conciliation—demonstrates Indonesia’s increasing pragmatism and flexibility on the issue. This redirection was first signalled in a news conference during French President Emmanuel Macron’s official state visit to Indonesia in May 2025. Prabowo said, “We must acknowledge and guarantee Israel’s rights as a sovereign country that must be paid attention to and guaranteed safety. Indonesia has stated that once Israel recognises Palestine, Indonesia is ready to recognise Israel and open the diplomatic relationship.” While the position is not new at all within Indonesia’s commitment to the two-state international consensus, this sentiment was in contrast with what the country had signalled in the prior administration. Prabowo’s September speech to the UNGA further reinforced this shift, especially since fellow leaders of Muslim-majority countries, the Global South, and certain Western countries continued to criticise Israel in the harshest terms.

On top of the rhetorical shift, Prabowo has attempted to align Indonesia with US-allied Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, on brokering peace between Israel and the Palestinians. On 13 October 2025, Prabowo visited Egypt to partake in the Gaza Peace Summit, which brought together 20 world leaders led by Donald Trump in an effort to bring a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the hope of ending the two-year Gaza war. It was notable that Indonesia was the only Southeast Asian country represented in the summit, and that the invitation was reportedly unexpected by the president—underscoring Prabowo’s efforts to raise his country’s international profile, and to a certain extent, his success in doing so. The conciliatory stance he has shown has also led to speculation of normalisation with Israel as Israeli media reported that the president would visit Israel after the summit, which was swiftly denied by Foreign Minister Sugiono.

Indonesia’s marked change in tone and posture toward Israel in a time when Israel is becoming more isolated internationally is an extraordinary feat. Pro-Palestinian support elsewhere is reaching new heights and Indonesia has a long history of fighting for the cause, which is broadly popular domestically and is one of the issues uniting diverse political constituents. This begs the question: How was President Prabowo able to undertake a move that carried such high domestic political risk despite broad public alignment with the Palestinian cause?

The receding threat of Islamism

The answer lies in a significant domestic political transformation: the successful neutralisation of Indonesia’s hardline Islamist opposition. Whereas Jokowi was forced to adopt a defensive strategy of religious appeasement to protect his government, Prabowo has inherited a tamed political landscape from the Islamist threat. This has been achieved through a combination of Jokowi’s prior coercive and co-optative measures and Prabowo’s own pre-emptive coalition-building. Together these have blunted the Palestine issue as a weapon against the government and granted Prabowo unprecedented flexibility in Indonesia’s Middle East policy.

The high-profile support of Jokowi’s administration for Palestine on the global stage can be attributed not only to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ influential role in shaping his foreign policy, but also to a requirement that the former president himself felt he constantly required to demonstrate: his support for so-called Muslim political interests as defined by conservative Islamists. Jokowi, throughout his two terms, frequently faced scepticism and outright hostility from powerful conservative and Islamist groups who questioned his religious commitment, a dynamic which was amplified by the fallout from the 212 protests.

For Jokowi, a robust and highly visible foreign policy stance on Palestine—an issue that cuts across all political and religious divides and serves as a universally acknowledged Muslim cause—was a necessary tool to immunise himself from accusations of being insufficiently Islamic or aligned with anti-Islamic elements. His selection of Ma’ruf Amin, a conservative and high-profile cleric and chairman of the Islamic Ulema Council (MUI), as his running mate in 2019, and his consistent rhetorical defence of Palestine, can be understood as elements of a broader domestic strategy of religious appeasement. This was a form of political insurance against the spectre of Islamist mobilisation and the use of identity politics to destabilise his government.

The most salient demonstration of this defensive strategy was the government’s tacit, and at times explicit, endorsement of the massive pro-Palestinian rallies that swept Jakarta and other major cities in 2023 and 2024 following the intensification of the war in Gaza. These were not merely grassroots mobilisations; they were immense public gatherings, often involving hundreds of thousands of participants, where hardline Islamist groups marched side-by-side with figures from the ruling coalition such as former foreign minister Retno Marsudi and DPR Speaker Puan Maharani.

In a striking example, a November 2023 National Monument (Monas) rally saw officials from Islamic-oriented political parties and major Muslim organisations sharing the stage with leaders of more conservative, street-based Islamist movements. The inclusion of these hardline figures, who were granted a platform to voice their strongest condemnations of Israel and the US, was a deliberate political calculation. By allowing, and even facilitating, these unified public displays of solidarity, the Jokowi administration successfully co-opted the momentum of the pro-Palestine movement. The joint spectacle solidified Indonesia’s image as a global leader of the cause while simultaneously neutralising the potential threat of the issue being weaponised against Jokowi.

Furthermore, the Jokowi administration managed to contain, to a certain degree, the hardline elements of the Islamist political scene through a broader crackdown that included, among other measures, the use of legal instruments such as the Perppu Ormas. Following the 212 protests in 2016, Jokowi signed the Government Regulation in Lieu of a Law (Perppu) No. 2/2017, which enabled crackdowns on the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI)—two radical Islamist organisations—on grounds of their purported opposition to Pancasila, Indonesia’s pluralist state ideology.

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In contrast, Prabowo as president has largely managed to prevent the formation of an Islamist opposition. His successful co-optation strategy began even before his electoral victory, securing endorsements from significant Islamic figures and institutions that had previously opposed him or were non-committal. Unlike Jokowi, Prabowo does not suffer from a credibility deficit with the Islamist constituency. His strong historical ties to conservative elements, cultivated over two previous presidential runs, combined with his strategic selection of an expansive cabinet and coalitional government that includes leaders from Islamic-oriented parties such as the Nahdlatul Ulama-affiliated National Awakening Party (PKB) and the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), have effectively demobilised the pro-Palestine cause as a singular political weapon against the executive branch. By bringing these groups into the fold of power, Prabowo has transformed their potential role from external critics leveraging foreign policy to internal stakeholders.

As the major Islamist actors are now either invested in the success of the administration or have been successfully marginalised and demobilised, they are less inclined to use the Palestinian issue as a stick to beat the government. This domestic security allows Prabowo to exercise greater latitude on foreign policy matters, enabling the conciliatory shift observed at the UNGA and the subsequent overtures toward the US-led Gaza peace process.

The limits of conciliation

Prabowo’s softening toward Israel is a high-stakes balancing act with uncertain payoffs. The danger lies in shifting rhetoric toward recognising Israel’s security needs without any tangible diplomatic outcomes that advance Palestinian statehood. This olive-branch approach grants diplomatic space to Israel, which has a record of deepening settlement expansion and occupation—a pattern that continued even after the Abraham Accords. Should Donald Trump’s ceasefire “deal” fail (a likely scenario given the entrenched positions of the belligerents), Prabowo risks being perceived as having betrayed the Palestinian cause merely for external political validation that could quickly unravel due to circumstances beyond Indonesia’s control. Furthermore, Indonesia’s ambition to serve as a credible “honest broker” is constrained by its limited regional leverage, lacking the financial clout, direct diplomatic channels, and geographic proximity that allow states like Qatar, Egypt or Turkey to meaningfully shape negotiations.

This policy risk feeds directly into Indonesia’s most significant domestic vulnerability: the unpredictable reactivation of hardline Islamist mobilisation. The 212 protests of 2016 demonstrated how quickly dormant networks can scale when a unifying grievance emerges, blindsiding even a well-prepared government. The Palestinian cause remains one of the few issues capable of generating such cross-spectrum cohesion, reflected most recently in Sports Minister Erick Thohir’s decision to deny visas to Israeli gymnasts ahead of the 2025 world championship. If the administration’s pragmatic diplomacy is perceived as edging toward normalisation with a longstanding adversary, the currently quiescent hardline movement could rapidly regain political will and organisational capacity. In the politically fraught atmosphere following the August 2025 protests, a reactivation of Islamists with the element of surprise reminiscent of 212, is far from inconceivable.

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17 August 2024 did not end up being a significant milestone for Nusantara, Indonesia’s planned new capital city currently under development in East Kalimantan. That year, on the 79th anniversary of Indonesia’s independence, outgoing president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had intended to celebrate the inauguration of a brand new capital. Instead, amid delays caused as much by the Covid-19 pandemic as the unrealistic timeline for phase of the ambitious project, Nusantara saw scaled-back celebrations against the backdrop of incomplete government buildings.

This caused renewed uncertainty over the long-term prospects of the new city, despite pledges by the new president, Prabowo Subianto, to continue Jokowi’s political legacy. Given current public dissatisfaction with Indonesia’s political elite, it is worth examining not just the promises over the capital city relocation project but also some of the assumptions about its origins and development which have so far been taken more or less for granted.

Beginning with its political origins, this article explores how Nusantara was conceived and rationalised by policymakers during the Jokowi presidency (2014–2024). It shows that various internal contradictions that arose from the planning process, including its rushed timeline, ambiguous justificatory narratives, and developmentalist idealism, have led to the city looking more like a speculative urbanisation project than an inclusive city for all Indonesians. The arguments presented here are based in part on the author’s recently completed doctoral thesis on the policy mobilities on Nusantara, which included 12 months of fieldwork in Indonesia and semi-structured interviews with policymakers, urban planners, architects, and consultants with first-hand knowledge of the capital city relocation project.

Hazy origins

The idea of relocating the national capital to somewhere more geographically central is not new in of itself. Indeed, Sukarno went so far as to develop a masterplan for relocating it to Palangkaraya, which later became the capital of Central Kalimantan. Sukarno wanted to develop a new capital to embed a new nationalist, modernist, and postcolonial identity for Indonesia, but later abandoned the plans due to technical and economic challenges and kept Jakarta as the de facto capital.

Nevertheless, the idea of fulfilling Sukarno’s vision kept simmering in intellectual circles. It was invoked in official government discourse on the capital relocation process in the early years after Jokowi’s official announcement in 2019, including in the Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas) Buku Saku (Handbook)  in 2021. At the time of writing, Sukarno was still mentioned as the progenitor of the idea on the official webpage of the National Capital City Authority (O-IKN), the government body created to oversee Nusantara’s development.

In reality, today’s capital relocation project bears very little resemblance to Sukarno’s vision and was initiated for entirely different motives. Although the idea of relocating the capital periodically surfaced in the 2000s, particularly in the aftermath of perennial flooding in Jakarta, there was no consensus on the best approach. Some states like Brazil, Nigeria and Myanmar had created purpose-built capitals far from their colonial-era capitals after independence, while Indonesia’s neighbour Malaysia had chosen to create a new political capital, Putrajaya, only 25km away from the commercial capital of Kuala Lumpur.

The contemporary capital city relocation plan embodied in Nusantara can trace its origins to the lobbying efforts of Tim Visi 2033 (TV2033), a small private think tank founded in 2008 by Andrinof Chaniago together with two other academics and a policy analyst. Their small outfit promoted big ideas for Indonesia’s development challenges, including relocating the capital city to the geographic centre of the country and building a network of new urban centres across the archipelago. In principle, this would help rebalance economic development and reducing the population burden of Java Island. Indeed, TV2033’s official logo shows a series of interconnected cities centred around a hypothetical capital in the centre of the country, somewhere on the Eastern coast of Kalimantan; TV2033’s founders, particularly Chaniago, made regular media appearances to spruik the idea of a capital relocation.

Figure 1: The logo of Tim Visi Indonesia 2033, with a hypothetical new capital city marked by a grey circle. Source: undated Tim Visi Indonesia 2033 policy brief (ca. 2010).

In 2010, Chaniago was introduced to a young up-and-coming mayor from Surakarta (also known as Solo). This political upstart, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, would be elected president of Indonesia just four years later. At the time, Chaniago and his colleagues saw a lot of potential in Jokowi’s progressive and participatory approach to urban development, and began inviting him to Jakarta to participate in national television debates.

Meanwhile, Chaniago also began lobbying behind the scenes to have Jokowi put on the PDI-P ticket for the Jakarta Gubernatorial race in 2012 and, later, the 2014 Presidential elections. Although the general idea of relocating the capital did not originate with TV2033—the idea was a common topic of debate among Indonesia’s intellectual and political elites in the early 2010s—TV2033 clearly ended up having a significant influence on Jokowi. Chaniago became a close adviser to Jokowi, and during an official visit to the president-elect’s office in 2014 handed Jokowi a copy of a TV2033 policy brief. Chaniago was briefly put in charge of the Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas) in 2014–2015, and oversaw the first of a series of internal feasibility studies undertaken by the government. However, plans for Nusantara soon began to mutate and take on a life of their own.

Figure 2: Andrinof Chaniago handing a Tim Visi 2033 policy brief to President-elect Jokowi in 2014. Source: SatuHarapan1/Andrinof Chaniago Facebook page.

Sukarno’s motivation for relocating Indonesia’s capital was based on a desire to break free from the past and create a new modern, postcolonial identity for the country. In contrast, the current vision for Nusantara—what I like to call capital city relocation 2.0—is predicated on the ideology that a new capital city can solve complex socio-economic and geographical development problems. Moreover, Jokowi’s version of Nusantara gradually adopted various high-modernist rationales that attempted to legitimise the project as a smart, green utopia (although much of that rationalisation was decided post-hoc, as explained in the next section below).

Although these ideas are not necessarily contradictory to the Sukarnoist vision, they are qualitatively different in that they envision “a particularly sweeping vision of how the benefits of technical and scientific progress might be applied” through the central state, which James C. Scott saw as characteristic of high modernism. The clean slate approach to facilitating various forms of high-tech spatial interventions across a 256,000-hectare territory further sets Nusantara apart from the modernist vision of Sukarno. Therefore, and in contrast to scholars who characterise Nusantara as a form of techno-nationalist urbanism, I argue that Nusantara is essentially not a city, but a high-modernist and speculative development project. I will return to this point again below.

A discursive black box

During Jokowi’s first term, the government (2014–2019) was focused on finding a suitable location for the new capital, whereas his second term (2019–2024) was defined more by the immense push to legitimise the relocation project. Legitimacy comes in different forms and depends on the audience being targeted. In the case of Nusantara, the post-2019 period saw Jokowi and his inner circle initially focusing their efforts on internal legitimacy within the state. These efforts included the creation of a strategic masterplan by a McKinsey-led consortium and various lobbying efforts in parliament to secure the 2022 Law on the National Capital passed without significant resistance by any of the political parties.

The 2022 law also sent strong external signals to potential investors and the general public, and was complimented by various forms of government discourse such as press releases, media statements, and other policy documents. Similarly, the design competition for the administrative core (Kawasan Inti Pusat Pemerintahan or KIPP) in late 2019, won by local urban design firm URBAN+, was an important tool for appropriating resistance among Indonesia’s urban design professionals (which includes architects, planners, and landscape designer).

However, many key decisions—such as the size of Nusantara, the exact location of KIPP, and the emphasis on green urbanism—were driven more by the need to rationalise the capital relocation (and create consensus among political elites) than by any overarching policy goals. This should perhaps come as no surprise, as scholars of governance and public policy have previously shown that evidence-based policy making practices are a “myth”—and that more often than not, policy is evidence-making, with key planners selectively picking evidence to craft whatever narrative they think is most likely to compel other policymakers.

Importantly, the various internal and external legitimisation strategies pursued by the Indonesian state created a “collective lexicon” of discursive frames for politicians, planners and third-party consultants to draw upon. Indonesian policymakers were somewhat adept at adding new operational logics to justify Nusantara over time, especially in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to concerns over national economic recovery. It did not take long for Nusantara to become burdened by a bewildering set of design ideals and discursive frames: green city, smart city, sustainable city, inclusive city, sponge city, resilient city, liveable city… the list goes on.

In my research, I categorised 64 different discursive frames—defining concepts, principles, and approaches—used in government discourse to legitimise Nusantara. This gado-gado of policy concepts has made it impossible to pinpoint what Nusantara actually is, or even stands for, thus undermining project coherence. The negative effects of this strategic ambiguity may have been unintentional, but it speaks volumes about how the government has sought to rationalise this megaproject and helps explain some of its internal contradictions.

Construction works at Nusantara, mid-2023. Author photo.

The city that never was

There are several internal contradictions in the capital relocation project that the preceding sections can help us illuminate. The first is its rushed implementation towards the end of Jokowi’s second term, which undermined due diligence and contributed to the chair and deputy of O-IKN resigning in June 2024.

Nevertheless, when considered from the perspective of an anxious executive that was running out of time, accelerating project implementation also served a strategic purpose, according to a forthcoming paper by Tim Bunnell, Anders Moeller, Priza Marendraputra, and Andrew Schauf: Jokowi, who was constitutionally barred from running for a third term, desperately needed to create path dependency for Nusantara to ensure that the crowning jewel of his political legacy outlived him. The rush led to coordination issues and contradictory design ideals among key planners involved in it, as well as a lack of meaningful inclusion of local communities in the planning process. It was also costly to accelerate construction efforts, and engineers and architects frequently had to amend plans on the fly due to insufficient geological data in the preparation phase. Nevertheless, and despite the lacklustre ceremony on Independence Day in 2024, Jokowi’s rushed project timeline helped propel Nusantara forward and embedded it in people’s imagination—at least amongst Indonesia’s political elite.

Similarly, and as already described above, the rush to legitimise the project led to significant ambiguity over what the project stands for. Nusantara may have scores of attractive policy buzzwords, but it has no core goal or overarching operational logic guiding it. This has in effect turned Nusantara into a political black box that any policy ideal can be attached to, whether it is the promotion of high-tech pharmaceutical industry or spearheading a low-carbon economic model for the country. This has also led to increasingly idealistic claims, such as the idea that Nusantara will help fulfil the promises of Golden Indonesia 2045, the national policy goal of achieving developed-country status by the centenary of Indonesian independence, or to achieve civilisational progress for the country. In essence, this boils down to a logical fallacy: Nusantara is good because Nusantara is good. And who would not want to support a project that is good for the entirety of the country?

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This is not to say that there are no logical reasons for building it in East Kalimantan; the area has relatively low population density, and much of its resource-depleted land concessions were own by private corporations which could (with generous compensation) be made available for public investment. But the lack of inclusive consultations, both locally with indigenous Dayak populations and nationally with the general electorate, has made the fanciful promises of Nusantara sound increasingly disingenuous.

This leads us to perhaps the biggest contradiction of them all: the fact that Nusantara is not really a city-building project to begin with. Although government charts usually portray Nusantara as constituting a core city (which includes KIPP) surrounded by a wider city development area, it is actually being planned out as nine distinct industrial development zones. While KIPP is slowly beginning to look like a small but functioning urban administrative district, the rest of the 256,000 hectares set aside for this project was never intended to become a singular city.

Instead, Nusantara has all the trappings of a speculative development project, where a “space of exception” was declared to facilitate private investment. While it is true that Jokowi genuinely believed that private investment could shoulder the majority of the cost of this multi-billion dollar project, Nusantara’s speculative development model contradicts the original vision of building an inclusive new capital city that would symbolise the unity of the archipelago’s hundreds of ethnic groups.

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The post Nusantara: the city that never was appeared first on New Mandala.

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In the morning of 1 October 1965, 37-year-old Eneng (not her real name) woke up in Bandung, about 200km from Jakarta, to an unexpected news broadcast via Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI): a group of people had taken measures to protect President Sukarno from a coup mounted by a “Council of Generals”. Although unanticipated, the news relieved her. Sukarno was an ally of the movement she was part of, as a member of Gerwani—abbreviation for the Gerakan Wanita Indonesia (Indonesian Women’s Movement), one of the largest organisations in Indonesia campaigning for women’s rights, anti-imperialism, literacy, and labour.

Eneng felt a flicker of pride as the group—later calling themselves as the Revolutionary Council—sounded appropriately ready, though not for long. By the evening that day, the narratives had changed. The army under Major-General Suharto had gained control of RRI and blamed the Partai Komunis Indonesia/PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) for the coup. Given its affiliation with the PKI, Gerwani was suddenly in the wrong, and Eneng was guilty by association.

A primary school-educated housewife, Eneng had been a Gerwani member for seven years by then. When she joined the movement in 1958 at 30 years of age, little did she know that it would profoundly impact her life—and death. Several months after that morning, in November 1965, Eneng was detained without trial. It was years later, when she was 44 years old in 1972, that her imprisonment was officiated in a set of documents containing her mugshots, fingerprints, and all her personal details, along with a list of all her close family and friends and their addresses. We know little about Eneng’s case beyond this time.

Eneng’s file is part of the Sukamiskin Prison Papers, a compilation of 58 prison records we, the 1965 Setiap Hari collective, accidentally encountered in a second hand bookshop in Yogyakarta in December 2024. Unlike the other files, hers does not contain the release documents—the so-called “voluntary” agreement to be released back into society only to be systematically surveilled, never to sue the government.

Eneng’s story speaks to the experience of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Indonesians. That her documents—and others’ like them, containing sensitive personal data potentially impacting so many lives—could be sold as mere commodities in a second hand market only underscores the persistence of impunity. After the army took control, it used propaganda to portray members of the PKI and its affiliate organisations—such as Gerwani—as dangerous internal enemies of the country that had to be eliminated.

This propaganda, combined with the establishment of a military structure to coordinate the attack on the Indonesian left, led to widespread civilian participation in mass violence against PKI members and sympathisers. It has been estimated that from late 1965 to mid-1966 approximately 500,000 men, women and children were killed. In addition, over a million people were arrested and detained, often over lengthy periods of time, without formal charge or trial. Conditions of detention were extremely harsh, and prisoners endured inadequate rations, lacked access to health care, and suffered torture and sexual violence. Some prisoners were taken out of prison at night in groups to be killed. Those who survived imprisonment were subjected to systematic discrimination and denied an array of civil rights.

The violence was a crucial part of the ascendancy of Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime. After 1998, there have been various efforts to address the 1965 violence, as well as other human rights crimes of the regime. However, these initiatives have largely failed, which can largely be attributed to the continuing presence of military elites in politics, who were implicated in human rights abuses during the New Order and who have been able to influence policy in such a way that accountability for perpetrators was avoided.

The presidency of Joko Widodo (2014–2024) was prefaced by an electoral promise to address past human rights abuses. However, this promise did not translate into improving existing mechanisms or reviving earlier endeavours. Instead, in Widodo’s first term new initiatives were introduced that were presented as more “culturally appropriate” ways of addressing past human rights crimes. In the second term, human rights issues were pushed even further into the background, with the exception of the President’s 2023 acknowledgement of past human rights violations, including the 1965 violence placed at the top of the list.

Although this acknowledgment allowed for socio-economic measures, including financial compensation, it fell short of holding those responsible for the violations to account. Moreover, it did not allow for genuine reconciliation measures such as truth-telling or revising official historical accounts to include the experiences and perspectives of those victimised by past human rights abuses. These measures have therefore only shielded the military and other elites from accountability.

Accountability for human rights crimes has only become more elusive following the 2024 election of Prabowo Subianto, a former army general responsible for the disappearances of pro-democracy activists in 1997–1998 and human rights violations in Indonesian-occupied East Timor. In May 2025, the Minister of Cultural Affairs Fadli Zon—who has a record of denying human rights violations—announced a Rp9 billion (US$551,000) project to rewrite Indonesia’s official history. The project has drawn strong criticism from Indonesian scholars and activists who argue that this new history will conceal darker episodes of Indonesian history—including the 1965 mass violence. The history re-writing project is thus part of a broader context of sixty years of impunity.

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Culture, too, is a political route to power. It is telling that the Prabowo presidency, resonating with several cultural power plays in Europe, including the Sweden Democrats’ strategic cultural moves, has formed Indonesia’s inaugural Ministry of Cultural Affairs under which the very project of rewriting history is being undertaken. Yet culture, by definition, is shaped through connections between individuals—by citizens, by the people. While the state invokes “culturally appropriate ways” to contain justice within symbolic gestures, culture can also be deployed differently. Collective memory work and other cultural interventions cannot substitute for state policy, but they do offer counterweights.

It is only within state narratives, however, that historical events appear isolated. Like the country maps we memorise in primary school, states appear as neatly bounded entities, with self-contained stories. For decades, the global publicity of the American War in Vietnam has obscured both the Malayan Emergency and the Indonesian genocide, even though the model of repression travelled—for instance, in the warning “Jakarta is coming” which appeared in Chile in 1973.

In reality, as state security and methods of exerting power operate beyond borders, practices of memory and solidarity must do the same. The urgent task ahead, therefore, is not to rescue, but to listen, to stand alongside, and to amplify. How can the heirs of Enengs—engaged in struggles worldwide—mobilise culture as a field of aesthetic resistance, connecting across boundaries to resist erasure in the name of power?

1965setiaphari.org

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The post Remembering 1965 against the politics of erasure appeared first on New Mandala.

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In late August and early September 2025, Indonesia saw one of its most intense protests in the country’s post-reformasi history. Sparked by public anger at salary increases for high-ranking officials, the demonstrations soon tapped into wider frustrations over social justice, economic inequality, inflation, corruption, state’s violence and militarism, and ultimately descended into violence and riots in which at least 11 people were killed. The police responded with heavy-handedly, arresting thousands of protesters. In recent weeks, authorities have justified their response by blaming “anarcho” groups (kelompok anarko), portraying them as the architects of unrest.

This fits a pattern seen in Indonesia’s recent protest waves: from the #ReformasiDikorupsi student protests of 2019, the Omnibus Law protests in 2020, the “Emergency Warning” (Peringatan Darurat) rallies of 2024, to the “Dark Indonesia” (Indonesia Gelap) actions of early 2025. In each case, officials quickly blamed “anarchist” agitators for unrest, using the anarko label to discredit demonstrations and justify crackdowns. The term anarko (anarchist) has thus become a catch-all bogeyman in official narratives of protest violence. But is the threat of anarchist groups truly as grave as portrayed? Since when did Indonesian authorities begin using this label, and to what effect?

Anarchism in Indonesia: a long-standing but fringe movement

A textbook might define anarchism s a political philosophy that rejects hierarchies of domination, especially the state and capitalism. Anarchists, accordingly, advocate for horizontal forms of social organisation based on mutual aid, voluntary cooperation, and direct democracy. In Indonesia, however,  “anarki” is commonly understood to mean “chaos” or “vandal”. This linguistic overlap has fuelled deep misconceptions. Police and media often equate any violent protest or act of vandalism with “anarchism”, regardless of whether those involved identify with anarchist ideology.

This gap between anarchism as an ideology and anarki as chaos is especially striking given Indonesia’s own anarchist history. Anarchism has existed for decades in Indonesia. Its roots stretch back over a century, although it has never been a mass political force. Early traces of anarchist thought appeared in the Dutch colonial era. For instance, anti-colonial writer Eduard Douwes Dekker and his grandnephew Ernest Douwes Dekker are often regarded as early anarchist figures in Dutch East Indies. Anarchist cells and syndicalist unions grew through the 1910s, though colonial authorities repressed them by the 1920s. After independence, anarchism vanished—especially under Suharto’s New Order, as his regime brutally suppressed leftist movements.

It was only after the fall of Suharto in 1998 that anarchism reemerged in Indonesia’s activist subculture. In the 2000s, Indonesian anarchist collectives began to form and appeared in May Day protest in small numbers. Throughout the 2010s, anarchist ideas spread widely within youth subcultures, such as the punk music scene, football supporter groups, and DIY art communities, especially in urban centres. These groups fostered anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist sentiments among segments of marginalised youth. By the late 2010s, Indonesia’s anarko scene had coalesced into loose networks sharing a common aesthetics (black flags, circle-A symbols) and tactics (graffiti, street protests). Anarchist-oriented activism gained wider visibility in recent years thanks to social media and mounting public frustration with the government. Online platforms have allowed youth activists to share anarchist literature, memes, and organising events across regions.

The 2019 May Day and the spectre of “anarko”

The first major public scare over “anarchists” occurred on May Day 2019. In Bandung and Jakarta, labour rallies were joined by an unprecedented number of youths dressed in black, wearing masks and carrying anarchist flags. In Bandung, a bloc of up to hundreds of young protesters shocked the public and authorities. It was “the largest to date” of such anarchist appearances. Footage from the Bandung rally showed marchers in black chanting anti-capitalist slogans, with some of them engaging in vandalism. Their photos and videos went viral on social media and caught attention worldwide in anarchist forums.

The reaction from police was swift and severe. In Bandung alone, authorities detained around 619 people who had worn black clothing. This 2019 May Day incident was the first time Indonesian police systematically used the term “anarko” to arrest protesters. National Police spokesmen alleged that an “anarcho-syndicalist network” had infiltrated the May Day rallies across several cities. Even a major labour union echoed the claim, suggesting “anarchy groups” had snuck into the worker demonstrations. From that point on, “anarko” became a buzzword in the media. Headlines blared about “anarko” as agents of provocation.

Just a few months later, in September 2019, the pattern repeated. Indonesia was rocked by the #ReformasiDikorupsi protests: massive student-led demonstrations against the weakening of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) law and controversial changes to the criminal code. These were the largest street protests the country had seen since the 1998 Reformasi uprising. Largely peaceful at first, the rallies in Jakarta, Bandung, and other cities eventually descended into clashes. In some places, mobs burned public facilities and vandalised property. Police confidently pointed to “anarko” groups as the culprits behind the unrest.

The script established in 2019 replayed with each new wave of protest. In October 2020, when unions and students mobilised against the Omnibus Law on Job Creation, riots broke out in Jakarta and other cities. Officials again blamed “anarchist infiltrators”. Police claimed to uncover an anarko plot, paraded a detained youth as the “leader of the anarchists,” and arrested others for graffiti or carrying black flags. Hundreds were detained across cities, often on questionable evidence.

By 2024–25, the narrative intensified. The Peringatan Darurat protests against democratic backsliding in late 2024 saw over 300 arrests in Jakarta, with police again citing the role of “anarko”. In early 2025, the Indonesia Gelap demonstrations, sparked by anger over legislative perks and police brutality, were cast in even darker terms. West Java police accused “anarko” groups of infiltrating the protests and spreading disinformation, and by September 2025 authorities even alleged foreign funding was backing “anarchist riots.” Each time, the message was clear: anarchists were to blame, and extraordinary measures, such as excessive use of tear gas, mass arrests, surveillance, were justified. But this raises a question: are anarchists really the dangerous force the state claims them to be?

A real danger or a convenient scapegoat?

To a limited extent, Indonesian anarchist groups have acknowledged their engagement in militant actions. There have been instances of vandalism, arson, or clashes initiated by self-identified anarchists, typically targeting symbols of state or capital (e.g. police posts, toll booths, banks). The actual size and capabilities of Indonesia’s anarchist movement, however, remain modest. Their protests gather at most a few hundred people, and they lack wide popular support in Indonesia. Why, then, do the police portray anarchists as so significant, even the culprits behind every eruption of unrest? There are at least two reasons.

First, as Dominic Berger notes, the state targets anarchists precisely because they are “weak” dissidents. Their numbers are small, leaderless, and operate in loose, decentralised networks. This makes them far easier to vilify and demonise with little political cost. Their association with punk aesthetics, black clothing, and confrontational slogans already marks them in the public eye as unwanted outsiders. By branding these groups as the face of disorder, the authorities create a convenient enemy that justifies harsh policing in tackling mass demonstrations.

Second, observers have noted that the government’s label on “anarko” echoes the New Order’s old tactics of labelling regime opponents as subversives. During Suharto’s authoritarian rule, the spectre of “komunis” (communists) was used to justify repression. At that time, dissenters were often accused of being communist agitators, invoking the national trauma of the 1965 PKI affair. Today’s treatment of “anarko” mirrors that logic. Though it is different in scale and context, the state narrative has turned “anarchists” into the new scapegoat akin to the communists of the past.

In short, the exaggeration of an anarchist threat is used to justify crackdowns on dissent. By turning anarchists into a convenient villain, the state doesn’t just justify crackdowns, it changes the dynamics of public protest. What does this mean for Indonesia’s democracy and for the future of mass movements?

Dividing the masses, burying the issues

The state’s scare tactics directed at “anarko” have several troubling implications for Indonesian civil society. For one thing, it divides the protest coalitions from within. After the events of May Day in 2019, mainstream demonstrators (students, labour unions, etc.) became increasingly distrustful of anyone outside their own groups during protests. Organisers began implementing informal “security checks”: for example, during campus-led protests, participants without university jackets were viewed with suspicion. In some cases, student marshals even expelled or detained individuals simply for “looking anarchist” (e.g. wearing black clothing or masks).

While these measures are often justified as a way to avoid chaos, it carries important implications. Without critical awareness, these dynamic risks fostering a culture of political exclusivity. It may hinder broader public participation in political protests, undercutting the strength of mass movements. The unity between different social groups, such as activists, students, workers, and urban poor, is fractured when each suspects the other of harbouring “anarchist” agents. Ultimately, this opens up opportunities for authorities to benefit from divide-and-conquer dynamics. It isolates the marginalised individuals, with no formal affiliation, from the larger movement, making it easier to pick them off. A concrete example of this divisive outcome occurred during the 2020 protests. Student groups themselves apprehended a few youths accused of being “anarko” agitators and handed them to police. These kinds of incidents show how the spectre of anarchists has been used to turn protesters against each other.

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The endgame of such framing is evident: it has been used to justify crackdown on political freedoms. Indeed, following the anarchist-blamed riots in 2020 and 2025, the state launched sweeping arrests. Each time, the general public’s fear of “anarchy” was leveraged to grant security forces a blank cheque.

Lastly, these dynamics risk invalidating the voices of the informal and sidelined political actors, such the marginalised youth.  The youth who engage in more militant protest behaviour often do so out of a sense of desperation and rage at systemic injustices. Dismissing them all as mere “anarko” ignores the social conditions fuelling their anger. As Ian Wilson observes, marginalised youths have authentic political agency that is “messy” and doesn’t fit respectable narratives.

However, the current discourse erases that agency by attributing any unruly behaviour to shadowy manipulation. This not only unfairly criminalises dissent, but it also lets the state avoid dealing with the grievances people are raising. Over time, constantly branding angry protesters as “anarko” could further alienate them from politics. At the same time, problems like corruption, inequality, state violence, and impunity are rarely addressed, while the state focuses instead on this “anarko” political myth. In the long run, it is not the spectre of “anarko” that threatens Indonesia, but the persistence of myths that distract from addressing the grievances that bring people to the streets.

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