The Birth of Buddhist Organizations in Modern Indonesia, 1900–1959

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, Indonesia was a predominantly Muslim majority colony under the Dutch Christian colonial authorities. The 1930 volkstelling (census record) conducted by the Dutch colonial government recorded four religions being practiced in the archipelago; Buddhism was not one of them. Nevertheless, sources such as newspapers and private magazines published by various organizations showed that Buddhism was being practiced in Java. In the 1930s, several organizations published books and translations on Buddhism. The first organization that exclusively identified itself as Buddhist, the Java Buddhist Association, was established in 1929 by Dutch Buddhists in West Java. Five years later, Peranakan Chinese in Batavia established a second Buddhist organization. This article seeks to explore two issues, namely: the history and development of Buddhist institutions during the late colonial and early post-Independence Indonesia; and the transnational networks of these institutions in the promotion of Buddhist knowledge in modern Indonesia.