The recent Constitutional Court ruling that allows millions of adherents of indigenous faiths to state their beliefs on their ID card has raised expectations of an end to state-sponsored discrimination. The Jakarta Post writers Margareth S. Aritonang and Corry Elyda review the landmark ruling and its pitfalls. Our correspondents Bambang Muryanto in Yogyakarta and Apriadi Gunawan in Medan take a closer look at local native faiths.

A ritual conducted by a community of Sunda Wiwitan, a West Java indigenous faith that existed long before mainstream religions arrived, in the temperate town of Kuningan confounded a local civil registry official who acknowledged he had never heard of the faith before.

“What is it? Is it Hinduism or Buddhism?” Opit murmured as he turned to a woman wearing a hijab sitting next to him. “This is definitely not Islam… those people don’t look like Muslims either,” he added as he observed the men in black and women in white kebaya.

His eyes lingered on the conspicuous portrait of prince Madrais Sadewa Alibassa Kusumah Wijaya Ningrat, better known as Kyai Madrais, the priest and founder of the Akur Sunda Wiwitan Cigugur Kuningan, the largest community of Sunda Wititan. What began as a cordial conversation between Opit and his Muslim acquaintance escalated into a debate on whether Sunda Wiwitan was a religion or a cult.

The event commemorating the propagation of Sunda Wiwitan in Kuningan by 185 years ago was indeed odd as it was attended by government representatives, rights activists and scholars. The highlight was a public seminar on the controversies surrounding the ancestral religion.

Among the notable guests was Nia Sjarifuddin, an expert staffer from the presidential working unit on the implementation of the state ideology Pancasila (UKP-PIP). A longtime campaigner of religious freedom prior to her assignment to the UKP-PIP, she praised the recent ruling on traditional faiths as a “revolutionary instrument” that will pave the way for equal treatment of native faith believers by the state.

Most of all, it reflected the newfound freedom among the hundreds of Sunda Wiwitan who came from faraway towns such as Garut in Banten. That day, the Sunda Wiwitan and freedom of religion advocates came together to celebrate the Constitutional Court’s landmark ruling that allows native faiths to be stated on ID cards.

The ruling has raised expectations that millions of native faith believers across the archipelago will be able to exercise their constitutional right to embrace the spiritual belief of their choice without fear or discrimination.

For a half century, believers have been subject to arduous bureaucratic procedures and even rejection when applying for official documents such as birth certificates, marriage registries and ID cards. Many have been alienated by being forced to choose one of the six state-recognized religions so that they can exercise their civil and political rights. Only a few are courageous enough to leave the religion space on their ID cards blank rather than faking their faith.

In some cases, adherents of indigenous beliefs are often stigmatized as heretics. The local government in Brebes, Central Java, built a special cemetery for followers of native faiths after pressure from believers of the mainstream religions.

In Jambi, the local government sided with Muslim groups who forcibly closed a Sapta Darma house of worship in 2013 on the pretext that the Javanese belief system was heretical.

Persistent discrimination and the persecution of religious minorities has often invoked international criticism and blemished Indonesia’s reputation as a role model of a democratic Muslim-majority country.

Indonesia, which is not a theocracy and proud to be the world’s third largest democracy, treats religious faiths as either state sanctioned or unrecognized.

The underlying problem that the Constitutional Court was meant to deal with was the Law No. 23/2006 on civil registry that was amended in 2013, which retained its controversial provision concerning religion.

Traditional faith groups, namely the Marapu of East Sumba, Parmalim and Ugamo Bangsa Batak of North Sumatra and Sapta Darma of Yogyakarta, managed to convince judges that not recognizing local beliefs was a violation of the constitution. They successfully argued that traditional belief systems have the same place as state recognized religion in Indonesian politics.

The festive event that the Sunda Wiwitan and their supporters held late last month may have been premature. Technically, the court’s ruling is binding. However, strong undercurrents could sway the government, which is currently considering the best way to implement the ruling so as to not offend critics’ religious sensitivities.

Conservative leaders of mainstream religions have argued that the court’s ruling confuses religion with traditional faith. While the two systems share fundamental values, such as monotheism and the search of spiritual perfection, by the traditional definition they are distinctive. A religion, for example, is introduced by a prophet whose teachings are encapsulated in holy scriptures, has standardized rituals and transnational followings.

Accordingly, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) has openly objected to allowing native faith followers to state a specific indigenous belief in the religion space on their ID card. Instead, MUI suggests that the government issue specific ID cards for traditional belief followers.

“The government should exercise due care in implementing the court’s ruling so as not to stir public unrest,” said MUI chief Ma’ruf Amin.

Leaders of the minority Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Confucian faiths have chosen a more muted response to the sensitive issue.

The Education and Culture Ministry, the Home Ministry and the Religious Affairs Ministry are finalizing guidelines on implementing the court ruling in a manner that avoids controversy.

The question is whether citizens will be given the liberty of stating the name of their native faiths on their ID card, or have their faiths stated as Kepercayaan Terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa (Belief in the Almighty God), regardless of what their native faith is.

The Home Ministry’s civil registration director general Zudan Arif Fakrulloh said it looks as though the government would prefer the second option, which may be less problematic because local belief systems are subject to change and even dissolution.

“In cases where [native faith’s] are dissolved, the adherents will have to have their ID cards revised. This means that we must review the data again,” he says.

But this sentiment would clash with the presidential inner circle. Nia said she would like to see the ministries give citizens the freedom of stating their native belief on their ID card because that was what they have always been in search of.

“There’s no reason not to implement the ruling,” she said. She predicted any backlash would likely come from leaders of mainstream religions who are afraid of seeing the number of believers decrease.

“Those people care about nothing but statistics.”

This year, the Culture and Education Ministry has registered 187 native faith groups that have 1,034 branches across the country, with followers numbering around 12 million throughout Indonesia.

Assuming the official figure is accurate, the court ruling will likely cause concern among leaders of the mainstream religions. The number of native faith believers could rise and those of the mainstream religions drop if every citizen states their true faiths on their ID cards.

According to the latest national census conducted in 2010, of the then 237.64 million Indonesians, 201.17 million were Muslim, 16.52 million Protestant, 6.90 million Catholic, 4.01 million Hindu, 1.70 million Buddhist and 117 thousand Confucian.

The court ruling that delighted rights advocates but dismayed conservative religious leaders remains a touchy issue. While preparing the bureaucratic system to accommodate the court ruling, the central government will have to educate local bureaucrats like Opit about the crucial development and what it means for civil servants.