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Inspired by ancient kingdoms, self-proclaimed Javanese 'kings' gain followers, money
Some individuals take benefit from people's fascination for ancient Javanese kingdoms.
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Tourists visit the sultanate palace called Kraton Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat in Yogyakarta. Sultan Hamengkubuwono X of Yogyakarta is the only hereditary royal in Indonesia who still has administrative claims over his territory. He is the current governor of Yogyakarta, which is mandated by a law on Yogyakarta's special status. Other regional heads in Indonesia are elected. (Shutterstock/Lano Lan)
T
he ruckus over “Keraton Agung Sejagat” (World Empire) has not settled, yet the Indonesian internet sphere was once again rocked by the emergence of the so-called Sunda Empire-Earth Empire in Bandung, West Java, claiming to be on a mission to settle the country’s debts at the World Bank.
A nine-minute video disseminated over YouTube and Facebook showed a man in a room full of people wearing flat light blue caps, passionately explaining the existence of the Sunda Empire-Earth Empire, saying that he was one of the empire’s “governors general”.
“Sunda Empire-Earth Empire is a Sun empire, an Earth empire. It doesn’t link to Sundanese [people] because this is a hereditary empire from dynasty to dynasty and currently it is the Sundakala dynasty,” said the man whose name was written in the video as HRH Rangga.
He claimed that Bandung was a city for the world’s diplomatic corps and that the group meeting carried out there was to inform all countries they could register with the empire, which would fight "to settle debts at the World Bank by 2020".
As unusual as the claims seem, the meeting was still followed attentively by dozens of group members and other video footage shows members, all in black military-like uniforms, listening to a speech of its leader in an outdoor event.
Before the Dutch occupation, Java, like other islands in Indonesia and the territory of neighboring countries, consisted of several kingdoms.
Majapahit, a Hindu-Buddhist empire that existed from the 13th to 16th centuries on Java, was recorded to have tributaries that included inhabitants of present-day Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and parts of the Philippines.
