From protecting Java’s fleeing Hindu-Buddhists to resisting pressures to abandon its own faith, Bali’s story is one of civilisation’s most remarkable acts of endurance. The last article in this column discussed how a tiny-dot-on-the-map Bali rose to the occasion by rescuing the endangered Javanese lives and over a millennium old Hindu-Buddhist heritage of theirs, and how it accommodated both in the manner of protecting and upholding the Dharma. While all that happened in the

As Majapahit crumbled and Islam reshaped the archipelago, Bali emerged as the unlikely custodian of Java’s classical inheritance. The last article in this column discussed how Java held a uniquely important position of the strongest anchor of the Indic character of Indonesia. Not many Indians are aware of a fact about the supporting or rather the most crucial role that has been played by Bali, a tiny adjacent island thinly separated by sea from Java, in historically protectin

From Majapahit to Pancasila, Java has repeatedly defended Indonesia’s plural ethos The last article discussed the conditions, apparently threatening the survival of the Indic thread of Indonesia’s culture, responding to many triggers including a penchant for Arabization of the hitherto localized ‘Indonesian Islam’. Given the size of this wide-spread archipelago called Indonesia, along with the more or less equally well-spread Islamist outlook within the society as well as the