Indonesia and Greater India

Today’s Southeast Asia, including predominantly Islamic Indonesia, has, in museums, scholarship and popular imagination worldwide, become part of a Hindu Buddhist civilization that has its origin in India. 

This project in preparation investigates, for the period 1880-1980, how knowledge exchange between pilgrims, scholars and hippies has contributed to the shaping of the moral geography of Greater India and the re-sacralization of Hindu-Buddhist antiquities from Indonesia. What was this moral geography about, who became part of it, and who became excluded? And what was the impact of Greater India in (post-)colonial Indonesia?