Muslim-majority Indonesia still has one of the world's largest Hindu populations
Hinduism shaped the Indonesian islands for over a thousand years before Islam spread along trade routes. Today it survives most strongly on Bali, where nearly 87 percent of people follow it, and legal rules on recognised religions have folded several indigenous faiths into the Hindu category too.
According to 2025 civil registration figures, about 1.66 percent of Indonesians are Hindu, making it the country's third-largest religion and one of six the state officially recognises. Most follow Balinese Hinduism, a local tradition built from indigenous beliefs and older Hindu and Buddhist influences. Some traditional religions outside Bali have been classified as Hindu for administrative reasons, because recognition requires belief in a supreme deity and a formal structure.
Before Indian ideas arrived, the archipelago's peoples practised animism and revered ancestral spirits, believing spiritual power could dwell in animals, trees, stones or mountains. Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese called this unseen force hyang, meaning divine or ancestral, a word modern Indonesian links to God.
Hindu ideas came through trade with the Indian subcontinent from around the 1st century CE, and from about the 6th century blended with Buddhism into a shared Hindu-Buddhist culture. Javanese legends refer to the Saka era, dated to 78 CE, and early versions of Mahabharata stories resemble those of southeastern India, today's Tamil Nadu and southern Andhra Pradesh. Temples and inscriptions such as the 8th-century Canggal inscription show worship of Shiva, Parvati, Ganesha and Vishnu, and the Chinese traveller Fa Hien noted two Hindu schools in Java on his voyage home from Ceylon in 414 AD. Chinese records of the 8th century described King Sanjaya's kingdom as exceedingly wealthy and at peace with its Buddhist neighbours.
This synthesis flourished under great powers such as Srivijaya and Majapahit. From the 14th century Islam spread via coastal trade and Hinduism declined across most islands, yet it held firm in Bali. In modern times revival movements have brought it back in parts of Java, drawing on Majapahit traditions, Shaivism and Javanese spiritual thought.
Source: Hinduism in Indonesia
