Javanese are the largest ethnic group in Indonesia . They make up about 40 percent of the country’s population. Indonesia is a nation of islands. The Javanese are native to the island of Java. Today, most Javanese live there, in the provinces of East Java and Central Java and in the Yogyakarta region. But Javanese have spread throughout Indonesia, largely as a result of relocation programs begun by the Dutch during the country’s colonial era and maintained by the Indonesian government. Javanese have migrated particularly to the island of Sumatra and to Kalimantan , on the island of Borneo . Outside Indonesia, Javanese descendants make up about 15 percent of the population of Suriname , a former Dutch colony in South America.
As the country’s most numerous ethnic group, the Javanese play a central role in Indonesian politics. The president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo —widely known by the nickname Jokowi—is Javanese from the city of Surakarta, in Central Java.
The Javanese are known for their music and theater. One of the most popular performing arts is wayang , or wayang kulit, also known as shadow puppets. Wayang kulit performances usually feature stories from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana , two great Indian epics that are popular among the Javanese.
Nearly all Javanese are Muslims . In the past, the Javanese homeland was ruled by Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms. The last Javanese Hindu-Buddhist empire was Majapahit , in eastern Java, which began around 1300. Its rulers claimed control as far as the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Bali , Lombok, and the Moluccas. In the 1400’s, civil war weakened the empire. By the early 1500’s, it was conquered by the Muslim kingdom of Demak.
From the mid-1700’s to 1945, during the Dutch colonial era, Javanese culture centered in the kingdoms of Surakarta and Yogyakarta. During this time, Javanese resisted Dutch colonial power. Diponegoro was a Javanese prince who led a rebellion against the Dutch in the Java War (1825-1830). In 1830, Diponegoro was arrested and sent into an exile in Makassar, Kalimantan. Today, the Indonesian government has acclaimed Diponegoro as a national hero.
