Ministry Of Religion Continues To Encourage Prambanan Temple To Become A Center For Worship For The World Hindus

Prambanan Temple in Sleman, Special Region of Yogyakarta. (Between)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Religion (Kemenag) continues to optimize Prambanan Temple can become a center for tourist destinations as well as places of worship for Hindus at home and abroad. "That is an extraordinary legacy for Hindus because for a long time Prambanan Temple was established, so far it has not been used for Hindu worship activities," said Director General (Dirjen) of Hindu Community Guidance (Bimas) of the Ministry of Religion I Nengah Duija in his statement in Jakarta, Thursday, November 30, was confiscated by Antara. He said that the use of Prambanan Temple had encountered problems, although the MoU for the use of Prambanan Temple for the religious interests of Indonesian Hindus and the world had already taken place in February 2022. At that time, he continued, Hindus could not directly use it to get guidance or standard operational procedures (SOP) for the use of Candi Prambanan from the Directorate General of Culture, Ministry of Education and Culture.

"After I was sworn in in September 2022, I immediately communicated to meet the Director General of Culture, in October the SOP was already running," he said. According to him, now the use of Prambanan Temple for religious rituals is often held, such as the commemoration of Siwa Ratri Day, the 1008 Genta and Tumpeng Gema Ceremony rituals, as well as others. "The latest data submitted by friends from the Yogyakarta Hindu Service has already had 22,700 visits to Hindu services in Prambanan Temple," he said.

On the other hand, he said, the Directorate General of Hindu Guidance has two other priority programs besides Prambanan Temple, namely digitization and education.

For digitization, the Directorate General of Hindu Guidance previously had several applications, namely e-Pasraman, Sindu (Hindu Information System), Wedangga (Weda in your Ganggaman), and Digital Archives. Based on the direction of the Minister of Religion, each application was merged into one, namely in the Super Apps Heritage. However, Duija admits that he is still not satisfied with the data that has been included in the application, especially from the directorate. The reason is, the limitations of human resources (HR) in the regions make data input related places of worship not accurate. According to him, there are around 29 thousand more places of worship for Hindus, but only about 10 thousand have been detected and registered.

In the education sector, Director General Duija feels grateful, because many achievements have been achieved and implemented. For higher education, the main achievements related to human resources, in 2023 as many as 16 professors have been confirmed. In addition, his party also provided LPDP scholarships in the Bangkit Indonesia Scholarship program. Not only that, the overseas process of a number of Hindu Dharma High Schools (STHD) continues to be pursued.