20-03-2026

A blog by Panggah Ardiyansyah, a former fellow who received the NIAS-NIOD-KITLV fellowship: Moving Objects, Mobilising Culture in the Context of (De)colonisation. The fellowship enabled Panggah to study the provenance of a Javanese manuscript, copied in 1930 and originating from Sendang Duwur, a 16th-century Islamic complex in  East Java.

Understanding “local” within decolonial practices

Between September 2025 and January 2026, I received the NIAS-NIOD-KITLV fellowship: Moving Objects, Mobilising Culture in the Context of (De)colonisation. This enabled me to study the provenance of a Javanese manuscript (Or. 26327), copied in 1930 and originating from the Islamic compound of Sendang Duwur in Lamongan, East Java.

The copy was commissioned by the Dutch scholar of Islam, G.F. Pijper (later Advisor for Indigenous and Islamic Affairs in the Dutch East Indies) and recounts hagiographic narratives, stories of the miracles of Sunan Sendang, and the origins of various sacred landmarks in the area. In 1965, Dutch philologist Theodore Th. G. Th. Pigeaud commissioned Soegiarto, a Javanese literature assistant, to produce a Romanised transliteration (Or. 11032). Both the Javanese and the transliterated copies are now kept in the Special Collections of Leiden University Libraries.

As part of the fellowship, I presented at NIAS on the trajectory of these manuscripts while reflecting on the dual positions I occupy while based in Amsterdam: as an Indonesian citizen and a transnational researcher. This serves as a reflexive space to problematise my position as a local subject within Dutch museum spaces and to consider how this might inform my analysis of the manuscript-as-subject, a material agent in the production of intersecting knowledges. This inquiry connects to a broader consideration of what “local” means across multiple decolonial practices.

Poem

The seminar opened with a poem by Dutch artist and NIAS Fellow Marjolijn van Heemstra, which relates the Sendang Duwur manuscript to ideas of belonging.

I had forgotten the sensation of human skin, breath on my pages, the weight 
of a questioning gaze. We books sleep like the trees in our fibres. 
Stories, too, have a sapflow, which slows down when in rest, mine was close 
to stagnation. How to describe what being read feels like, like being 

interpreted by the way the light reflects on your skin, 
understood by the dirt stuck under your nails, 
explained by rain that drips from your hair – 
described by tracks the world draws on you.

My story might be poisonous, my details meant to control 
a population, my premise the dangerous guess that knowledge 
is power, but the story is my context, not my source. 

Have you tried smelling me? I carry a dry and steady fragrance, 
it brings back memories, too bad your noses are primitive. 
If you were a dog you would smell my ink, if you were an ant 
you would scent the organic structures in my pages, the pulp, 
the glue, and very faintly: the hands that made me. 

All the elements forced together to become this faded vessel 
of words – or maybe it wasn’t force, perhaps there was a sense 
of longing in play. I once met a book carrying the story of creation
in which it all begins with a vessel filled with light. When it breaks, 
its countless fragments form life. Glistering splinters. 

In this story every entity – a fox, a nut, a word, a tree – is homesick 
for that vessel in which the light was still together. Brokenness is 
the genesis of every single thing, so to be is to be longing. 

Reflecting on this poem, the NIAS Fellows attending the seminar undertook a thought exercise on what it means to be local in today’s globalised world, and I summarise the responses that follow. In essence, to be local is to be deeply rooted in a particular place: to listen to it, love it, and take care of it. It is a commitment to justice that begins nearby, protecting the people and environments that shape everyday life.

Local

Local means knowing where your energy comes from. It is about roots—earth, language, light, and smells—and the memories and hopes attached to them. In a city like Amsterdam, being local is not just about having an address; it is about having friends, routines, and favourite spots. It is knowing the routes you walk, the history of the streets, and the best view at sunset. It is feeling welcomed and, in turn, welcoming others. It is familiarity: friendly faces, shared assumptions, and a sense that not everything needs to be explained. Being local also means belonging at a human scale. Life unfolds in face-to-face encounters, in small shops and on walkable streets. Culture, food, art, and traditions are practised without constant translation. There is safety in this intimacy, in not being perpetually questioned about who you are.

But locality is not about exclusion. It is about responsibility. In a globalised world, global flows always “land” somewhere. To be local is to understand how these forces shape your neighbourhood—and to care. It is to owe yourself to the people and places you find yourself among. Belonging today may be multiple and partial. Still, the chance to put down roots matters. Ultimately, being local is about home—about connection, care, and the ongoing work of belonging.

To conclude, through this reflection and thought exercise, I hope to situate the trajectory of the Sendang Duwur manuscripts in conversation with current debates on restitution. What does “home” mean for an object whose form was shaped by colonial intervention, yet whose content remains deeply embedded in the local contexts from which it emerged? When we categorise it as a “local manuscript” within philological, archaeological, and art-historical frameworks, which notion of the local is invoked? Finally, how might we delineate the boundaries between the local and the colonial in ways that acknowledge their entanglement without collapsing their distinctions? Reflecting more deeply on these questions might help reshape practices of restitution towards decolonial futures.