Cakraningrat of Madura, Indonesia and Robben Island, South Africa: A Shared Heritage, Different Memories

Paper Abstract: Cakraningrat IV (d. 1753) is a ruler of Madura, an island close by Java, the political center of Dutch colonial power in the Indonesia archipelago. Serial conflicts with the Dutch Indies Company/VOC led to his exile to another side of the Indian Ocean, where he finally passed away on Robben Island. A few years after that, his descendant asked the company to return his deceased body to Madura and bury it in the royal cemetery complex there. However, his (former) tomb on Robben Island became an important site, especially for Muslim communities. Nelson Mandela remembered that site as a tomb of the Madurese leader who resisted the colonial regime. Even UNESCO includes this site as a part of the World Heritage Site that was inscribed in 1999. The situation is very different in Indonesia. Cakraningrat IV is only remembered as the Madurese ruler who passed away in the Cape of Good Hope, not Robben Island. Indonesian historians portray him as a champion of Hindu-Balinese culture rather than Islam. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the diverse memories of Cakraningrat by using the shared heritage concept. This concept, which primarily employs the shared heritage between the colonizer and the colonized, has potential beyond its initial conception.