Majority bias in legal politics

Scholars have extensively studied discriminatory recognition of local religions; however, few have emphasised proposing solutions using legal politics as an approach. This study aims to identify the legal politics underlying the legislation on the recognition of local religions of customary communities and its implications for services in obtaining citizenship documents, such as identity cards, family cards, marriage certificates, and birth certificates. Using a socio-legal method, this research was conducted in six customary communities practising the local religions/beliefs of Sunda Wiwitan in West Java province and Adam in Central Java province as the primary data sources. Meanwhile, secondary data was gathered from three ministries and the Department of Population and Civil Registration in six districts. The results showed that the presence of majority bias-based legal politics in the legislation resulted in discrimination against local believers in acquiring citizenship documents in Indonesia. These discriminations are experienced by four communities that still adhere purely to their local religions.