Recently there have been a series of cultural conflicts between Indonesia and Malaysia. According to Indonesian media, there are more than 20 controversial cultural heritages including batik, pendek, rasasayang(e), over which each country claims exclusive ownership. These quarrels seem like trivial spats over petty issues, but they are entangled with the complicated political and social problems such as migrant workers, territorial disputes, reversed abang-adik(big brother-little brother) relationship due to Malaysia’s economic development. The two nation-states were once part of the same fluid ethnic community which can be called a Nusantara culture. However, European colonization divided the region into separated colonial states, transforming the previously fluid and shifting ethnic boundaries into more rigid and exclusive national identities. While these conflicts between Indonesia and Malaysia are extraordinarily bitter, we can also see that the disputes are taken advantage of by the political leaders in the both countries as a strategy to strengthen social cohesion. The results of this study elucidate the reasons why these heritages have triggered the disputes between the two nations, and provide several different perspectives on how to interpret the cultural conflicts.