Will tourism destroy the Balinese identity?

Mario Koch, Contributor, Tabanan

Images of the great and colorful celebrations surrounding the Kuningan-Galungan holidays in late June are still fresh in the mind.

Avenues of lamak (woven palm leaves) and penjor (decorated bamboo poles) stand witness to never-ending processions; a unique mix of the sounds of gamelan and the odors of incense and sandalwood fill the humid air. From village kitchens waft smoke and the aromas of home-cooked feasts.

Young men in trance-like states carry shrines holding ancestral effigies from mountain temples to the sea. Beside them, copper-skinned young women in beautiful costumes walk ardently. The frangipani adorning their proudly upright heads make them one with Bali’s natural glamor.

Once again, we feel reminded of the cultural uniqueness, if not the exotic abundance and beauty, of Bali.

“Galungan is the greatest of all our ceremonies. This is of a veritably perennial character,” Balinese social scientist Dr. I Gusti Nyoman Aryana told The Jakarta Post. “Its individual-psychological as well as socio-political meaning can hardly be overestimated.”

What about everything else that is seen to comprise the uniqueness of Bali?

After all, there are few other places on earth where everything is so much about showing-off, marveling at and speaking about the features of ethnic identity — a term that often bears a sense of remarkable complexity when used in connection with Bali.

All too quickly, it moves beyond the comprehension of underlying meanings and toward the singular absorption of visible manifestations.

For foreign tourists and Indonesians from other islands, a visual feast might well be enough. But what about the Balinese themselves? What might be the consequences of an identity so complicated and multi-faceted becoming blurry to them?

This line of thought leads to thinking on the Hindu enclave’s oft-repeated vulnerability within the republic.

“Are we really in danger? What exactly is it, that might be? Who or what is the source of our fears?” asks Aryana, whose thoughts are unusually controversial on the subject. “To decide what veritably is to be preserved becomes so hard if it’s so unclear what Bali-sein (Balinese-ness) really is about.”

The ensuing talk, which considers every religious and artistic expression to be some centuries-old Bali-sein tradition, handed down from generation to generation, is definitely misleading.

To uncover the sources of such confusion, we have to go back in history — 100 years, to be precise.

It was then that the island and its inhabitants started to become Indonesia’s shop-window. This was the case during the Dutch colonial period, the first years of the independent republic under Sukarno and during Soeharto’s New Order — and it is still the case today.

Just think of the dozens of international conferences held and state visitors received on Bali this year alone.

Much of what nowadays is perceived “indigenous Bali” has been established by foreign and domestic elites during the last century. Rulers and administrators have continued to shape and reshape Balinese ethnic identity according to their needs.

Following years of bloodshed, in 1908 the Dutch overthrew the last independent Balinese ruler. Soon afterwards, the colonial power set out to promote Bali vigorously as an exotic tourism paradise and a living museum of the ancient Javanese-Hindu tradition.

According to the colonialists, it was them — and not the Balinese — who knew of what this tradition really consisted. So the Dutch started their project of Baliseering which, quite ridiculously, was designed at “Balinizing” Bali.

Its influence has been felt heavily until today. Only slightly altered, its central premises are still being taken up by those in power, and are internalized by those not.

In his famed book Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture, made available in 2006 in Bahasa Indonesian, French anthropologist Michel Picard states that the Dutch built the framework within which the Balinese were to define themselves.

Ask a Balinese today — whether he is an intellectual or village peasant — what truly is great about the island. His answer may very well turn out to literally follow the concepts drawn up by th colonialists and their successors.

During Sukarno’s presidency, the country was built on the five pillars of the Pancasila state ideology. The first principle to be fulfilled by every Indonesian was the belief in a single god.

Consequently, from 1958 onwards, Balinese beliefs centering on the worshiping of their ancestral spirits — as exemplified by Galungan — were labeled agama Hindu Bali (Balinese Hinduism). In addition, a governmental institution was founded to spread, regulate and coordinate the “new” religion and the activities of their followers.

“Before that, Balinese just held mass prayers common to other world religions twice a year,” Aryana pointed out. “Now look at the abundance of religious ceremonies today. In this context, we should definitely not forget about the economic burden for the less well-off in society.”

Soeharto’s authoritarian regime surely played its part in reshaping Bali-Sein. In order to develop the country and attract foreign currency, international tourism was taken to ever new heights during his 33-year rule — with “Paradise Bali” the primary location.

Picard speaks of the “touristification” of the island’s culture to describe the consequences of this process.

By largely equating culture with artistic expression, Bali’s socio-organizational value becomes more and more neglected, and what is thus promoted are those elements ready for easy commercialization.

Certainly, this short overview of the construction of Balinese ethnic identity is not to say that the island’s culture has gone to the dogs in the course of the past century.

Rather, if foreigner visitors, other Indonesians and particularly the Balinese themselves keep this picture in mind, it could pave the way for fresh approaches to retain the unique features it has to offer — for the Balinese as well as for the world.