BY BRUCE W. CARPENTER
In the 1920s, Bali would experience a new phenomenon, the rise of a western-style intelligentsia who would lay the foundation of a long, contentious debate about Balinese identity and religion. It was a direct result of the Dutch opening government schools with western curriculums in Buleleng Regency, a once proud independent kingdom with a glorious history ending in 1849. Before direct incorporation into the Netherlands East Indies in 1882 with its capital in Singaraja, the Dutch appointed a series of princes as raja to rule in their name. The last was Gusti Ktut Djelantik, banished to Batavia in 1872.
Under Dutch administration, there was a great expansion of infrastructure – roads, bridges and harbors – that transformed Singaraja into a bustling market town and administrative hub with a cosmopolitan population of Chinese, Arabs, out-islanders and Europeans. Connected by a regular Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij (KPM, or Royal Packet Navigation Company) boat out of Surabaya, carrying goods and passengers back and forth, the economy was booming. In the process, Singaraja became Bali’s window to the outside world, and North Balinese gained a reputation of being far more receptive to outside influences, goods and change than their conservative southern neighbors.
Driven by the Ethical Policy, which dictated that the colonial regime was obligated to educate their subjects, they also built new schools with western curriculums and pedagogies. The reasons for this were not entirely altruistic: the colonial regime required qualified locals to man the lower bureaucracy as officials, clerks and schoolteachers. Integrating them into the system was also believed to breed loyalty. It was a process that had already been instituted elsewhere in the colony. While not the first, the Hollandsche-Indische School (HIS), which opened in 1914, was by far the most important. Most students were the children of colonial elites, in particular aristocrats. Classes were not conducted in Balinese but Melayu. Once the lingua franca used by interisland traders, it was adopted as the official language used to administer all the far-flung multi-lingual colony. Eventually it would evolve into today’s Bahasa Indonesia. Because Melayu often lacked adequate equivalents to express western ideas, the language was sprinkled with Dutch terminology and words. Dutch was also taught to students eager to climb the colonial hierarchy.
Before continuing, it is important to emphasise that Bali already possessed a well-developed, functioning educational system for centuries, with extensive palm leaf manuscript libraries. Usually written in Kawi or High Balinese, an archaic courtly language written in metre, they covered a range of subjects including histories, medical treatises, law, customs, philosophy, literature and literature, as well as the arcane arts – geomancy, spellcasting, rituals and demonology. In Bali’s largely illiterate agricultural society, the gatekeepers of this knowledge were the highly-revered high caste men. Some, such as the balian usada, learned individuals with deep wisdom and large libraries came from any caste. Sought out by those in need of supernatural aid or intervention, they were also held in awe, if not fear.
In the 1920s, the new intelligentsia never numbered more than a few hundred souls. Stimulated by new ideas, beginning in 1917, they created associations and forums to discuss issues, especially religious and social matters. While most were short lived, several names came up repeatedly. In 1924, I Ktut Nasa, I Gusti Putu Djelantik and Tjakra Tanaya joined to start a journal, Santi Adnjana (Thoughts on Peace), something Michel Picard describes as “a complete novelty”. Despite their good intentions, intellectual fault lines soon appeared, because the commoners (wong jaba) rejected traditional caste privileges expected by the high caste (triwongsa) on the grounds that their educations had bestowed upon them equal status. Santi Adjana, after rebranding as Bali Adjana, became the mouthpiece of the high caste members. In the meantime, Tanaya and Nasa started a new publication Surya Kanta (Beautiful Sun) that expressed the opinions of the wong jaba.
During the next years, an often-virulent polemic broke out between the two journals in which the wong jaba presented themselves as modern progressives, and their rivals as hopelessly old-fashioned conservatives standing in the way of progress. On the other side, the conservative fraction perceived themselves as the guardians of faith and tradition seeking to preserve the ancient legacy they inherited from their ancestors. In reality, as Picard advises, this situation was far more complicated than a pure progressive-conservative divide.
These debates marked the start of the Balinese seeking to define their own identity (kebalian). In particular, tradition (adat) and religion (agama) were prioritised. Ironically, the former was an Islamic term neutralised by the Dutch to define the specific traditional customs of any Indonesian ethnic group regardless of religion. The second, agama, was also problematic. While Sanskrit in origin, it did not really mean religion, but rather something that had been handed down. More problems arose as in practice, the intellectuals found it difficult to separate the two categories. Nonetheless, an often-contentious dialogue marked a turning point. Whereas the Balinese had hitherto performed their rites and rituals without feeling any compelling need to name the whole, they were now forced to enunciate one.
In 1925, I Nyoman Kadjeng, the chairperson of Santi, proposed at a meeting that they use the name agama Hindu Bali, acknowledging the debt to Hinduism while adding Bali to indicate it was an indigenous variety. Almost all agreed except for a handful of progressives led by I Ktut Nasa, who protested that the religion was damaged and need in reform. Instead, he proposed agama Bali Hindu to emphasise the shortcomings of the Balinese version of the Indian religion. The matter was debated again a year later after Tjakra Tanaya justified the name agama Hindu Bali with a convoluted argument for two main sects on Bali: worshippers of Shiva (agama Siwa) and Buddha (agama Bodha) that had over the centuries merged into one: agama Siwa-Bodha. Because the use of holy water was an essential feature of both, he also announced another new name – agama Tirta (the religion of holy water). Despite this, because some minor sects on Bali did not recognise or use holy water, he turned once again to agama Hindu Bali as the most universally appropriate nomenclature for their religion. Still convinced that the religion had been corrupted, reformists like Ktut Nasa, in search for a pure form of Hinduism, unburdened by superstition and occult, increasingly turned to India which was also being engulfed by similar movements pushing for religious reform, social justice and equality.
These were also the themes of Bali’s first modern literature at the time. “Balian” (Witch Doctor), a short story by I Made Pasek in 1913 recounted the dubious roles of unscrupulous traditional healers in society. In 1931, I Wayan Gobiah compared the damaging effects of forced marriages against a background of the destructive vices of gambling and usuary in his novel Nemoe Karma. The moral of the story was that marriages based on love and free choice were better. Anak Agung Pandy Tisnu, the most famous novelist of the period, also embraced progressive themes, despite being an aristocrat related to the last raja of Buleleng. Whereas Ni Rawit (1935) told the sad story of slavery and slavers, Sukreni Gadis Bali (1936) recounted the fate of a beautiful jaba girl raped by a cruel, haughty prince.
This short period of intellectual foment would begin to fade after the progressive and often provocative magazine, Surya Kanta, ceased publishing in 1928. It also marked the effective victory of the conservative traditional faction. Although the reformists had vigorously promoted the rights of the wong jaba, they remained an elitist group that had never really sought grassroots support. So, too, while the Dutch had instituted many changes, they conspicuously left the traditional village hierarchies in place. Highly conservative, they continued in the image of their ancestors. So, too, the colonial regime became wary of reformist movements, which were often vehicles used by nationalists to push for independence, especially after communist rebellions on Java in 1926 and Sumatra a year later. Despite the debate, no one on Bali except a few of the men who participated, thought of themselves as Hindu. That would only come later after a cataclysmic war, occupation, bloody revolution and Indonesian independence when the Balinese woke up to find themselves part of the world’s most populated Muslim country. The final chapter in this debate will be told in the next and final article of this series.
