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Foreword

Contemporary Balinese Dilemma

This book relates the story of Bali, its rulers, its people, and its encounters, often traumatic, with the Western world. Spanning the entire period since the beginning of recorded island history, it gives intimations of the long-term sources of the contemporary crisis which now confronts the Balinese with the grim choice between economic decay in obscurity or cultural decadence on the floodlighted stage of international tourism.

There already exists a wealth of literature on Balinese art and thought and the singularly beautiful Balinese way of life which often seems to outsiders like a lavishly costumed pageant continuously and merrily played out against a superbly scenic tropical backdrop. Except for several Balinese court chronicles, impenetrable to most foreigners, and a few other works, mainly in Dutch, by Western writers of the nineteenth or early twentieth century, there is almost nothing of any consequence with regard to Balinese history, economics, and politics, or the roots of the present dilemma. It is the aim, therefore, of this account to provide a background sketch of historic events, to trace the complications of domestic and international politics, to depict the changing economic scene, and to introduce the key characters, Balinese and Western, of the island drama of the last millennium as it now comes to an especially significant new climax. Since all else in Bali cues to the cultural tradition, there is also a chapter dealing with the basic conceptual elements of a life-outlook best described as Balinism.

The exposure, however brief, may provide insight into the still living manifestations of a richly textured medievalism which is now threatened with extinction. Paradoxically and tragically, it is the very policy now being designed for the purpose of cultural conservation which poses the greatest threat. The plan is to promote “Cultural Tourism” as the one and only really promising new industry. Under this strange new device Bali now deliberately invites a late twentieth century invasion of jumbo-jet borne barbarians. The rather fanciful concept seems to be that flights of joy-seekers from overseas crave not just exoticism but also aestheticism and will generously pay the costs of Bali’s coming reincarnation as a prosperously modernized but still uniquely artistic island entity.

Even by resort to more enlightened developmental planning it may already be much too late to revitalize an archaic system which is as anachronistic in the twentieth century as it was appropriate to the sixteenth and has been miraculously preserved almost intact through many previous disasters. Perhaps Cultural Tourism really will result in the transfusion of cash and the acquisition of skills which will enable the Balinese, guided in some esoteric manner by their own true genius, to survive and to flourish within a culture-centric society precariously perched on the rim of the materialistic world. The artistically endowed Balinese are now so economically impoverished, however, that they seem not indisposed to engage in a folklorical sort of exhibitionism in return for their visitors’ admission fees. A spectacle so transparently shabby can scarcely be expected to yield transcendental rewards.

It lies just beyond the scope of this book to present any very extended analysis of Bali’s modern dilemma or any deeply reasoned forecast of the consequences of Cultural Tourism or any suggestion of alternatives. But the basic factors can be quickly identified. Up until about the year 1900 the island’s agricultural economy was able to support the masses of the Balinese people in such rustic affluence that they enjoyed the plenty and the leisure to indulge themselves fully in the elaborate and costly ceremonialism which is the island’s most distinctive characteristic. It also enabled a large class of highly privileged lay and religious rulers to create palaces, courts, and temples richly ornamented with works of astonishing artistry or craftsmanship. All this was possible because the land was and is wonderfully fertile; there is abundant rainfall; the climate allows for two or three food crops each year; the farmers are skillful and industrious; and Balinese agriculture, especially its rice culture, is the envy even of the ingenious Javanese. The ordinary Balinese, furthermore, is gifted with quite extraordinary powers of observing and representing the wonder and the mystery of the world about him; it is as though nature itself compels artistic self-expression.

Since 1900 Balinese circumstances have altered quite drastically, not only because of the imposition island-wide of Dutch colonialism but also because of natural developments which long went almost unremarked. The population has at least doubled within this century, while land holdings have shrunk to less than one acre per family with the finest irrigated rice lands having to be divided and sub-divided. The rice crop is still abundant, but it is far from adequate to meet the demands of a population which would contentedly eat enough rice to make up 90% or more of its total protein and caloric intake but is now compelled to rely more and more upon not very highly esteemed cassava and sweet potatoes. Although coffee, copra, cattle, and pigs provide important cash earnings, Bali’s economy shows a dangerously increasing excess of imports over exports, and the provincial government is largely dependent upon central government financing. An island which was rice-rich in the past and lavished its wealth upon cultural display is rice-poor today and is about to be reduced to catering its culture as cocktail canapé for tourists.

In yet more specific terms, Bali now has a population of over 2.2 million and is rapidly growing toward a total of 4.4 million by the year 2000. It is unable to support more than one million persons in anything approximating the degree of comfort and pleasure it afforded in times past. The annual per capita income is probably about $75. It would require a quadrupling of the rice harvest (from 200,000 to 800,000 tons) or the entertainment of some 300,000 visitors (there were 100,000 in 1973) to raise the income to $175; both together might raise it to a more respectable and acceptable $275. But the rice crop is not susceptible to any such escalation, sudden or gradual, and the prospect of 300,000 tourists is not especially reassuring with regard to the spiritual integrity of the future Balinese farmer turned tourist tout, the student graduated to become beach boy or bar girl, or the musicians, dancers, and actors who adapt their performances to the standards of the discotheque and nightclub. Aside from the development of tourism there seems to be no other possibility of stimulating economic growth on a scale remotely commensurate with the need. Coffee, copra, cattle, and pigs now bring in something like $4–6 million each year; but imports of textiles, foodstuffs, and other essential goods total at least $10–15 million. Arts and crafts yield $1 million; 100,000 tourists now spend $12.5 million. Provincial government revenues come to only about $500,000; provincial and central government expenditures on island administration and development amount to $6 million. Out of this very unsatisfactory fiscal mix, as reflected in official but not very reliable statistics, solvency is not the predictable end product.

The Balinese population, meanwhile, is being exposed to modern education—230,000 pupils at the primary level, 45,000 secondary school students, and 2,500 registered in the provincial university. Such schooling unfits the youth for life as farmers; it equips them to observe the difference between their own status and that of the foreign visitor. The latter will spend in a single day at the Bali Beach Hotel or one of the newer, even more luxurious establishments, what it costs a university student to maintain himself for six to twelve months. The government, which is spending a modest one to two million dollars per year on education ($2.00 per head at the primary level), is laying out an equivalent amount on new systems of communication. New roads and other facilities are calculated to serve the people; even more specifically and immediately, however, they accommodate the tourists, who are the carriers of discontent. In seeking suitable employment the educated young Balinese now turns, gratefully or reluctantly, to the tourist industry, so that a newly opening hotel has been known to receive 10,000 applications for 500 positions.

The Bali provincial government, like the Indonesian national government, is attempting to implement policies of basic reform and rehabilitation which will serve to repair the enormous damage done to the nation by the reckless policies of the Sukarno years, when Bali in particular was subjected to shameful neglect and exploitation. The policies of the new Suharto regime are epitomized in the popular slogan and acronym KISS, signifying Koordinasi, Integrasi, Simplifikasi dan Stabilisasi, or, alternatively, Sinkronisasi. KISS, by extension, also implies a whole macaronic catalogue of other much acclaimed principles, such as rationalisasi and modernisasi, anti-inflasi and antikorupsi, desentralisasi and deburocrasi, rehabilitasi, rekonstruksi, reorganisasi, revaluasi, restrukturasi, and reorientasi. In the very formulation of new concepts to guide policies and programs, the new Indonesians, the Balinese among them, are forced to reach out beyond their own linguistic context in the creation of a new semantics as the basis of rethinking, talking, planning, and acting. In seeking new inspirasi and identifikasi, they are thus impelled at one and the same time to construct and to conduct a whole new dialog for a new pendinamisan dan kevitalan politik, ekonomis dan sosial.

The Bali dialog now inevitably comes to a focus upon Cultural Tourism as contrived and christened by visiting French experts and subject to the mystical interpretation of the Balinese themselves. Some Balinese quite openly despair of explaining how tens and hundreds of thousands of frenetic sightseers are suddenly to be transformed into contemplative connoisseurs. Cultural Tourism, others suggest, means “tourism for Bali, not Bali for tourism.” The intent, in short, is to maximize the advantages (profits) and minimize the hazards (social and cultural pollution) and thus to preserve Balinese values while still acquiring desperately needed foreign valuta. If the Balinese themselves are to continue to enjoy their traditional way of life, work, and worship, they can do so, it seems, only if they invite outsiders to share the pleasure and delicately to pay the costs, a felicitous combination of circumstances which seems improbable. Bali, the paradise island of the Pacific, is now self-consciously converting itself into a tourist paradise. It may quite soon be neither if droves of tourists should shatter the very enchantments which they seek. KISS may very soon have to be re-spelled to read as an unpalatable KISSW, signifying an unwelcome overlay of Waikikianisasi.

It is prudent, however, to point out that certain highly discriminating visitors of the 1920s and 1930s, who first made the island’s magical charm well known to the outside world, warned even then that it was already too late for later comers to experience the real, unspoiled Bali. It was not then in fact too late. It is not too late now. Given Bali’s demonstrated capacity over the centuries for continuous and creative self-renewal, it still may not be too late in 2000. But a stampede of half a million tourists each year seems the formula for extinguishing, not rekindling the luminous culture which is Bali’s glory.