Journal of Bali Studies

ISSN 2088-4443

Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

Journal of Bali Studies

Bali dalam Globalisasi dan Glokalisasi Balinese Art versus Global Art Adrian Vickers Globalisme dan Multi-versalisme I Ketut Ardhana

Universitas Udayana

Jurnal Kajian Bali Journal of Bali Studies ISSN 2088-4443 Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011 ...................................................................................................................................................................... Pelindung Rektor Universitas Udayana Penanggung Jawab Ketua Pusat Kajian Bali Ketua Editor Prof. Dr. I Nyoman Darma Putra, M.Litt. Sekretaris Editor I Nyoman Aryawibawa,S.S.,M.A.,PhD. ...................................................................................................................................................................... Anggota Editor Prof. Dr. I Gde Parimartha, M.A. Prof. Dr. I Wayan Cika, M.S. Prof. Dr. I Ketut Ardhana, M.A. Prof. Dr. I Wayan Windia, S.H., M.Si. Prof. Dr. I Nyoman Suarka, M.Hum. Dr. dr. Dyah Pradnyaparamita Duarsa, M.Si. Dr. A.A.P.A. Suryawan Wiranatha, M.Sc. Gusti Ayu Made Suartika, S.T., M.Eng. Sc., PhD. ...................................................................................................................................................................... Mitra Bestari Prof. Adrian Vickers (University of Sydney) Prof. Jef Lewis (RMIT University, Melbourne) A/Prof. Helen Creese (University of Queensland) Dr. Graeme MacRae (Massey University, Auckland) Dr. Brett Hough (Monash University) Dr. I Wayan Arka, M.Phil. (Australian National University) Prof. Dr. Susanto Zuhdi, M.A. (Universitas Indonesia) Dr. Sri Margana, M.Phil. (Universitas Gadjah Mada) Suryadi, M.A. (Leiden University) Dr. Yekti Maunati, M.A. (LIPI) ...................................................................................................................................................................... Penyunting Bahasa Dr. I Wayan Suardiana, M.S. (bahasa Indonesia) Ms Siobhan Campbell (bahasa Inggris) ...................................................................................................................................................................... Sekretariat, Produksi, Distribusi Drs. I Nyoman Ariana, M.Par. Slamat Trisila ...................................................................................................................................................................... Alamat Editor Fakultas Sastra Universitas Udayana Jalan Nias 13 Denpasar, Bali 80114 INDONESIA Telepon/fax (0361) 224121; Email: [email protected] Jurnal Kajian Bali merupakan refereed journal, terbit dua kali setahun, setiap April dan Oktober. Kami menerima sumbangan tulisan yang dalam dan kritis tentang Bali dari pelbagai disiplin ilmu. Tulisan yang dikirim hendaknya tulisan baru yang belum pernah dipublikasikan. Pedoman penulisan bisa dilihat di situs: http://jkbali.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/hello-world Gambar sampul: Lukisan berjudul Puputan di Klungkung karya Mangku Mura.

Jurnal Kajian Bali Journal of Bali Studies ISSN 2088-4443 Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011 .........................................................

DAFTAR ISI

Pengantar ~ iii ARTIKEL Global Kamasan Siobhan Campbell ~ 1 Balinese Art versus Global Art Adrian Vickers ~ 34 The Relevance of Cultural and Media Studies to Theatre and Television in Bali Mark Hobart ~ 63 Workplace and Home: Understanding the Sai Baba Movement in Bali as an Urban Phenomenon Gde Dwitya Arief Metera ~ 76 ’Sarad-Jatah’: Representasi Sosio-Religius pada Budaya Pangan di Bali Nazrina Zuryani ~ 99 Aktualisasi Nilai-nilai ‘Puputan’ dalam Pembangunan Karakter Bangsa I Gde Parimartha ~ 123

Globalisme dan Multi-Versalisme: Beberapa Catatan tentang Dinamika Sosial Budaya di Bali I Ketut Ardhana ~ 140 Mungkinkah Menganggap Akhir Abad ke-20 Sastra Bali Memasuki Sebuah Era Keemasan? I Nyoman Darma Putra ~ 159

TINJAUAN BUKU Menapak Sejarah dan Kritik Sastra Bali Modern I Made Sujaya ~ 186 Bali, Benteng Terbuka Yudistira Adnyana ~ 194 ”Komodifikasi” yang Dipaksakan: Fenomena Joged Porno Buleleng I Wayan Artika ~ 198

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JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

PENGANTAR

S

elamat membaca edisi kedua Jurnal Kajian Bali. Jurnal ini diterbitkan oleh Pusat Kajian Bali, Universitas Udayana. Jurnal ini mengkhususkan diri memublikasikan kajian-kajian akademik yang membahas berbagai aspek tentang Bali mulai dari sejarah, politik, seni, media massa, arsitektur, budaya pop, pendidikan, ekonomi, pariwisata, agama dan spiritualitas, sampai lingkungan. Sesuai namanya, Jurnal Kajian Bali dimaksudkan sebagai media untuk pengembangan studi kajian Bali. Tidak ada pulau kecil di dunia ini seperti halnya Bali yang mendapatkan perhatian yang begitu besar dan terus-menerus dari kalangan peneliti lokal, nasional, dan internasional. Para ahli sejarah, antropologi, arsitektur, ahli pariwisata, ahli sastra, sarjana kesehatan masyarakat, ahli seni pertunjukan dan seterusnya telah dan terus menghasilkan banyak sekali kajian tentang Bali. Ada yang terbit sebagai buku, banyak juga yang muncul dalam jurnal-jurnal. Tidak sedikit kajian-kajian mereka memberikan kontribusi signifikan dalam perkembangan teori-teori sosial budaya secara universal. Pusat Kajian Bali Universitas Udayana menerbitkan Jurnal Kajian Bali untuk ikut menyebarluaskan hasil-hasil penelitian tentang Bali dan mendorong iklim riset akademis yang produktif dan inovatif. Edisi kedua Jurnal Kajian Bali mengambil tema ‘Bali dalam Wacana Globalisasi dan Glokalisasi’ dengan menyajikan artikel-artikel tentang seni lukis (di) Bali. Artikel-artikel lain membahas mengenai relevansi kajian media dan budaya dalam studi Bali, tentang bahasa dan sastra Bali, tentang identitas spiritual, dan kajian tentang sarana upacara serta nilai-nilai heroisme puputan dalam konteks pembentukan karakter bangsa. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Jurnal Kajian Bali terbit dua kali setahun, menyajikan artikel-artikel dalam bahasa Indonesia dan Inggris. Kontribusi dari kalangan peneliti dan kaum akademik diharapkan bisa membuat jurnal ini mampu mewujudkan cita-citanya sebagai media akademik untuk pengembangan riset, ilmu pengetahuan, dan kebudayaan dari titik area studies yang bernama Kajian Bali.

Editor

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Global Kamasan Siobhan Campbell 1* Abstract The painting tradition of Kamasan is often cited as an example of the resilience of traditional Balinese culture in the face of globalisation and the emergence of new forms of art and material culture. This article explores the painting tradition of Kamasan village in East Bali and it’s relationship to the collecting of Balinese art. While Kamasan painting retains important social and religious functions in local culture, the village has a history of interactions between global and local players which has resulted in paintings moving beyond Kamasan to circulate in various locations around Bali and the world. Rather than contribute to the demise of a local religious or cultural practice, exploring the circulation of paintings and the relationship between producers and collectors reveals the nuanced interplay of local and global which characterises the ongoing transformations in traditional cultural practice. Key Words: Kamasan, painting, traditional, contemporary, art, collecting

Introduction n 2009 a retrospective was held of works by a major Kamasan artist in two private art galleries in Bali and Java. The Griya Santrian Gallery in Sanur and the Sangkring Art Space in Yogyakarta belong to the realm of contemporary Indonesian art, and the positioning of artist I Nyoman Mandra within this setting revealed the shifting boundaries

I 1

Siobhan Campbell is a postgraduate research student at the University of Sydney working on a project titled Collecting Balinese Art: the Forge Collection of Balinese Paintings at the Australian Museum. She completed undergraduate studies at the University of New South Wales in Indonesian language and history and is also a qualified Indonesian/English language translator. Siobhan has taught in the School of Modern Languages at UNSW and is on the teaching staff of the Department of Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney. More details on her current research can be found at http://www.australianmuseum.net.au/image/Siobhan-Campbell/ Email: [email protected] JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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between traditional and modern art and suggested the reevaluation of Kamasan painting within the art market. The exhibition was billed under the name of artist I Nyoman Mandra, but the works of several Kamasan artists were included in the show, including I Wayan Pande Sumantra, Ni Wayan Sri Widani, I Nyoman Adi Prabawa, Ni Made Sri Rahayu and Mangku Mura. Despite this incursion into the contemporary art market, the paintings of Kamasan continue to be defined as traditional. In fact, both contributions to the catalogue which accompanied the exhibition, stressed the importance of tradition and spirituality in Kamasan work. Adrian Vickers (2009) describes Mandra as “guardian of tradition, master of innovation” while contemporary Balinese artist and museum director Nyoman Gunarsa argued that producing paintings for an audience beyond the temple community had not diminished the work’s religious significance and that upholding a sense of tradition was Mandra’s key motivation: In the global era, where Bali is experiencing upheavals in the direction of its art from outside cultures, tourism and the varieties of art active in Bali, Nyoman Mandra remains consistent, convinced and firm in carrying out his HinduBalinese philosophical and cultural mission. His works have moved the world, and so elevated the reputation of Bali and the Indonesian people (Gunarsa 2009).

Commenting on the transition from traditional to modern styles of painting in Bali with reference to the work of Balinese artist Ida Bagus Made, Kaja McGowan (2007: 101) has described the shift not as a “rigid division” but a “blurring of these boundaries”. The history of Kamasan painting further reveals that the shifting between the concerns of the village and the world outside, as represented by collectors, anthropologists, museums and art galleries, has been an 2


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ongoing feature of Kamasan art. There are many facets to the types of engagement that Kamasan artists have had with the outside world. Looking at Kamasan art and those who have collected reveals the dynamics of the shifting between religious art and commodity, and builds on the claim by Fred Myers that changes in the intersections of different levels of circulation cannot be studied simply as “breakdowns” - either from art into commodity or from “culturally authentic” to inauthentic - or as simple appropriations. (Myers 1995: 11)

Kamasan is the site of a painting tradition that can be traced back to at least the time of the great East Javanese kingdom Majapahit. Although a similar style of painting was once practiced throughout Bali, Kamasan remains the only village in Bali where the painting style has not been superseded by the adaption of more modern styles and materials. The village is two kilometres south of Semarapura, the capital of Klungkung District in East Bali, which was the seat of the Dewa Agung of Klungkung, the highest ruler in Bali, until 1908, when the Dutch destroyed the kingdom. Kamasan painters, known by the Balinese word for artist/craftsman sangging, served the ruler of Klungkung. Their work includes the painted ceiling narratives on the Kerta Gosa, or Court of Justice, located within the grounds of the former royal palace. The painting style is closely related to the wayang shadow puppet theatre and the paintings depict scenes from the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata as well as indigenous narratives including the story of black magic witch Rangda, the courtly tales of Prince Malat Rasmi, the family of Pan and Men Brayut and the Tantri animal fables. Not only are there parallels between the scenes depicted Kamasan paintings in temple reliefs and other artforms throughout Southeast Asia and India, but the materials JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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used by artists were also sourced from outside the village. Alongside the natural pigment used by Kamasan artists to colour their work imported blank ink and vermillion (kincu) from China were used. Paintings were produced in a variety of formats on bark or cotton cloth and hung within royal palaces, individual courtyard and community temples, normally stored away and brought out for use during festivals. The barkcloth on which paintings were produced was, up until the nineteenth century, sourced from around Bali and throughout the Indonesian archipelago. Barkcloth was then replaced by local cottons from the island of Nusa Penida as well as European imported cloth. Paintings sometimes had Chinese coins sewn along the top edge and strips of printed fabric sewn along the bottom edge so they could be hung as curtains or space dividers on wooden pavilions (figure 1). Paintings fulfil a variety of functions within Kamasan village, including use in village temples and family shrines. While most other parts of Bali have replaced the painted cloths with cheaper screen printed versions, Kamasan village temples store collections of old and new paintings produced by local artists for use in various festivals and ceremonies. While paintings continue to be used in the village, Kamasan artists have adapted to changing markets for their work

Fig.1 Ramayana: Sita’s Ordeal by Fire. Attributed to Nyoman Laya, Kamasan, c.1920s.Natural paint on cotton cloth, 225 x 91 cm. The Forge Collection, Australian Museum, Sydney (Registration No. E074169)

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in Bali and internationally. Yet throughout the twentieth century numerous Western observers have discovered that this traditional art is on the brink of extinction due to declining religious significance. Various descriptions of Kamasan painting portray it as a tradition in decline, one of the most extreme examples is Marrison (1995) who stated Balinese classical painting, as known from surviving examples, principally in museum collections in Bali and the Netherlands, belongs to the late eighteenth century, and throughout the nineteenth. With the Dutch conquest of the island in 1908, the patronage of independent princes came to an end, and painting rapidly declined (1995: 1).

Marrison notes that classical painting revived in 1930s, but these newer works are distinguished from older paintings because they have been produced on Western cloth using modern chemical pigments. One of the most influential accounts of Kamasan painting is Covarrubias (1937) which describes the painting style as repetitive, copied and lacking originality. In his account, and many others which have replicated his description, traditional painting is static and justifiably superseded by new innovations in painting styles. Dutch artist Rudolf Bonnet (1953) also describes lifeless painting, noting that it is uninspired and produced mainly for shops. Yet although traditional painting clearly failed to impress either of them, both Bonnet and Covarrubias assembled significant collections of Kamasan paintings.2 In his novel based around the group of expatriate artists and scholars in Bali during the 1930s, Nigel Barley (2009) recreated fictional discussions between foreign artists Rudolf Bonnet and Walter Spies. The following excerpt 2

Most of the Kamasan paintings collected by Covarrubias are at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. For more details on Bonnet in Bali and his collection see Spanjaard (2007). JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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follows a statement by Spies that Balinese aren’t really artists because they never depict ordinary life, while Bonnet plays the devil’s advocate and suggests to Spies that he is making unfair discriminations between the standards he applies to his own art practice and those of the Balinese: “What’s the difference?” I enquired with saccharine curiosity, “between an artist and a craftsman, I mean?” He considered. “For present purposes, an artist is someone who produces work that interests me, a craftsman someone who makes stuff the tourists buy.” I smiled even more sweetly as I slid the knife between his ribs. “Don’t you ever sell your paintings to tourists?” He looked over and laughed, not in the least put out. “I sell my paintings to art lovers who just happen to be here on a visit.” (Barley 2009: 90-91)

Their fictional discussion reminds us that the reception of traditional art is continually dogged by issues of production, and particularly whether it has been made for sale. Dutch art historian, Theodoor Paul Galestin (1962) argued that innovations had been taking place in Balinese art long before the 1930s, the period frequently cited as the point at which Balinese art embarked in a new direction due to increased tourism and the resulting demand for souvenirs. Galestin states that Kamasan artists had been receiving commissions from foreigners since 1912 and that changes in subject matter and format of traditional paintings were due to recognition on the part of the artists that the average European buyer did not really understand what was represented or what constituted a good work. Not only can we glimpse the agency of the Balinese artist in determining what types of paintings were made available to foreigners, but we should question the supposed degeneration that 6


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resulted when tourists replaced royal palaces as the patrons of Kamasan paintings. Rather than viewing the adaption of Balinese artists to new circumstances as a degenerative influence on their art, we should question the idea that the production of art for secular and religious purposes are mutually exclusive. Further examination of the relationship between Kamasan artists and several key collectors will provide glimpses of these interactions and show how artists frequently move between the demands of the village and those from outside. A tradition of collecting Countless visitors to Bali have taken home a Balinese painting as a memento of their stay on the island. Records dating to at least the mid-nineteenth century demonstrate that collecting Balinese paintings is not restricted to the twentieth tourism century boom on the island. Thomas Cooper estimates that more than 95% of the traditional Balinese paintings in museum and private collections around the world are from Kamasan (2003: 146). The nineteenth century and early twentieth century was, in general, not characterised by amiable relations between Balinese kingdoms and the outside world, particularly in Klungkung.3 Margaret Wiener (1995) describes how, at some time between the mid and late nineteenth century, the rulers of Klungkung incorporated depictions of the Dutch into the renovation of the great door leading into the royal palace. Six Europeans figures were carved in place of the stone statues depicting ogres and demons which normally flank the entrance. Collectors in this period were therefore operating in a hostile environment and this is reflected in the trajectories of various objects of Balinese origin stored in 3

See Wiener (1995) for an excellent account of relations between colonial powers and Klungkung in this period. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Fig. 2. Detail from The Puputan in Klungkung By Mangku Mura (1920-1999), 1995. Natural paint on cotton cloth.

museums throughout Indonesia and the world. Paintings too attest to the violent clashes between the Dutch and Balinese and Kamasan works were part of the war booty resulting from the second Bali expedition in April 1849 in Buleleng and the third Bali Expedition in May 1849 in Klungkung. They are now held in the Berlin Museum (Hinzler 1986:10). The early twentieth century also witnessed the destruction of the Klungkung royal family and court by the Dutch colonial army in a massacre at the site of royal palace in 1908, known as the puputan or “finishing” in Bali. As painters to the court, it is likely that works by Kamasan artists were part of the furnishings of the palace either destroyed during the battle or removed by unscrupulous soldiers. In 1995 Kamasan artist Mangku Mura (1920-1999) completed a major work depicting the events during and preceding the puputan as recounted to him by a commoner, I Rungking of

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Banjar Siku, Kamasan, who had taken part.4 A detail from this painting (figure 2) depicts the Dutch, having conquered the Gelgel area, resting overnight in Galiran before continuing their march north to the Klungkung capital. A Dutch soldier stands guard with a rifle as three fellow officers sleep at his rear and defends himself from a commoner bearing a kris in defence of the king. Mangku Mura has chosen to highlight the role of commoner Balinese alongside their high-caste masters in this narrative which is a major departure from the narratives usually depicted in Kamasan work and although the painting itself does not date from the actual encounter between Klungkung and the Dutch, it offers a Balinese view of the conquest which characterised European contact with Klungkung showing how this knowledge has been transmitted within the village. Colonial conquest was not the only point at which the paths of Balinese artists and Europeans crossed. During the almost fifteen years he spent in Bali, Danish trader Mads Lange (1807-1856) acquired at least two Kamasan paintings, one depicting an episode from the Malat and the other Mahabharata. In 1851 these were included in the twenty or so objects he presented to his country of birth (Wulff 2002). Unfortunately we don’t know the story of how these paintings came into his possession and whether he actually acquired them from the artist’s village or through an intermediary. While in Bali Mads Lange also had his portrait painted, which demonstrates that traditional artists were not restricted to the fixed subject matter and format that many later observers would have us believe. In his study of an illustrated manuscript of the Siwaratrikalpa, Vickers (1982) also provides likely evidence of a self-portrait being incorporated into a manuscript produced by a Kamasan 4

Interview with Mangku Muriati, daughter of the artist, Kamasan, 3 November 2010. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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artist on imported Dutch paper during the nineteenth century. Dutch civil servant, de kat Angelino (1921) recounts the legend of the unfortunate artist who was punished after unknowingly producing too realistic a portrait of the wife of the ruler. In this same account he describes the services provided by Kamasan artists to the royal palace under the rule of the Dewa Agung and the conditions of their employment, mentioning that in their free time they produce work privately for trade. Another late nineteenth century collection shows clearly how Balinese artists responded to working on paper. The Van der Tuuk Collection at Leiden University Library contains the work of fourteen artists, identified by Hinzler (1986). Van der Tuuk (1824-1894) was born in Malacca and lived in North Bali from 1870 until his death in 1894. During this time he was working on a dictionary of Old Javanese, Balinese and Dutch for which he commissioned Balinese artists to produce paintings and drawings on paper. These paintings from the 1880s challenge the conventional history of Balinese art which attributes new influences to the arrival of Western artists in the 1930s, and provide evidence of significant stylistic variations amongst artists, Dutch and Chinese influences as well as the individual innovations that artists introduced to their work. The way the works were commissioned and the remuneration of artists by Van der Tuuk demonstrates that nineteenth century artists were producing art work on commission and for sale to foreigners. After his death, the Van der Tuuk collection was initially housed in the Leiden Ethnographic Museum in the Netherlands. Here the drawings were studied by the Dutch artist W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp prior to his first visit to the Dutch East Indies in 1904. In fact, Nieuwenkamp is reported to have taught himself to paint in Balinese style by reproducing 10


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paintings from the Van der Tuuk collection and paintings in his Balinese style appear throughout his books (Carpenter 1997). Once in Bali, Nieuwenkamp is also believed to have studied painting with artists in Kamasan village as well as with North Balinese artist I Ketut Gede (Cooper 2003). One of his drawings, reproduced in Carpenter (1997: 158), actually depicts a female souvenir seller in Sanur sitting in front of a traditionally painted calendar. Like many other foreign artists resident in Bali, Nieuwenkamp financed his five visits to Bali between 1904 and 1937 by collecting for institutions in the Netherlands and Germany. During the 1930s expatriate artists Walter Spies and Rudolf Bonnet visited Kamasan, possibly with their good friend from the royal family in Ubud, Cokorda Gede

Fig. 3. Ramayana: The Abduction of Sita By Ketut Lui, Kamasan, c.1930. Natural paint on cotton cloth, 85 x 88 cm. The Forge Collection, Australian Museum, Sydney (Registration No. E074186) JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Agung Sukawati with whom they established the Pita Maha association of artists in 1936. They would have known the Kamasan artists who were members of the association, including Kaki (Ketut) Lui (1860-1930) to whom the painting of the Abduction of Sita from the Ramayana (figure 3) is attributed. Kamasan paintings from this period suggest that artists did engage in experiments which departed from the traditional style. Although the cloth preparation and figures in this painting are conventional, more novel elements include the prominent trees and other plants and the use of a solid yellow background instead of the traditional wind and cloud motif (Forge 1978). While considered a departure from the traditional style, until the 1970s when it was acquired by Anthony Forge for the Australian Museum, this painting was used with the family temple of the artist in Tojan, Klungkung. Although these days only a forty-five minute drive separates Ubud and Kamasan, in the 1930s it was quite a journey even in the motor vehicles used by the European visitors. Sometimes they stayed overnight at the home of artist I Ketut Rabeg (Pan Putera) who recalls that the dirt paths around Kamasan were not well equipped for the modern cars.5 Visits between Ubud and Kamasan were reciprocated, and Ketut Rabeg recalls making the full-day journey to Ubud, mainly on foot, not only carrying paintings but laden with baskets of fruit for sale to the foreigners. Similar accounts by Balinese artists also mention visiting the foreigners in Ubud to sell them things in this period. In the following passage recorded by Hildred Geertz (2005) Ida Bagus Made Togog from Batuan describes his visit to the home of American anthropologist Jane Belo and her husband Colin McPhee to try and sell a kris handle, Interview with I Ketut Rabeg and his son I Ketut Widastra, Kamasan, 17 August 2010.

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So after a while the guests looked at my thing that I had bought, and one offered me one rupiah for the kris handle. I was very happy. Today if you offered me 50,000 rupiah I wouldn’t sell it. But at that time, I didn’t know anything about how expensive good, old things are, and I was happy with what I got from the nyonya in Sayan. After that I sold other things, precious stones and rings, whatever I could find to sell (2005:183).

I Ketut Rabeg worked with another Kamasan local I Wayan Ledang, who operated an antique business and silversmith workshop in the village. Although primarily known for his contributions to ethnomusicology, Colin McPhee also visited Kamasan and collected paintings in the same period. There are about forty traditional paintings in the McPhee Collection at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He collected these paintings through I Wayan Ledang whose family in Kamasan still has a significant collection of photographs taken by McPhee in Bali during this period.6 Most of the Kamasan paintings currently on display at the Puri Lukisan Museum in Ubud were donated by Marianne van der Sleen-van Wessem, a friend of Spies, who as secretary of Pita Maha and curator of the Bali Museum, may have joined them on these visits to Kamasan. In late 1949, French photographer Henry CartierBresson visited Kamasan during his tour of Indonesia in the final year of the independence struggle to document the official transfer of sovereignty from the Dutch to Indonesia. Cartier-Bresson was accompanied by Cokorda Gede Agung Sukawati from Ubud who knew several Kamasan artists through their association with the Pita Maha in the 1930s. Cartier Bresson’s typed notes from the visit record that the 6

Interview with I Wayan Murja, son of I Wayan Ledang (deceased), Kamasan, November 2010. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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artist they intended to visit was not at home but that his daughter was there painting. He further comments that although this was not a job normally done by women the war had resulted in shortages of cloth for weaving leaving the women with time to take up painting.7 Cartier-Bresson mainly photographed this young woman, who kneels on a woven mat behind a low wooden table. Her hair is pulled back and she is dressed in a woven checked sarong secured around the waist with a plain coloured sash. The surface of the small table she is working on is draped with the painting, and she appears to be applying the final outline and embellishment in black ink to what may be the Arjuna Wiwaha. Her left hand rests on the painting while the right dips a thin bamboo brush into a small pot of blank ink on the ground beside her, in front of which lies a spare brush. She sits working directly in front of a twin-leafed carved doorway which leads into one of the interior rooms. Although Cartier-Bresson took several photographs of his visit to Kamasan, this is the only one he released for viewing by the public. Fieldwork in Kamasan has revealed that the young girl in the photograph is Ni Nyoman Runis.8 Cartier-Bresson was visiting the compound of her uncle, artist I Wayan Lenged (Pan Seken). The compound has since been renovated but the location could be identified by the architecture of the brickwork and wooden doorway visible in the photograph. I Wayan Lenged, born around 1890, was one of the leading artists in Kamasan until his death in 1984 and a member of the Pita Maha through which he would have known the Cokorda. His household was home to metalsmiths, weavers and painters. Artist Ni Wayan Wally is the niece of Ni Nyoman Runis, and recalls that most of the 7

Typed notes from this visit provided by the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris, 17 November 2010.

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Interview with Mangku Nengah Mujana, Kamasan, 28 September 2010.

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women being proficient weavers and painters.9 The assertion that painting was done by men is subject to questioning, not only today when there are several skilled female artists and colourists working in Kamasan but it seems probable than in the communal production of paintings the contribution made by women has been severely undervalued. By the 1970s when English anthropologist, Anthony Forge spent a year in the village conducting fieldwork, many of the arguments which had been aired throughout the 1930s about the death of traditional art were recirculating. An exhibition and sale of contemporary Kamasan paintings organised by Klot and Bullough (1972) in Amsterdam was one initiative to revitalise the dying art and the pair collected new paintings produced in Kamasan, giving considerable emphasis to the spiritual significance of the works. Around the same time the expatriate Australian artist, Donald Friend (2006), based in Sanur was making regular forays to the antique shops of Klungkung to purchase antique paintings. Anthony Forge took a different approach again and began collecting old temple paintings as well as the works of younger practicing artists. His overriding interest was the study of Balinese symbolic systems and how they were expressed in paintings and during the course of one year in Kamasan, with several follow up visits, he acquired a collection that amounts to almost two hundred paintings now housed at the Australian Museum in Sydney. Forge combined an analysis of older works with those produced by living artists. In fact, he relied on living artists to interpret the older works he acquired. The catalogue he produced (1978) to accompany an exhibition of these paintings remains one of the most authoritative accounts of painting

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Interview with Ni Wayan Wally, Kamasan, 30 January 2011. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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in Kamasan to date.10 As an anthropologist who understood that art is never autonomous from the spheres of social, religious and political life, his work Kamasan can be seen as part of a tradition by outsiders using traditional Balinese paintings both in the field and in museum institutions for the academic study of Balinese society. Paintings in the world of academia Just as the painting depicting the Dutch conquest of Klungkung by Mangku Mura suggested the role of art in building collective memory, many foreigners have been drawn specifically to paintings to reflect on what significance these paintings might have or still have for the artist or community which created them. Kamasan paintings have featured in several academic studies, including Christiaan Hooykaas (1971) who examined Balinese drawings, paintings, shadow puppets and literature to explore the pamurtian figure (a many-headed figure representing a state of anger assumed by a god or demon) in his research on priestly rituals and Balinese manuscripts. Angela Hobart (1990) used paintings to explore the Sutasoma story in a variety of genres. In her study of the Bhima Swarga story depicted on the panels on the Kerta Gosa in Klungkung, Idanna Pucci (1992) presents a text based on a translation of the oral narration recorded during a shadow puppet performance to accompany the photographed panels. Other scholars have made more detailed studies of individual paintings. Peter Worsley (1984) studied this scene from the Ramayana on barkcloth (figure 4). This painting dates from the nineteenth century and was sourced from 10

For more details on the relationship between Forge and the people of Kamasan see Campbell (2010). Podcast of lecture on the same subject by Adrian Vickers and the author can be accessed at http://www.anu.edu.au/discoveranu/content/ podcasts/

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Fig.4. Ramayana: the Bridge to Langka Kamasan, early 19th century. Natural pigment and ink on barkcloth, 150 x 127 cm. The Forge Collection, Australian Museum, Sydney (Registration No. E074168)

a temple in Jero Kapal, Gelgel, Klungkung by Anthony Forge. Worsley argues that the artist has referred to various narratives or texts which would have been familiar to the viewer. By manipulating the ordering of these narratives the artist could direct messages to multiple audiences without making direct references to social relationships in society, The paintings were able to fill a deep silence between triwangsa kings and jaba commoners and render unsayable things sayable. The paintings were public and as such participated in the complex etiquette which government the relationships between Balinese on public occasions. Paintings, indeed the whole narrative world of the Balinese, formed a ground on which Balinese of different classes and estates negotiated their relationships with each other. Our painter was thus able to propound the impotence of JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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kings, assert their ultimate dependence on their commoner subjects, and so celebrate the triumph of his fellow jaba without losing his life (1984: 101)

Consideration of the different ways of seeing amongst visual cultures and more reflexivity about how outsiders approach Balinese views on historical paintings has been central to the work of Adrian Vickers (2005). He started out with the intention of a philological study of the text Kidung Malat but his field-work based investigations lead him to argue that the textual version was just one of many manifestations of the narrative and did not necessary inform the other performed and painted traditions. Although he does not claim to present the kind of response a Balinese viewer might articulate, he identifies a “combination of determinants” that can be applied to viewing, These determinants are the actual contexts of the paintings, both spatially and historically; their arrangements of iconographic elements and their manipulations of and variations on subtleties of Malat narration; and the possible range of prior knowledge that Balinese viewers would have been able to bring to bear on them (2005: 200).

Although the interrelations across visual art, theatre, performance and literary traditions in Bali are important, Vickers shows how paintings reveal understandings outside those found within other versions of the text. In his earlier study (1982) of the narrative Siwaratrikalpa, already mentioned for the possibility that it contains a self-portrait of the artist, Vickers found that some of the illustrations accompanying the text did not concur with the Western translations, leading him to question these translations as the authoritative guide to paintings. He further argued that the religious message and ritual function of the narrative as 18


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an act of devotion was being overlooked by the ways that Western translations of the text had presented the story, But what lies at the heart of the kakawin, and what emerges as the artist’s interest, despite the danger of getting lost in details, is the religious meaning of the Night of Siwa. For this purpose all details that seem extraneous to the Westerner, the humorous, the erotic, poetical beauty, battle and nature, are in fact different aspects of the total religious picture (1982: 458).

Bearing in mind the meanings that Balinese paintings have been made to have in contexts outside Kamasan, the same question should be asked of traditional paintings that remain in Bali, particularly as several public and private museum institutions on the island house significant collections of Kamasan work on display to the public. The role of museums in Bali was the focus of a seminar held in Bali in 2010 to launch a book about the architecture of five major museums titled Concealed Secrets in the Museum Buildings of Ubud Bali.11 The museum book hints at the conditions under which Bali has been invested with meaning as part of the Indonesian nation state. Author Sarojini explained that the book was conceived in response to the majority of books about Balinese art and culture being written by foreigners while stressing the different ethnic backgrounds of all the Indonesians working on the book, most with little previous experience of Balinese culture. While most historical museums in other parts of Indonesia were housed in former Dutch colonial buildings, she explained that museums in Ubud were unique because 11

Published in English and Indonesian, the book was officially launched at the Puri Ubud on 7 October 2010 as part of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, followed by a seminar the following morning with presenters architect Ir. Putu Rumawan Salain M.Si. and archeologist Prof. Dr. I Wayan Ardika M.A., both from Udayana University, moderated by Wayan Juniarta. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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they featured specifically Balinese architecture. Further, she argued that although several museums had been built with the involvement and support of foreigners, these crosscultural collaborations had not abandoned Balinese values in their design. By describing the significance of Balinese museums in these terms, the book can be seen as a project of national identity, in which the five museum directors were lauded during the book launch as heroes in the preservation of national culture. Traditional Painting in Bali Preserving Balinese culture is the primary motivation expressed by a number of prominent Balinese collectors for opening private art museums. By the 1970s foreign collectors had been joined by several Balinese who began to collect art produced by Balinese artists as well as foreign artists who had lived in or been associated with Bali. Public and private institutions in Bali with impressive collections of Kamasan art include the Bali Museum in Denpasar, Neka Museum, Agung Rai Museum of Art (ARMA), the Rudana Museum, Puri Lukisan in Ubud and the Gunarsa Museum in Klungkung. Smaller holdings can be found at the Museum Pasifika in Nusa Dusa, the Bharata Museum in Klungkung and the museum at the Kerta Gosa complex in Klungkung. In addition to these, several major hotels and government offices house examples of Kamasan art, including the Grand Bali Beach Hotel in Sanur. Agung Rai, the founder and director of ARMA in Ubud, commissioned writer Alison Taylor (1991) to produce a history of Balinese art using paintings selected from his collection. The museum publication relates how Agung Rai began to sell work to tourists around Peliatan and Mas as early as 1968 after realising that he lacked the necessary skill to become a painter. His rationale for collecting is expressed 20


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as follows: Because so many paintings of value have found their way outside the island, it remains the responsibility of a few long-sighted nationals to keep works of merit in their rightful place for both historical and aesthetic reasons. This indifference is largely due to the fact that very few Balinese are interested in buying paintings for their own enjoyment (Taylor 1991: 28).

Likewise, Richard Mann (2006) has published on the work of Balinese artist and collector Nyoman Gunarsa who established the Museum of Classical Painting in Klungkung in 1994. Not only is this the only museum in Bali specifically devoted to traditional paintings but it is the closest museum institution to Kamasan, lying about three kilometres to the west of the village. The book relates Gunarsa’s childhood interest in classical painting, meetings with Western artists in Bali in the 1950s and visits to Jakarta as an art school student in the 1960s to sketch stone sculptures at the National Museum. However it was a visit to America during which he viewed the work of artist Andy Warhol that sparked his passion for the Indonesian shadow puppet theatre. In America Gunarsa began seriously to hunt down Balinese antiquities in auctions wherever he happened to be.12 As a result of his ambition to repatriate Balinese antiquities from around the globe, visitors to the museum today can view a selection of paintings purchased by artist W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp in Bali and which Gunarsa tracked down after the death of the artist in Florence, Italy. But such visitors are largely from outside Klungkung. Despite the proximity of the museum to Kamasan, very few artists themselves have visited the collection and they see it more as an attraction for tourists rather than a resource for the local community. 12

Interview with Nyoman Gunarsa, Klungkung, 27 January 2011. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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While a strong interest and commitment to traditional painting and architecture define his role as a collector, Gunarsa himself is a big name on the Balinese contemporary art scene. Putu Wirata Dwikora (2001) describes how his art, as well as that of other senior Balinese artists like Made Wianta, Nyoman Nuarta and Nyoman Erawan consciously incorporates traditional iconography or narratives. In the work of Teja Astawa, a younger Balinese contemporary artist, the connections with the iconography of traditional painting are immediately obvious and particular features such as the rocks which normally serve as scene dividers and wind motifs are enlarged on the huge canvases. Curator I Wayan Seriyoga Parta (2011) described Astawa as “unleashing” the standardised forms and attributes of traditional paintings. Yet when traditional is used as a descriptor for paintings in Bali it can mean different things. Although Kamasan is considered the only village in Bali which retains the most traditional painting style, in the world of Balinese art traditional extends to a much wider body of work than that produced in Kamasan. Much of the so-called modern art which developed in the 1930s and which observers at the time went to great pains to differentiate as a complete break from the older styles is now considered traditional itself. A lexicon of Balinese traditional painters by art critic Agus Dermawan T (2006) includes artists who produce work using traditional techniques with modern themes or using modern techniques but incorporating Balinese concepts and patterns. Our understanding of traditional also needs to take into account problems with English language understandings of the term as Hildred Geertz (2004) observed: in English the terms “traditional” and “modern,” carry inappropriate associational baggage from evolutionary 22


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notions of progress, with “traditional” standing for longenduring, homogeneous ancient forms of life and art, and “modern” for dynamic, rapidly changing ones. In Balinese discourses the terms are better understood more narrowly as contemporary local stylistic alternatives.’ (2004: 198)

While making the links between Kamasan art and contemporary artists may be important to people observing the art from the outside, Kamasan artists have no qualms about referring to their art as traditional. Although there are many examples of how contemporary art has been informed by traditional practices, the traffic is largely one way in that, with few exceptions, traditional painting is a reference for but largely excluded from the contemporary art scene. Jan Mrazek (2008) has argued that most accounts of modern art in Southeast Asia continue to exclude traditional even though “the different traditional arts are in many cases forcefully and consciously part of Southeast Asia’s (post)modernity (2008: 292).” This, he argues, is generally because they either focus on Western inspired art or because of Western prejudices about what constitutes art. The work of artist I Nyoman Mandra exhibited as a retrospective in contemporary art spaces is one exception, but there are other ways which demonstrate how the engagement between Kamasan artists with the world beyond the village is multifaceted and goes beyond a positioning within the contemporary art scene. Contemporary Kamasan Most of the senior artists practicing in Kamasan today learnt how to paint by studying with older artists and many recall starting out by sketching figures in the dirt. Nyoman Mandra was taught by his uncle Nyoman Dogol and Mangku Mura, who lived outside the ward of Sangging which is the centre of the painting tradition, studied with several prominent Sangging artists including Kaki Lui, Kaki Ngales and Kaki JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Kayun. During the 1970s Nyoman Mandra formalised the instruction of younger artists by establishing a school within his studio where students as young as six could come after completing their regular classes at the government schools in the morning. With funding from the regional and national government the school was particularly active during the 1980s when as many as eighty students were studying at any one time. Students not only received instruction in painting and traditional narratives but were regularly taken on weekend excursions to visit historical sites around Bali. Several of the most active artists in Kamasan today were students of Nyoman Mandra including Nyoman Arcana and Wayan Pande Sumandra as well as his own three children. Not only has poor health prevented Nyoman Mandra from continuing this role, student interest has deteriorated due in part to the demands of other extracurricular lessons held after school as well as the perceived monotony in the learning process. Wayan Pande Sumandra who aspires to continue the teaching tradition pioneered by Nyoman Mandra, has expressed his concerns about lack of young people being trained in the art, and the difficulty in inspiring his own sons to take an interest in painting.13 While it is true that the ambition of many young men and their families in Kamasan today is to get a lucrative job in the cruise industry this is not to say that they will leave painting behind forever. One male now in his forties, who currently works for a large hotel in Nusa Dua and makes the three hour return trip from Kamasan every day, plans to retire from the hotel in the next few years to take up painting again. Many of those who fulfil their dream of leaving the village to work out a couple of contracts on a liner are able to return home and buy land, small businesses and renovate family houses. 13

Interview with I Wayan Pande Sumantra, Kamasan, 11 February 2011.

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Several of the art shop businesses which line the streets of Kamasan have been funded by a family member working in the cruise industry and it is common for at least one son to remain in the village to look after the family home even when the rest of the family has left Kamasan for Denpasar or other metropolitan centres around Indonesia. The production of paintings in the past was rarely a full-time job, it was more likely to fill spare time during the farming season. Income from painting was piecemeal, and certainly wasn’t enough to support a large family. In fact, it is possible that more people in Kamasan are employed in the painting industry than at any other time in the past. Forge estimated that in 1973 there were between thirty and forty houseyards in Kamasan making a substantial part of their income from the production of paintings (Forge 1978: 8). In the 1980s Umar Kayam recorded 142 painters in the village (Kayam 1990: 48). Kamasan now has a population of around four thousand people and village authorities estimate that fifty percent of the population derives an income from the painting industry.14 From the 1980s, many Kamasan youths were sent to Denpasar to study art at university. Art school education has led some young people to reject painting in the traditional style and their work is considered non-traditional within the village. While the most conspicuous examples are those who produce abstract designs on canvas in bulk for sale to the art and souvenir market in Seniwati, for others there is not such a clear departure from what they learnt as children. I Made Sesangka Puja Laksana, grandson of I Ketut Rabeg, has worked for many years as a designer for a ceramic design studio in Sanur but has recently returned to painting on canvas in his Kamasan studio. His works 14

Interview with Ida Bagus Ketut Danendra, Village Head of Kamasan, Kamasan, 28 October 2010. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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contain many of the iconographic features and narratives associated with Kamasan, such as the god Wisnu riding in the mythical bird Garuda and the punakawan servant figures, but are rearranged in different proportions and combinations. I Komang Rai Setiawan, grandson of I Wayan Lenged, studied design and works as a draftsperson for a building construction firm, but produces very fine reverse paintings on glass and transparent acrylic panels in his spare time.15 Although capable of producing works on cloth in the Kamasan style, I Komang Rai Setiawan has refused to do so on several occasions despite active encouragement from elders in the community. In fact, he holds very strong views on his own mission to develop his version of traditional style on a medium not customarily used in Kamasan. These two examples of Kamasan painting can be contrasted with those of Ni Wayan Sri Wedari and Mangku Muriati, who also received a formal education in fine art but whose work is still accepted in the village as part of the painting tradition. Ni Wayan Sri Wedari, daughter of I Nyoman Mandra, continues to produce paintings in her father’s studio and assists with large commissions but most of her time is devoted to her full-time job as art teacher at one of the local high schools in Klungkung. Mangku Muriati, daughter of Mangku Mura, divides her time between painting and her role as a local temple priest. Muriati believes that art school benefitted her by making her more adaptable to the contemporary demands of the Kamasan art market. Although natural ochre pigments are still considered superior to acrylic, the high cost and rarity of some colours has led artists to produce cheaper work in acrylic colours. Muriati says that art school taught her how to properly mix acrylic colours and compares her work in acrylic to that of 15

For more details on glass painting in Bali see Cooper (2005).

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her father who used colour straight from the tube. When her father was bewildered by a commission he received from Jakarta to paint a huge map of the world in Kamasan style for the Indonesian pavilion at the 1988 World Exposition in Brisbane, Muriati convinced the client that they could fulfill such an order, and worked on the initial sketch with her father. Muriati reproduced a smaller version (figure 5) of the same map featuring just the Indonesian archipelago for an exhibition at an Ubud gallery in 2009. While Mangku Muriati has Balinese clients who order specific scenes on cloth and plywood panels to decorate their homes and temples, depicting narratives outside the standard scenes known to Kamasan painters in her chief interest. Without waiting for a client to order them, she frequently paints new stories which she has heard on the radio or seen on television in the confidence that they will appeal to potential buyers. Like her father, who painted

Fig. 5. Detail from Indonesia.By Mangku Muriati, Kamasan, 2009. Natural and acrylic paint on cotton cloth. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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narratives based on local dance drama performances, in 2011 Muriati completed a painting based on a televised performance of the annual arts festival in Denpasar relating the creation of the demon goddess Durga. Her painted version begins as Siwa’s consort, Uma, inadvertently drops her infant son Kumara on the ground and licks his bleeding forehead. Siwa is angered by her actions as consuming blood is inappropriate behaviour for a goddess and he condemns her to take the form of Durga. No longer entitled to reside in heaven she descends to earth and makes her home in the pura dalem or temple used to perform rituals associated with death. Because Siwa wishes to see his wife again but cannot do so in his godly manifestation, he transforms himself into the demon Kala Ludra and joins Durga in the temple. Unification of the two demons results in chaos on earth and to remedy the disruptions they are causing, the gods Brahma, Wisnu and Iswara hatch a plan to return the two to their original forms. They organise a drama performance relating the journey of Siwa and after watching it Durga and Siwa resume their godly forms and order returns to earth.16 While not all Kamasan artists introduce fresh narratives to their paintings or even share the same interest as Mangku Muriati in locating new stories, many stick with the familiar narrative repertoire but incorporate more contemporary scenes into their work. Ni Wayan Wally, who never studied art outside the village, has updated the popular folk story of Pan and Men Brayut which relates the saga of a poor couple with too many children. Despite the many hardships they experience in raising eighteen children, once the children reach maturity the family prospers and are able to hold a lavish celebration of the marriage of one of their many sons.17 16

Interview with Mangku Muriati, Kamasan, 20 January 2011.

17

For more details on the Brayut story and early twentieth century examples of the Brayut narrative in paintings see Forge (1978). The Brayut narrative

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Fig.6. Detail from Pan and Men Brayut By Ni Wayan Wally, Kamasan, 2010. Natural and acrylic paint on cotton cloth.

In Wayan Wally’s painting, tourists with cameras round their necks jostle to snap the wedding couple and girls in bikinis share the waves with fishermen in wooden fishing boats. A trio of government officials dressed in khaki uniform arrive at the ceremony accompanied by another guest in trousers and jacket and are greeted by a pair of women in Balinese dress who place a garland of flowers round their necks (figure 6). Some of the references for these novel inclusions are a pile of old hotel brochures in her studio. The juxtaposition of old and new in her painting suggests the range of possibilities available to Kamasan artists in maintaining their tradition. Conclusion This article began by describing how the work of artist I Nyoman Mandra was chosen as one representation of is also depicted on the panels of the Bale Kambang pavilion within the Kerta Gosa complex in Semarapura, Klungkung. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Kamasan art but has stressed that there are many ways to appreciate the ongoing transformations in the traditional art practice of Kamasan village. I have attempted to go beyond making statements about whether Kamasan painting is resilient to the impact of globalisation by showing how debates about the nature of traditional painting and the effects of change have long history in the way Kamasan has been represented by outsiders. By presenting a brief survey of some of the different meanings accorded to Kamasan through the interactions of both people and paintings with the outside world, I have attempted to introduce some of the ambiguities related of traditional Balinese art, which will continue to mean different things to different people. This discussion contributes to a wider discussion of how traditional is articulated in contemporary Bali and is relevant to the questions many communities around the world are asking about the globalised world that we live in. Acknowledgments Research in Kamasan, Bali was supported by a Prime Minister’s Asia Australia Postgraduate Award and the Australia Research Council Linkage Project LP0883981 between the University of Sydney and the Australian Museum in Sydney titled Understanding Balinese Painting: Collections, Narratives, Aesthetics and Society. The author wishes to thank Prof. Adrian Vickers, Emeritus Prof. Peter Worsley, Dr. I Nyoman Darma Putra and Dr. Stan Florek for their ongoing support as well as the people of Kamasan who have so generously participated in this research. Bibliography Agus Dermawan, T. 2006. Bali Bravo: Leksikon Pelukis Tradisional Bali 200 tahun. Jakarta: Panitia Bali Bangkit. 30


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Angelino, P de kat. 1921. “Over the smeden en eenige andere ambachslieden op Bali” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde, Deel 60 & 61. Barley, Nigel. 2009. Island of Demons. Singapore: Monsoon Books. Bullough, Nigel and Klot, Steven E. 1972. Bali: An Adventure in Cultural Ecology / Hedendaagse Schilderkunst Van Bali. Amsterdam: Kosmos and KIT. Campbell, Siobhan. 2010. “Collector and Collected: Exploring the Intercultural Nature of a Museum Collection.” TAASA Review, 19(4). Carpenter, Bruce W. 1997. W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp: First European Artist in Bali. Singapore: Periplus Editions. Cooper, Thomas. 2005. Sacred Painting in Bali. Bangkok: Orchid Press. Cooper, Thomas L. 2003. “Two Paintings Attributable to I Ketut Gédé, 19th Century Master Painter of North Bali”, Archipel (65). Covarrubias, Miguel. 1937. Island of Bali. New York: Knopf. Dwikora, Putu Wirata. 2001. “Balinese Society and Contemporary Arts” in Bali, Living in Two Worlds: A Critical Self-Portrait, eds. Urs Ramseyer, Rama Surya and I. Gusti Raka Panji Tisna. Basel: Museum der Kulturen; Schwabe. Forge, Anthony. 1978. Balinese Traditional Paintings: A selection from the Forge Collection of the Australian Museum, Sydney. Sydney: Australian Museum. Friend, Donald. 2006. The Diaries of Donald Friend. Canberra: National Library of Australia. Galestin, Theodoor Paul. 1962. Hedendaagse Kunst van Bali. Utrecht: Centraal Museum. Geertz, Hildred. 2004. The Life of a Balinese Temple: Artistry, Imagination, and History in a Peasant Village. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Geertz, Hildred. 2005. Tales from a Charmed life: A Balinese Painter Reminisces. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Gunarsa, I Nyoman. 2009. “Nyoman Mandra - The Master of Classical Balinese Painting” in Retrospective I Nyoman Mandra, Griya Santrian Gallery, Sanur, Bali. Hinzler, H. I. R. 1986. Catalogue of Balinese manuscripts in the Library of the University of Leiden and other collections in the Netherlands. Leiden, The Netherlands: Leiden University JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Press. Hobart, Angela. 1990. “The Enlightened Prince Sutasoma: Transformations of a Buddhist Story.” Indonesia (49). Hooykaas, C. 1971. “Pamurtian in Balinese Art.” Indonesia (12). Kayam, Umar. 1990. “From Nyoman Mandra to Ivan Sagito: The Continuous Quest for Style and Form in Indonesian Art” in Modern Indonesian Art, Three Generations of Tradition and Change, ed. Joseph Fischer. Jakarta. Mann, Richard. 2006. Classical Balinese Painting, Nyoman Gunarsa Museum, Klungkung, Bali. Nyoman Gunarsa Museum of Classical Balinese Painting in collaboration with Gateway Books International. Marrison, G.E. 1995. Mrazek, Jan. 2008. “Ways of Experiencing Art: Art History, Television, and Javanese Wayang” in What’s the use of art?: Asian visual and material culture in context, eds. Jan Mrazek and Morgan Pitelka. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Myers, Fred R. 2001. “Introduction” in The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture, ed. Fred R. Myers. Santa Fe: Oxford: James Currey. Parta, I Wayan Seriyoga. 2011. Fragments of Subconscious Memory: A Solo Exhibition by Teja Astawa, Tony Raka Art Gallery. Mas, Ubud, Bali. Pucci, Idanna. 1992. Bhima Swarga. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Sarojini. 2010. Concealed Secrets in the Museum Buildings of Ubud Bali. ??? Taylor, Alison. 1991. Living Traditions in Balinese Painting. Peliatan, Ubud, Bali: Agung Rai Gallery of Fine Art. Vickers, Adrian. 1982. “A Balinese Illustrated Manuscript of the Siwaratrikalpa.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 138(4). Vickers, Adrian. 2005. Journeys of desire : a study of the Balinese text Malat. Leiden: KITLV Press. Vickers, Adrian. 2009. “I Nyoman Mandra: Guardian of Tradition, Master of Innovation” in Retrospective I Nyoman Mandra, Griya Santrian Gallery. Sanur, Bali. Wiener, Margaret J. 1995. Visible and Invisible Realms: Power, Magic, and Colonial Conquest in Bali. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 32


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Worsley, Peter. 1984. “E74168.” Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs (18). Wulff, Inger. 2002. “Early Indonesian Collections in Copenhagen.” In Treasure Hunting? Collectors and Collections of Indonesian Artefacts, eds. Reimar Schefold and Han Vermeulen. Leiden: CNWS Publications.


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Balinese Art versus Global Art1 Adrian Vickers 2 Abstract There are two reasons why “Balinese art” is not a global art form, first because it became too closely subordinated to tourism between the 1950s and 1970s, and secondly because of confusion about how to classify “modern” and “traditional” Balinese art. The category of ‘modern’ art seems at first to be unproblematic, but looking at Balinese painting from the 1930s to the present day shows that divisions into ‘traditional’, ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’ are anything but straight-forward. In dismantling the myth that modern Balinese art was a Western creation, this article also shows that Balinese art has a complicated relationship to Indonesian art, and that success as a modern or contemporary artist in Bali depends on going outside the island. Keywords: art, tourism, historiography

S

outheast Asia’s most famous, and most expensive, painter is Balinese, but Nyoman Masriadi does not want to be known as a “Balinese artist”. What does this say about the current state of art in Bali, and about Bali’s recognition in global culture? I wish to examine the post-World War II history of Balinese painting based on the view that “modern Balinese” art has lost its way. Examining this hypothesis necessitates looking the alternative path taken by Balinese

1

This paper was presented at Bali World Culture Forum, June 2011, Hotel Bali Beach, Sanur.

2

Adrian Vickers is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies and director of the Australian Centre for Asian Art and Archaeology at the University of Sydney. A version of this paper was given at the Bali World Culture Forum, June 2011. Research was funded through an Australian Research Council Linkage Project Grant with the Australian Museum and the Singapore Batuan Project. I would like to thank participants in this project for comments, particularly Siobhan Campbell, and also Leo Haks for providing materials and documentation. Aspects of the discussion in this paper will also be dealt with in my forthcoming book Balinese Art: Paintings and Drawings from Bali, 18002010 (Singapore: Tuttle). Email: [email protected]

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artists who have wanted to be modern, following the route of Indonesian national modernism. This route has led those who want to work on the global level into the rapidlychanging scene of contemporary art, since it is not possible to work as an artist within the confines of the image of Bali, and be recognised globally. New Balinese artists succeed, I argue, as modern and contemporary artists by going outside Bali. In the case of national modern artists, they go to Yogyakarta, in the case of global contemporary artists, they are marketed in Singapore and Hong Kong. I argue, through the example of Balinese painters, that there are two reasons why “Balinese art” is not global, first because it became too closely subordinated to tourism between the 1950s and 1970s, and secondly because of confusion about how to classify “modern” and “traditional” Balinese art. Traditional modern art Balinese painting underwent a radical transformation in the 1930s. In that period a range of experiments in style, and to a lesser degree subject matter, produced a fresh vision of what it meant to be Balinese. The dynamic artists of the 1930s were responding to the western presence on the island, producing a kind of visual dialogue with the Dutch, the other expatriates who lived on the island, and the tourists who consumed much of this work. Unfortunately accounts of the period tend to produce the false image that this art was the creation of westerners, and further that it was about a turn to naturalism, depiction of everyday life, and rejection of the mythology found in traditional painting. Further, traditional painting, primarily the art produced in the village of Kamasan, Klungkung tends to be reported in such accounts as moribund (Bonnet 1936; Stutterheim 1936). None of these claims is true. Balinese JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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were innovating in art long before Walter Spies and Rudolf Bonnet turned up, as the work of nineteenth century artist I Ketut Gede of Buleleng shows (Hinzler 1986-7; Cooper 2003). The majority of 1930s works had some mythological reference, and was based on stylistisation, particularly of foliage, but also in terms of its fantastic renderings of figures and perspective. True, a number of leaders in the innovative movement of the 1930s, such as I Nyoman Ngendon and Ida Bagus Made Togog of Batuan, A.A. (Dewa) Gede Sobrat of Ubud and Ida Bagus Nyoman Rai of Sanur did set out to ‘pick the brains’ of westerners to find out about the new potential audience for their work, and to learn technical tricks that might improve their work (Geertz and Togog 2005). Kamasan painting is still going strong, and continues to produce innovative and interesting work, as shown by the output of Nyoman Mandra, its leading artist. The 1930s art was genuinely modernist, in that it involved experimentation and searching for new styles and modes of art. It deserves recognition in art historical terms, but it has been problematic in narratives of the development of modern Indonesian art, in that it does not fit in with the teleology of modernism from Raden Saleh to Persagi to the Bandung and Yogyakarta Schools of painting. In this teleological narrative, Bali only features as a site visited by the Persagi artists, beginning with Affandi and continuing with Agus Djaja and others who had houses there. Claire Holt, the author of a definitive study of Indonesian art, was familiar with the Balinese painting of the 1930s through her research on the island and her work with her lover, the archaeologist Williem Stutterheim. Coming back to Bali in the 1950s she found that the exciting modernism of Balinese art had been replaced with what she characterised as “decorative and naturalistic” painting, mostly “weak and insipid” compared to what she had known 36



(1967: 184). Although she counted a number of artists such as Ida Bagus Made Poleng as exceptions, her description of what she saw was particularly relevant to the domination of Balinese art by Ubud, identified with what has generally been called the Pita Maha style. The narrowing of Balinese art in the 1950s is a complex topic, and I have set out in more detail the factors that influenced this change. Chief amongst these factors was the influence of Rudolf Bonnet, who advised marketers of art (such as G. Koopman), directed commissions (as in the case of a big Dutch-American exhibition of 1948-49), assisted in the setting up of formal schools (in Ubud, Paliatan and Batuan), and played a major institutional role in the setting up of the Museum Puri Lukisan (Bakker 1985). The new direction of art was much more in accord with Bonnet’s taste, and his lack of interest in modernism in his own art. Bonnet’s art belonged to what Sudjojono derisively called ‘Mooi Indië’ or ‘Beautiful Indies’ art, idyllic depictions of happy natives in rice fields, that was a part of the colonial mentality of the western artists who lived on Bali in the 1930s (Holt 1967). I agree with Holt, Balinese painting lost direction and impetus as a modernist art form in the 1950s. The new, best summarised as ‘Ubud art’ was a triumph not of the direction of art history, but of the capturing of Balinese art by a new agenda. That agenda was to present a positive image of Indonesia as a new nation on the international stage. That was the agenda of Sukarno, whose taste in art was dubious, but who was the major patron of the arts, especially in terms of its presentation to the world. Bonnet also had an influence over Sukarno’s view of art, especially through the respect that Sukarno showed to Bonnet’s friend Cokorda Agung Sukawati, the main prince of Ubud. For Sukarno, the Mooi Indië view was easier to integrate into the national story than complicated and challenging modernist works. It JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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was certainly easier to accommodate Mooi Indië art into the attempts to restore tourism to Bali. Curiously the alignment of newer Balinese art with national culture has created a problem in terminology. What was once the ‘modern’ art of Bali is now called ‘traditional’, and while I agree that it is no longer modernist, the confusing terminology obliterates the traditional art of Kamasan. In order to cope with this, the term ‘classic’ is now used to refer to Kamasan art, although there are forms of ‘traditional’ painting, ie wayang paintings that can also be used in temples, found in other parts of Bali. The various Indonesian and other accounts of Balinese art that accompanied the take-off of tourism in the 1970s tended to accept the Mooi Indië view of Balinese art, which became an Ubud-centred view of the arts in general (Moerdowo 1977). This was a credit to the ability of the Ubud royal family in reframing how others view Bali, and was a success in terms of creating a new tourist industry that was based on the policy of Cultural Tourism. Culture and tourism have come to be intimately linked, as the title of the national ministry shows, but is this ‘culture’ in the sense that others might understand it? In my 2008 address to the Bali Cultural Congress, I pointed out that a problem of defining Balinese culture in relation to tourism is that it leaves high culture in a difficult position, since tourism is inherently about commercialisation and reducing things to the lowest common denominator. Unlike anthropologists and postmodernists, I still tend to take high culture seriously as the most refined and highly developed art objects and performances that can be produced by a society. High culture is not typical of everyday social expression, but it does define the most serious efforts to concentrate certain aspects of a culture in a way that is affective for participants in that culture, but may also reach 38



out beyond to other audiences through aesthetic values. Balinese painting is not what it used to be. In Global terms, it presents a narrow and easily consumed image of Bali. While Cultural Tourism was the dominant policy, this relationship between the image of the arts and tourism was not challenged. Since the 1990s, however, tourists have turned away from the idea of Bali as a place of culture, and began to see it primarily as a set of resorts, and now villas. This property-based view of the island has meant that Cultural Tourism has been replaced by resort tourism, drawing attention to the chasm between different forms of art. This dilution of Balinese modern art has created two problems: it has meant that the global image of Balinese culture, as expressed in painting, has lost impact, and it has meant that artists working on Bali are struggling for recognition and status. In the first case, in terms of global culture, if people want to portray ‘Bali’ they do not turn to the same kinds of paintings that art displayed on Bali. An example of Balinese art for Balinese consumption is the Pita Prada exhibition and publication, from the attempt to set up a Balinese Biennale, or at least a Biennale of works that are ‘traditional’, which means not modernist or contemporary. The exhibition included a number of works from leading artists such as the late Dewa Mokoh, but combined with some very indifferent paintings. In contrast to the Pita Prada, the only recent big international exhibition of Balinese art has been the Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance exhibition at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. This exhibition was mainly of ritual objects and sculptures, but included some paintings, mainly nonKamasan traditional works from the nineteenth century, such as a splendid box painted with Malat scenes which was JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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once on the collection of W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp, as well as very beautiful Smaradaha paintings on wood from a temple in Tabanan, now in the Dutch National Ethnographic Museum, Leiden. The exhibition is well set up with multimedia displays of wayang, interactive temple tours and other displays of traditional Balinese culture. What is often presented as art of Bali, and this is also true of the San Francisco exhibition, is art depicting Bali by visitors and expatriates. So a number of Covarrubias and Nieuwenkamp images are included in the San Francisco exhibition, and the guide books and other works on Bali often pay more attention to the Mooi Indië artists than to Balinese. I find this disturbing for two reasons: first, many of these western artists, for example Hans Hofker, are producers of mediocre and highly conventional art, replicating a colonial view of Bali. The second reason that I find this disturbing is that it robs Balinese of agency in their own culture, and plays down the amazing creativity of Balinese artists. One of the key reasons for the continual reference to western artists is that the perception of ‘Balinese art’ is caught in a vicious circle. Partly influenced by Sukarno’s taste for kitsch, bare breasts and Mooi Indië art, partly working to create colonial nostalgia, collectors of Indonesian art in previous decades have focussed on the westerners who painted Bali, to the point where works by Walter Spies passed the US$ 1 million mark some time in the 1990s. These collectors were originally based in the Netherlands, hence their direct colonial nostalgia, although the baton has well and truly been taken up by Indonesians as the Dutch imperial memory fades. Spies was perhaps something of an exception amongst the westerners who worked in the Indies, in that he was a genuine modernist, with close links to the German expressionist school, as well as to the art of Chagall. However his subject matter was still the idealised peasant 40



scenes of the other colonial painters, even if he spared us the interminable bare breasts that dominate the work of painters such as Hofker. The higher the prices these artists fetch, the more people want them, the more they come to represent ‘Bali’. What was Left Out The creation of a Mooi Indië vision of Balinese art in the 1940s and 1950s was done by deliberately ignoring the more challenging aspects of Balinese modernism. Modernism, in the usual western definition, is identified with the idea of an avant garde, that is a group that takes a lead in society. Part of the achievement of early twentieth century modernists was to challenge the existing social order, particularly bourgeois sensibilities. They did this at the same time as providing new solutions to specific art problems. The results were often historical interventions, ie commentary on society and events, such as Picasso’s Guernica. Bali has not had a self-conscious avant garde in the potentially pretentious western sense. However it has had artists concerned with pushing the boundaries of society. The clearest examples are those artists whose deployment of western culture led them to challenge aspects of the colonial social order, both in terms of directly opposing Dutch colonial rule, but along with that, of seeking to overturn what they saw as the feudal restrictions of caste. At least three of the most interesting artists of the 1930s perished fighting against the Dutch. I Made Pica of Sanur died under circumstances that are not clearly documented. More is known about the death of Ida Bagus Made Jatasura, the favourite artist of anthropologist-collectors Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. He was arrested along with a group of young men from Batuan, who were tortured in Gianyar jail, and Jatasura died as a result of that torture JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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(Geertz 1991). One of the leaders of the Revolution in Batuan was Nyoman Ngendon, who joined Ngurah Rai’s forces, but was captured by pro-Dutch Gianyar troops, and executed in the graveyard in Batuan. Ngendon experimented with a range of styles, and was intellectually very daring, also travelling to Yogyakarta after meeting Affandi. Some of his most interesting work can be found in the former collection of the Bohemian Swiss artist, Theo Meier. Meier was not someone whom the other expatriates such as Bonnet approved of, since he led a very decadent lifestyle and sexually exploited Balinese, although the same accusation can, and has been, levelled against many of the expatriates on the island in the 1930s and afterwards. Meier was not interested in directing Balinese art, but gave artists opportunities to interact in an open environment. Some of the most interesting work done between the late 1930s and the 1950s ended up in his collection, and these are far from Mooi Indië. One of the only female artists working in the 1930s, Desak Putu Lambon, is represented there, along with Ida Bagus Ketut Togog Warta, Dewa Ketut Baru, and a number of other Batuan artists who were very interested in depicting interactions between westerners and Balinese. This was a topic that Bonnet actively discouraged, and which has been edited out of the Ubud-based story of Balinese art. The Pita Maha story doesn’t include Balinese who want to be modern. Thus what is also left out of the standard account of Pita Maha is the idea that Balinese depict ‘everyday life’, but not history. In fact there are many history painters, in the sense of depicting both the historically-contingent challenges to the social order, alluded to in the story of Jayaprana, which was very popular amongst Balinese revolutionaries in the 1940s and 1950s, or to historical events such as Japanese rule. Probably the leading history painter of Bali has been 42



Ida Bagus Nyoman Rai of Sanur, a close friend of Meier’s, who was very interested in Balinese modernity, along with the major events going on around him. Balinese and Indonesian modernism Balinese have continued to produce confronting and modernist work, but have often had to go outside Bali to do so, because such modernism is not part of the tourist image. All of the founding fathers of Indonesian art came to live and work on Bali at some stage, presenting Bali through Indonesian eyes, and thus drawing attention to the role of Bali as a site for modern Indonesian art. Following on the examples of Affandi and Agus Djaja, aspiring artists from all over the archipelago made Bali a place of pilgrimage. However this connection encouraged Balinese who wanted to be modern Indonesian artists to go to the centres on Java from which these artists came, particularly to study in Bandung and Yogyakarta. Balinese have been very successful as modern Indonesian artists. The New Order regime, however, put an official stamp on Indonesian art that was very different from Sukarno’s. Suharto seems to have had no interest in art, but he recognised its challenging potential, and so his regime exercised control over the arts. They curbed any art that had leftist connotations, particularly the social realism that had been favoured by communist-linked LEKRA (People’s Art Institute) artists. This further discouraged the historical modernism in Balinese art from becoming an important part of its identity. The Suharto regime encouraged abstract expressionism, and a number of Balinese did well at this. Nyoman Tusan, respected as the leading Balinese modern artist of an older generation, studied in Bandung and then encouraged younger JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Balinese modernists. Most of the next two generations went to Yogyakarta. Nyoman Gunarsa and Made Wianta were the pioneers of a movement called Sanggar Dewata. Founded in 1970 in Yogyakarta, it has linked Yogya and Bali. After Gunarsa and Wianta, Made Budhiana and Nyoman Erawan became leading lights in this modernist stream, creating a distinctively Balinese version of national modernism. Along with Made Djirna, Pande Ketut Taman and collectives such as the Galang Kangin, these artists have given new meaning to Abstract Expressionism.

Fig. I. Bagus Made Togog, Batuan, I Amad’s magic is stolen Isteri Beregedab: “I Amad obtained a [magic] coconut vessel. Then he sought out Isteri Beregedab, when he found her, he wanted to take her, but Isteri Beregedab was unwilling. Amad went on a trip with her to the temple on Manjeti Island, in the middle of the ocean. Arriving there, Amad felt tired. So he slept, then his clothes were ransacked, the vessel, arrows, armoured coat, were then taken by Isteri Beregedab.” Batuan 1937, Ink on paper, 57x48cm, ex-Bateson-Mead Collection B644, Collection R. Lemelson.

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Fig. II. I Nyoman Mandra, Kamasan, Swargarohanaparwa: the Pandawa enter heaven, 1980s, traditional paint on canvas, Artist’s Collection (photo Gustra)

Fig. III. Desak Putu Lambon, Batuan, Joged dance, dated 20/09/1937, ink on paper, ex-Bateson-Mead Collection B214, Collection R. Lemelson. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Fig. IV. Ida Bagus Made, Tebesaya, Atomic War in Indra’s Heaven, 1956, tempera on canvas, 91x73cm, Ida Bagus Made Estate, courtesy Puri Lukisan (photo Gustra).

Fig. V. A.A. Gede Soberat, Padangtegal, Bumblebee Dance, 1970, tempera on canvas, 97x132, Neka Art Museum (photo Gustra)

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Fig. VI. I.B. N. Rai, Sanur, 1963 Eruption of Gunung Agung, 1968, ink on paper, 70x100, Neka Art Museum (photo Gustra).

Fig. VII. I Dewa Putu Mokoh, Pengosekan, Boy Trying to Study, 1995, ink and acrylic on canvas, 50x35cm, Collection Chris and Mary Hill (photo Bo Wong). JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Fig. VIII. I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniashi, Bercinta dalam Mimpi (Love in a Dream), 2002, acrylic on canvas, 80x80, Tonyraka Art Gallery.

Fig. IX. I Nyoman Gunarsa, Two Puppets, 1988, oil on canvas, 95x95, Neka Art Museum (photo Gustra).

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Fig. X. M. Budhiana, Jeritan Alam (Scream of Nature), 2007, acrylic on canvas, 190x250, courtesy of the artist.

Fig. XI. Pande Ktut Taman, Meluruskan Sejarah, 1999, oil on canvas, 150x400cm, Neka Art Museum (photo Gustra).


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Fig. XII. I Wayan Cekeg, Batuan, Pesta Demokrasi (Festival of Democracy: the Election), 2008, tempera on canvas, 52x73, Singapore Batuan Collection (photo Ken Cheong).

Fig. XIII. Mangu Putra, Denpasar II, 2005, oil on canvas, 140x285cm, private collection (photo Koes).

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Fig. XIV. I Nyoman Masriadi, Yogyakarta, Awakening Kumbakarna, 1998, acrylic on canvas, 140x200cm, OHD Museum Collection, Magelang (photoGajah Gallery)

A particularly important part of the Sanggar Dewata legacy has been its reference to traditional Balinese aesthetics, sometimes in the form of direct appropriation of wayang figures and Kamasan art, at other times through direct study and adaptation of traditional techniques and styles. Both Gunarsa and Wianta show aspects of this interest, as do their followers and successors. All of these artists incorporate strong reference to mythology and to Balinese religious and spiritual beliefs, whether referring, as in Tusan’s work, to the niskala, or make use of Hindu yantras, as in Wianta’s work, or adapting wayang forms, in Gunarsa’s work, or referring to Hindu notions of creation in destruction, in Nyoman Erawan’s paintings. Many of the Balinese painters remained interested in politics throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but under the stifling authoritarianism of Suharto, had learned to avoid direct political expression. The fall of Suharto and the Reformation JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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period it ushered in 1998 freed Indonesian artists from such constraints, and brought more direct examination of Bali and Indonesian politics. An important example of this is a work by one of the artists who had emerged at the tail-end of national modernism in the 1990s, Pande Ktut Taman. His early work had followed the lines of that of Budhiana and Djirna, in using colour and new forms to express cultural motifs and themes. By the late 1990s, he was producing commentaries on the nature of Indonesian society, such as his 1999 work ‘Straightening Out History’, Meluruskan Sejarah. Referring to the arguments raging at the time about the suppressed history of the anti-communist purges, Sukarno’s downfall and other key events in national history, Djirna gives an ironic commentary through depicting a tug of war with a bent rope. This kind of more cynical reflection on politics typifies the pessimism that has overtaken much of Indonesian society as the Reformation Period has failed to bring about the democracy aspired to in the 1990s. Taman’s Meluruskan Sejarah can be explained simply as part of the national modernism, but I think that misses an important point about Balinese painting. The Pita Maha image never quite succeeded in smothering the stream of history painting. During the Suharto era it could rarely be critical, and had to be presented with gentle irony. The chief exponent of this has been Made Budi, whose travels to the United State and other parts of Asia helped foster a commentary on tourist Bali. His works depicted the interactions of tourists and Balinese, and encouraged covillagers, notably Wayan Bendi, to extend this representation into more and more detailed satires. Since the fall of Suharto, other Batuan artists have taken up with commentary with a harder edge. Chief amongst them is Wayan Cekeg, who has produced a series of commentaries on current events and Indonesian 52



politics. Cekeg is concerned with the deterioration of the environment in Bali, with corruption in Indonesian politics, and with day-to-day survival. However his work, like those of his other Batuan contemporaries, covers a wider range than this, and includes many erotic pieces focussed on the worship of Smara and Ratih. Balinese working within the so-called ‘tradition’ began by the 1930s modernists have shown that it is hard to tell the difference between ‘traditonal’, ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’ art. An example is Dewa Putu Mokoh, whose work refined one aspect of the depiction of ‘daily life’, but in a way that dealt with domestic and gender issues (Hill 2006). His languid images dealt with social relations on a very grounded level. Probably his most dramatic example of this is his Bom Bali, which employs the innocence and gentleness of his other works to highlight the horror of the violence visited on Bali in 2002. Contemporary Balinese art Mokoh’s star pupil, the late Gusti Kadek Murniasih, showed just how contemporary such influences can be. Murni is one of the strongest examples of a return to the linear and figurative in painting, while exploring contemporary themes of gender politics and place. Murni’s all-too-brief life did not allow her to develop the full potential for confrontation in her work. She had come from Tabanan to study with Dewa Mokoh in Pengosekan, and continued his naïve style. While Mokoh’s work reflects gently on intimate personal relations, Murni’s experience as a Balinese woman was less positive, and her work turns Mokoh’s lines into harsher delineations of the image of women. Her paintings blurred the distinction between a global pop sensitivity, and Balinese linearity. Murni was a member of the women’s artists cooperative, Seniwati, an initiative of an Englishwoman, Mary Northmore JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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(wife of the noted teacher Abdul Aziz) (Northmore 2001). Given that women artists had been largely neglected in Balinese art, Seniwati has been a valuable corrective to the bias of the art world, taking senior women artists such as Ni Suciati from Kamasan, and allowing them to mentor younger female artists. Seniwati’s international linkages, along with connections to the contemporary art scene via Murni’s Italian husband, Mondo, provided an avenue for one group of Balinese artists to reach international audiences. One of the younger women to emerge via Seniwati’s launching pad has been Ni Nyoman Sani, whose family came from Sanur. Sani moved to Singapadu in Gianyar when she married artist Ketut Sugantika, and graduated from the Art Academy in Denpasar, before a brief career in the garment industry, which influenced her work (Sukra and Utami, 2006). Sani’s art is very different to that of the other Seniwati artists. Like Murni and another prominent woman artist, Cokorda Mas Astiti, she pursues the representation of women, but in her case the fascination is with the images of the refined elegance of fashion. Most of her work is based on variations on elongated female torsos. She uses the flatness of fashion design to comment ironically both on the nature of art as fashion and on the meaning of ephemeral images for the objectification of women. Seniwati also demonstrates the continuing importance of collective work in Balinese art. Thomas Freitag, in his discussion of the successful artists’ group Galang Kangin, draws attention to the way that joint work remains a feature of Balinese art that crosses over from traditional to modern to contemporary. Indonesia’s prominent art critic, Jim Supangkat, has described the counter-veiling forces at work on Indonesian art at the end of the Twentieth Century (Supangkat 2008). The late 1980s saw a massive boom in art prices, which 54



continued into the 1990s. This boom initially emphasised a deep rift between the Jakarta galleries and art circles (ie artists and critics). The rift was only closed when the initial boom subsided, and “the painting buyers…became more selective and critical.” This phase allowed a number of more discerning galleries, notably Edwin Gallery, to become prominent arbiters of taste. However at the same time the international Biennale and Triennial shows furthered debate in Indonesia as to the nature of contemporary art. The debate reached a crescendo in attacks on an attempt to localise the term ‘contemporary’ in the 1993 Jakarta Bienniale IX. Despite the initial rejection of the term (at that stage related terms such as ‘post-modern’ were still in vogue), it gradually penetrated the art world. The debate reopened up when contemporary Chinese art started to push Asian art markets up. Only in the wake of this Chinese boom, after 2006, have a number of Indonesian painters started to be recognised on the global contemporary scene. The fraught atmosphere pervading art investment produces some complex moments in Indonesian art. Young radicals whose art is a direct challenge to what they see as the empty and valueless lives of the ruling rich in Indonesia are the main beneficiaries of the patronage of the rich. So a number of young and difficult Balinese painters such as Masriadi have risen to national prominence through works which attack the political and economic systems or which offer provocative statements about the nature of Indonesian society, and in so doing they have transcended specifically Indonesian political concerns. For other Balinese painters, the Sanggar Dewata artist connection with Yogyakarta is still primary. A number of former Sanggar Dewata have moved towards figurate expressions and landscape as an expression, the best of these being Mangu Putra and Ketut Susena. It should be noted, JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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however, that there are some artists, like Mangu Putra, who are returning to work from Bali, or who have emerged as products of Bali’s own School of the Arts (ISI), who are now making an important mark. One eccentric figure in all this is Made Budhiana, the abstract artist trained in Yogyakarta, but who continues to inspire younger artists in Bali. Mangu Putra’s landscapes are a far cry from the cheery, over-populated world of Made Budi’s Bali. These are grey, stark spaces, rendered with a spare, semi-abstract style. It is as if he is trying to bleach the tourist image of Bali from the island. Thus his Balinese performing rituals do so in colourless urban settings, alienated from the idealised village world. This comment on present-day Bali is social criticism with a much grimer face than hitherto found in Balinese art, but the contemporary element involves also a return to long-term themes in Balinese art. Cekeg’s and Mangu Putra’s art comes together in a joint critique of overurbanised Bali, but only Mangu Putra’s art is considered ‘contemporary’, while Cekeg is consigned to the strange version of ‘tradition’ current in tourist discourse. After Masriadi, the best-known new Indonesian artist of the early Twenty-First Century is Putu Sutawijaya, whose figures and landscape images share much in common with the work on Supena and Mangu Putra. Sutawijaya moved from Bali to be based in Yogyakarta, where he has his own gallery, and is married to a Malaysian graphic artist. His Sangkring Gallery was the venue outside Bali for the Retrospective Exhibition on Kamasan artist Nyoman Mandra held in 2009 by the Santrian Gallery. Sutawijaya operates on a pan-Southeast Asian level. Being married to a Malaysian artist, he has access to the wider scene of other Southeast Asian contemporary art practice. An interest in calligraphic rendering of figures come through strongly in his works, as well as the casting of figures 56



on bare landscapes that recall Manu Putra’s and Susena’s. Sutawiajaya’s landscapes are more often than not religiously charged ones. He takes pan-Southeast Asian religious sites such as Angkor Wat, as well as Borobudur, and infuses these with dynamic sets of figures. These figures are based on the seated kecak dance-chant performance, which has been a popular set-piece for Balinese painting since the 1930s, when the dance was first popularised for tourists under the sponsorship of Walter Spies. A decade after a painting by Walter Spies crossed the US$1million dollar mark, Sakah-born Nyoman Masriadi, achieved that market distinction. Born in Gianyar, he lives in Yogyakarta, but is managed in Singapore and his works sell at auction in Hong Kong, representing the trajectory of contemporary artists. Despite his market popularity, his work are challenging, and like many artists he emerged in the late New Order period by directly confronting the political order of the time. His images have a strong linearity and sense of proportion that is quite alien to Western traditions of perspective. They draw on the story-telling and the two-dimensional format of the famous shadow puppet (wayang) tradition. The figures, rendered like stiff icons, typifies the rougher aspect of Balinese painting. In works such as his Awakening Kumbakarna, Masriadi demonstrates his connections to the foundations of Balinese painting in narrative, specifically in this case to the ancient Hindu epic, the Ramayana, in which the demon Kumbakarna is the last great weapon to use against the hero, Rama. Produced in 1999 after Indonesia’s most important awakening in Masriadi’s life, the fall of the dictator, Suharto, the work gives a contemporary context to mythology, something most Balinese artists do. This painting is ambiguous, since Kumbakarna is a demon to be fought off, and the democratic JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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reawakening of the nation in 1998 also awoke demons of violence and destruction. Nyoman Masriadi remains the big success story of Balinese-art-that-is-not-Balinese. He is now international property. His is the latest version of the key dynamic of Balinese-Indonesian art. Balinese artists have striven to find a set of images, some of them overt symbols, that describe where they come from. But they need to present that Balinese identity in terms intelligible to Indonesian audience and now international audiences. Masriadi’s use of cartoon images as the basis of his figures frees him from the concern about being Balinese that has preoccupied his predecessors in Sanggar Dewata (Sabapathy 2010). Masriadi’s images of the corporeal are made stronger by their large scale and depth of reference. While some of these images seem intensely personal, others are clearly referring to the social and political circumstances of their production, as in the Kumbakarna painting, or a series of works commenting on violence in Indonesian society. He also comments satirically on the art world of Indonesia and his position in it. The disturbing psychological edge to Masriadi’s figures is taken further into interior images of the self in conflict in the work of some of his Balinese colleagues, such as Sutawijaya, whose quickly-rendered figures are like anonymous personae, projected as a new form of the many performances that make up Balinese life. Masriadi is very conscious of his links to Pop Art, and his move away from the abstract expressionism that dominated Indonesian art. He emphasises the origins of his work in personal experience, but also the commercial forces shaping art, but., ‘“if someone talks about business, there is profit and loss. But for me, there is artistic work. Working on art, that feels like being a god. You can follow your own pleasures everyday. Maybe that’s different from what other 58



people do. Is that what’s called a struggle?” Then he laughs.’ (Arcana 2009; Herlambang 2008). Masriadi and Sutawijaya are taking elements are based on Balinese culture and rendering them international. But their work co-exists with the full range of other forms of Balinese art. Painters such as Nyoman Mandra are still working in the Kamasan classic style, although anxious about whether that style will be continued by the next generations. In Batuan, Cekeg continues the set of preoccupations established two generations ago by his fellow villagers, such as Nyoman Ngendon. The boundaries between the different periods and styles continue to be blurred, as Balinese art finds new themes and directions, working between conscious traditionalising and a striving for the new. Although artists are continually experimenting with new media, their grounding in the aesthetics of Balinese culture remains firm. Balinese Hindu mythology continues to contribute to potent social criticism, and to the work of artists pushing the boundaries of perception. Masriadi does not want to be labelled a “Balinese artist” because this would be too limiting for him. His grounding is in the roots of Balinese aesthetics, not in the superficial world of tourist marketing, and he wants to separate himself from that world. Bali’s image to the outside world is more a hindrance than a help in the contemporary art world. Bali is no longer cool. Artists such as Nyoman Masriadi have the potential, however, to make Bali cool again, and reinvigorate our understanding of Balinese culture. This is not a comfortable image, but one that is grounded in the realities of daily life for Balinese and other Indonesians.

References

Arcana, Putu Fajar. 2009. “Teka-teki Nyoman Masriadi”, Kompas, Minggu, 19 July. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Bakker, Wim. 1985. Bali Verbeeld. Delft: Vokenkundig Museum Nusantara. Bonnet, Rudolf. “Beeldende Kunst in Gianjar.” Djåwå 16 (1936): 59-72. Clark, John. 1998. Modern Asian Art. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ______. 2007. “History of the Asian ‘New’: Biennales and Contemporary Asian Art,” in Asian Art History in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Vishakha N. Desai. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cooper, Thomas. 2005. Sacred Painting in Bali, Bangkok: Orchid Press. ______. 2003. “Two Paintings Attributable to I Ketut Gede, 19th Century Master Painter of North Bali.” Archipel 65: 145-61. Couteau, Jean. 1999. Museum Puri Lukisan. Ubud: Ratna Wartha Foundation. Fisher, Joseph. 1990. “Problems and Realities of Modern Balinese Art.” In Modern Indonesian Art. Three Generations of Tradition and Change 1945-1990, ed. Joseph Fischer, 90-105, Jakarta and New York: Panitia Pameran KIAS [1990-91] and Festival of Indonesia. Forge, Anthony. 1993. “Balinese Painting: Revivial or Reaction.” In Modernity in Asian Art, edited by John Clark, pp. 18-28, Sydney: Wild Peony. Geertz, Hildred. 1994. Images of Power: Balinese Paintings Made for Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. ______. 1991. “A Theater of Cruelty: The Context of a Topeng Performance”. In State and Society in Bali: Historical, Textual, and Anthropological Approaches, edited by H. Geertz, pp. 165197, Leiden: KITLV Press. Geertz, Hildred, and Ida Bagus Madé Togog. 2005. Tales from a Charmed Life: A Balinese Painter Reminisces, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Haks, F, Jop Ubbens, Adrian Vickers, Leo Haks and Guus Maris. 1999. Pre-War Balinese Modernists 1928-1942: An Additional Page in Art History, Haarlem: Ars et Animatio. Herlambang, Rustika. 2008. “Percakapan di atas Kanvas”, < http:// rustikaherlambang.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/i-nyomanmasriadi/>, last read 22nd March 2011. 60



Hill, Christopher. 2006. Survival and Change: Three Generations of Balinese Painters, Canberra: Pandanus Books. Hinzler, H.I.R. 1983. “The Artist Behind the Drawings.” Indonesia Circle 30, no. March (): 5-12. ______. 1986-1987. Catalogue of Balinese Manuscripts in the Library of the University of Leiden and Other Collections in the Netherlands. Part I, Reproductions of the Balinese Drawings from the Van Der Tuuk Collection; Part II, Descriptions of the Balinese Drawings from the Van Der Tuuk Collection 2 vols. Leiden: Brill. Holt, Claire. 1967. Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Marianto, M Dwi; Seng Yu Jin; and Wang Zineng. 2008. Masriadi: Black Is My Last Weapon, Singapore: Singapore Art Museum. Northmore, Mary. 2001. Seniwati Gallery of Art by Women: The First Ten Years, 1991-2001. Ubud: Seniwati Gallery of Art by Women. Moerdowo, R.M. 1977. Reflections on Balinese Traditional and Modern Arts, Denpasar: Udayana University. Sabapathy, T.K. 2010. Nyoman Masriadi: Reconfiguring the Body, Singapore: Gajah Gallery. Smith, Terry. 2009. What Is Contemporary Art? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Soemantri et al. 2008. Ida Bagus Made: The Art of Devotion. Ubud: Ratna Wartha Foundation. Soemantri, Hilda (ed). 1998. Visual Art. Vol. 7, Indonesian Heritage, Singapore: Archipelago Press, 1998. Spanjaard, Helena. 2003. Modern Indonesian Painting. Meppel: Sotherby’s. Stutterheim, W. F. 1934. “Een Nieuwe Loot aan een Oude Stam.” Elsevier’s Geillustreered Maandschrift XLIV (6): 391-400 Sukra, Wayan [Thomas Freitag]. 2006. Mangu Putra: Belief. Surabaya: Rupa Galeri. ______. Triumph and Defeat/ Kemenangan Dan Kekalahan: 10 Tahun Kelompok Galang Kangin. Yogyakarta: Griya Santrian Gallery, Taman Budaya, 2006. Sukra, Wayan and Vidyasuri Utami. 2006. The Paintings of Ni Nyoman Sani. Yogyakarta: Cahaya Timur. Supangkat, Jim. 2008. Legacy of Sagacity: The Case of Putu Sutawijaya, JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Yogyakarta: Galeri Canna. ______. 2010. Ethnicity Now: Indonesian Contemporary Art by I Wayan Bendi, I Made Djirna, Heri Dono, Nasirun, Samuel Indratama, Angki Purbandono, Indieguerillas, and Yudi Sulitya, Jakarta: Garisartspace. Vickers, Adrian. 2009. “The Sanur School of Painting and Theo Meier.” In Museum Pasifika: Selected Artworks of Asia Pacific, edited by Philippe Augier and Georges Breguet, 33-39, Singapore: Equinox.

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The Relevance of Cultural and Media Studies to Theatre and Television in Bali* Mark Hobart** Abstract A critical approach to Balinese society presents a starkly different picture from the representations that Balinese usually tell themselves, which are largely myths to disguise a painful reality. Bali no longer belongs to Balinese but to international capital, a process of alienation by which Balinese energetically commoditize their culture while claiming the opposite. Even the frames of reference for discussing what is happening are inadequate because they predate the rise of contemporary consumer capitalism and the mass media. That is why critical media and cultural studies, disciplines designed precisely to address such phenomena, are potentially so relevant for Indonesian intellectuals. Key words: mass media, media and cultural studies, Bali, representations, theatre, television

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here are two rather different ways of addressing questions surrounding what is happening in theatre, television and the televising of theatre in Bali. The first is how the various participants understand what is going on, be they dancers, actors or media professionals. This has obvious strengths, most notably an intimate knowledge of what is going on, the complex dynamics and tensions of lived experience. The second is the critical understanding from outside, which, like a satellite photograph, highlights what is not easily accessible to the participants themselves. The strength of this approach is its potential to bring to bear the theory relevant to understanding contemporary forms

_____________ * Talk for 6th. Anniversary of GEOKS ** Mark Hobart is Professor of Critical Media & Cultural Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. Email: mh5@ soas.ac.uk JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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of media and cultural production and consumption. My aim is to raise issues for public discussion about the urgent problems facing Bali brought about through rapid social, economic and political change. My role is that of devil’s advocate: I shall raise issues, at times contentious, about what is happening that most people prefer to ignore, hope will simply go away, or do not know how to face. I hope that such an intervention is a useful – if not always welcome – contribution to debates about possible future directions for Bali. Let me start with an anecdote. Three days ago, on the flight to Ngurah Rai from Singapore, an unshaven Australian, dressed in ragged clothes and smelling badly, sat next to me. He put his feet up against the seat in front and waved his elbows about so much that I had to lean right out of my seat to avoid being poked. I was about to complain, when it occurred to me that what was happening to me was, in miniature, much what has happened to Balinese under the impact of tourism. Over the next hour and a half, this man behaved in an increasingly gross manner, quite oblivious to those around him. For the duration of the flight, I was given some small sense of what Balinese are obliged to put up with most of the time. Put simply, Balinese no longer own Bali.1 Balinese have effectively been reduced to serfs, if not slaves on their own island. Bali is now the playground for international capital, which has ruthlessly carved up the potential sources of profit, leaving droves of national and local companies to fight over the scraps. Meanwhile, Balinese compete furiously for wages, which are derisory relative to profits. If you think I exaggerate, consider how many corporations are 1

Arguably, not much has changed over the last two hundred or more years, except to whom Balinese are slaves. At least in the pre-colonial period, they were subject to Balinese or Javanese overlords.

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involved between the airline flight and the hotel destination. The drive along the bypass from the airport is a succinct summary of the island’s fate as thousands of businesses and hoardings jostle with one another to block out what was once a landscape. The puzzle is why this situation, which ordinary Balinese understand only too well, is so little debated in intelligent terms. Leaving aside the curtailment of expression under the New Order government, and the familiar and convenient overlap of interests between business and local and national government, what is striking is the absence of critical discussion, which is the task of the various social sciences. What is it that has coerced, by more or less subtle means, scholars and other intellectuals into accepting or even celebrating what is happening, instead of questioning it and examining the longer-term implications? By way of example, consider my former discipline, anthropology. Between 1910 and 2010 Bali underwent a radical transformation. What was a peasant society under patrimonial2 rulers became a capitalist society, split into a tiny élite, a fragile emerging middle class and a large working class comprising both farmers and labourers. Within this last group, we should probably include not only the conventional tourist sector, but many of the artists and performers, who sell their labour, albeit more elegantly.3 Although this transformation is obvious to many 2

Although Indonesians speak of the pre-colonial period as ‘feodal’, it differed greatly from the type case of European feudalism. The striking feature of the distribution of power in Java and Bali is how closely it was – and indeed still is – linked to the person of those in power. This differs sharply from the landbased, legal division of obligations that characterized feudalism.

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If you think this far-fetched, examine carefully the arrangements under which dance performances take place in the predominant sector, namely tourist shows. The status of dancers and musicians can be judged by the fact that they are transported not in buses but in the trucks used for cattle and other commodities the rest of the time. Rarely has the commoditization of skilled labour been flaunted so graphically. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Balinese, how come it is so little talked about? One significant reason hints at the potential relevance of media and cultural studies. Balinese are incessantly invited through the mass media to imagine themselves as a single group, somehow special and set apart, united by a unique shared culture.4 This is a very common ploy by capitalist organizations, in which the mass media hold a particularly important function. In this instance it neatly distracts attention not only from the extent to which that culture has become a marketable commodity, but also to the extent to which Bali has been sold to and, as to what matters, is effectively controlled by outsiders. Balinese are left endlessly performing the simulacrum of their own culture, now neatly packaged for consumption as ‘art’, ‘dance, ‘religion’ etc. The diversity of opinion and interests central to the argument and struggle that is culture has been replaced with a manufactured uniformity, which spells death. If, for a moment, we suspend uncritical acceptance of the myth of the vitality of Balinese culture, we can see the relentless commoditization that is actually going on. Balinese have been busy selling everything tangible and intangible to whoever will buy it. Land has been sold for hotels, restaurants businesses and, most recently, villas and condominiums. The sale of culture, long the staple of consumerism, has now extended to religion. In the Duty Free at Ngurah Rai airport, you can buy ‘genuine’ tirtha. And, for several thousand US dollars, you can even take a course guaranteeing the purchaser taksu. Occasional attempts to draw boundaries, as with the use of Panyembrama as a welcome dance to replace of Pèndèt, which was a temple 4

In cultural studies, this process is known as interpellation. It is how the mass media work to domesticate readers, viewers, Internet users and so on. By addressing viewers etc. as carefully constructed ‘identities’, not only do people learn to recognize themselves, after which they can be very effectively moulded as subjects, but they actively participate in such subjection.

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dance, serve merely as ‘inoculation’.5 They give the public impression of taking a stance, when the actuality is allowed to proceed largely undisturbed. On the subject of Pèndèt, the recent contretemps between Indonesia and Malaysia conveniently obscures the fact that Bali is now largely owned by foreign capital. Balinese have been distracted by a minor issue – amusingly about the commoditization of culture – and ignore the urgent crisis facing everyone, which goes unchallenged. What I am highlighting is the need to rethink the nature of power, especially where consumer capitalism is taking hold. Conventionally power is treated as linked with domination, what Althusser called ‘repressive state apparatuses’, the army and police, together with national and local politics. Such forms of power are crude and cumbersome. Revolutionary movements have long recognized this, which is why they usually prioritize control of the means of broadcasting rather than more obvious targets. As a means of control, it is far more effective if you can get people to cooperate or enthusiastically collude in their own subjection. Such hegemony works through ‘ideological state apparatuses’, such as education and, crucially, the mass media, where populations are trained to recognize themselves in engineered stereotypes. An obvious example is Ajeg Bali, where Balinese not only subscribe to the conditions of participation in an expressly capitalist medium, but even pay to take part! This is an autocrat’s dream of power with minimum exertion, which people inflict on themselves.6 5

The term is from Roland Barthes and is central to understanding how the media function. For example, mdia coverage of anti-corruption commissions or imprisoning a few corruptors gives the impression that government is determined to root out corruption, when the opposite is in fact true.

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The point may be made simply by asking: what is the commodity actually sold by commercial television? It might appear to be advertisements. But that is JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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The problem is, quite simply, that the older social sciences, which date from the nineteenth century, were designed for a quite different world than that of twentyfirst century global consumer capitalism and struggle to make sense of it. It was to try to understand such changes that cultural and media studies were created.7 Inevitably, of course, there are rival ways of representing and addressing what is going on. For present purposes, there are broadly two opposed camps. The first sees the media as a valuable part of the project of modernization in educating people out of traditional, pre-modern, ways of thinking, so that they can learn to function effectively in this new world – culture being this package of attitudes and skills. The second dismisses this account as subservient to corporate and political interests by producing an idealized vision, a myth, which disguises not only the exploitation that takes place, but also how this vision misrepresents as open and mobile an arrangement which works overwhelmingly to the benefit of a small élite. The latter account questions the transparency of representation by asking who represented not how it is understood within the industry, where the price of advertisements varies according to audience ratings. In short, the audience is the commodity that television channels sell to advertisers, while pretending not to. Ironically it is Pajeg Bali (the tax on Balinese) that BaliTV extracts from audiences for the privilege of watching. 7

By way of a note of caution, cultural studies, which is a discipline emerging from a post-Gramscian theoretical critique of earlier approaches, is quite different from the study of culture, with which it is often confused. The latter, emerging mostly from departments of literature and the arts, is strong on cultural nuance but theoretically very weak and often incoherent. For cultural studies, culture is not an ideal, a pattern or an object, but inherently contested and a crucial site of struggle for power. In the Introduction to After culture (published originally in Indonesia, now freely available online at www.criticalia.org) I address the differences between interpretive and critical approaches to the notion of culture. The latter highlights the extent to which conventional notions of culture deal, by definition, with what is in the past and dead, an ideal to be resurrected nostalgically. And who decides what constitutes or should be treated as culture? What alternative accounts do claims about culture silence? Such questions show that commonsense notions of culture are shot through with power.

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what as what to whom on what occasion for what purpose.8 Culture thereby ceases to be an unproblematic positivity, but becomes a means to articulate what is happening and, crucially, to disarticulate or silence alternative accounts. That is why, for cultural studies, culture is a site of struggle. At issue is the question of objectivity. Do the mass media represent the world accurately (or strive towards it) as they claim? Much depends on the response to this question, because upon its answer hangs the whole question not only of the objectivity and impartiality of news and documentary, but potentially of other genres as well. If, for example, soap operas or historical dramas do not depict what actually happens in family life or happened in the past, quite what are they doing? Among others, two arguments are immediately relevant. The first is the deceptiveness of the notion of representation itself. It is impossible to represent any event or action, material or immaterial, in its fullness at any particular moment in all possible frames of reference.9 Representing requires rigorous selection and articulation of particular elements, together with the suppression of others, while claiming to remain ‘faithful’ to the original. In short, representation involves selective transformation. Therefore it is impossible to represent something objectively.10 Claims 8

These quite different kinds of analyses stem from mid-Western American mass communications and British cultural studies respectively. The covert agenda of the former becomes evident when the close links of its founders to US government and intelligence are revealed, as is its dependence of funding from the media corporations that it is supposed ‘objectively’ to research. The latter emerges from broadly left of centre Gramscian and post-Marxist thinking, which was effectively banned under the New Order and remains marginalized so, not accidentally, depriving Indonesians of a rich vein of critical interrogation of their own society and polity.

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The argument has been developed by Nelson Goodman in Languages of Art.

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Consider news broadcasts, say, of a war. The two sides invariably represent the same video footage quite differently. The mass media also claim to be working in the interests of readers or viewers. Were this so, most media corporations would quickly be bankrupt. The art lies in interpellation: getting the viewer or reader to ‘identify’ with a particular representation of JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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to do otherwise are plain disingenuous. Second, as Roland Barthes argued, such accounts are fairly obviously a form of myth, that bear a tenuous relationship to actuality. And we need to establish in whose interests these myths are and whose world view they embody. Uncontroversially, these are mostly the myths of the dominant class, which in modern and modernizing societies is the bourgeoisie. This is not obvious because, unlike, say, feudal or patrimonial societies, where the ruling class proudly announced itself, the bourgeoisie ‘exnominates’ itself – that is refuses to be named, instead going to great effort – and that is a prime function of the endless output of the mass media – to make its particular accounts appear as natural and normal. Look critically at any broadcast on any channel on Indonesian television and how the process works rapidly becomes obvious. Let us now turn briefly to Balinese theatre, which is highly developed and driven by some brilliant and imaginative minds. What is more, theatre has long been a mode of social and political commentary. So, what does contemporary theatre have to say about the crisis facing Bali? Where are the genres that address the problems facing the poor? Where is the sympathetic recognition of the dilemmas facing young people? Where is the critique of the savage pursuit of wealth and money, which creates so many casualties? These are at best issues slipped in quietly during exchanges between servants in theatre. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Balinese theatre to Javanese and foreigners alike is the determination, bordering on the obsessive, with re-enacting the pre-colonial past and using this as the sole model to impose on audiences of whatever age themselves, which is created by the corporations themselves. So differences of ethnicity, religion, generation etc. are inexhaustible resources ready to be sold to gullible viewers.

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and class. Two points are worthy of note. First, the account of Bali’s past in broad terms is extraordinarily inaccurate. There is sufficient scholarship of the highest quality that has shown, as was the case elsewhere, that rulers vied with one another over how greedy, violent, cruel and uncaring they were to the populations they governed and exploited. Bali is not unique here. As elsewhere, there were traditional intellectuals, whose job it was to turn ruthless butchers into model monarchs. If babad (mostly written in fact in the twentieth century but retrojected) were the medium of their times, the mass media are now. So we need to interrogate how they represent the past with care and dispassionate, not partisan, scholarship. Put simply most theatrical and televisual accounts of Bali’s past are largely myth.11 Second, the past comes to have completely different significance when society has changed fundamentally and irrevocably, because the social function of appealing to the past is necessarily different. Régimes everywhere find it convenient to appeal to a noble past that they can engineer to justify and legitimate present inequalities and exploitation. As Balinese actors are skilled at showing, that does not mean that people cannot learn lessons from the past or from literature, which can be used to comment critically on contemporary actions and events. That is a vital part of culture as an argument. It is quite different from peddling myth as incontrovertible fact. This brings us to an interesting problem. Why should Balinese be so nostalgic about a largely imaginary past? One reason is that Bali has been catapulted in less than 11

Let me be quite clear. I am not singling out Balinese for criticism. Popularly disseminated histories very widely serve class and political interests. For example, most mass media representations of British history bear little, if any, relationship to what happened. As Paul Gilroy noted, the British obsession with the Second World War is not unconnected with the fact that in a long history of duplicity, colonial brutality and greed (just think of the Opium Wars), for once Britain had a moral case for its actions. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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a hundred years from a peasant society to a platform for global consumer capitalism with a massive redistribution of wealth and power. Society is being split into a managerial and professional middle class, which serves offshore capital, and a large proletariat, which sells more or less skilled labour at market price.12 When the future looks so uncertain, indeed grim, clinging to a past however fantastic is comforting. Rethinking the past in order to engage with the present is crucial for social continuity. However to ignore or overwrite the present creates grave dangers. Ostriches, which bury their heads in the sand when a predator approaches, tend to come to brutal ends. There are other reasons for the problem just noted, which require a brief excursion into cultural studies’ theory. Questioning the simple acceptance of social representations at face value, as natural and just the way things are, perhaps we should ask: what such representations do, what do they articulate? Articulation has two senses. It refers to how ideas or representations articulate with relations of power and production. It also refers to how these representations are themselves forged out of diverse elements into a seemingly coherent, natural and normal vision of the world. The mass media are the central means of disseminating such a vision. When an articulation becomes generally accepted to the point that people agree with and reproduce it, even against their own interests, we can call it hegemonic. The use of credit cards in many societies is an example, because people happily spend and so lock themselves into debt with large corporations – banks. In Bali, an obvious instance is the priority given to money, together with its strenuous denial through assertions about ‘culture’. 12

The reason that businesses are shifting from China and Vietnam to Indonesia is not out of concern for the widespread poverty, but because they can extract labour at even lower prices, which government presents as a triumph.

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Two points are worth noting here. First, the more powerful an articulation, the more it disarticulates other ways of understanding. In place of dialogue – in short, culture in a critical sense – you get a monologue, the repetition of a fixed articulation in different guises, which stifles debate and argument.13 This is, of course, very convenient for both political regimes and business, which is why media are mostly owned or controlled by corporations or people with political ambitions. Second, there can be no such thing as an objective or perfect representation. The question that this raises immediately is: why has Bali been subject to such intensive and sustained romanticization, however counterfactual?14 The answer is that this is inevitable, because almost all the mass media work for corporate capitalism and, as John Fiske put it ‘are the “unauthored” voice of the bourgeoisie.15 The new business rajas dissimulate their activities behind the smokescreen of myth. What are the implications for televising theatre in Bali? By now, it should be fairly clear. Whereas live performance before audiences makes possible social and political commentary and criticism, televising almost 13

For Indonesia more generally, this trend has been noted and caricatured by Butèt Kartaredjasa and Putu Wijaya in their development of an explicitly critical genre of Monolog.

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For example, Raffles remarked that Balinese, unlike Javanese, had little interest in the arts, preferring warfare and weapons. Indeed the history of Bali is marked by violence (the pre-colonial era, puputan, G30S, repression under Suharto, the widespread use of préman). Vickers has argued that the rebranding of Bali as paradise was closely linked to the Dutch need both to find a champion against Islam which they saw as threatening and to create a re-articulation to distract attention from the bad publicity that their conquest of Bali had created in the European media.

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State broadcasting might seem the exception and, at its best, public service broadcasting can be quite interesting and informative. However, Barthes’ point still holds. In modern and modernizing societies, the mass media provide a singularly bourgeois articulation of the world. This argument also indicates how it is possible to evade this closure. Peasant and local radio stations run by cooperatives in the interest of listeners, often with very smallscale investment, allow for other interests and representations. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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invariably castrates. That is why Nigel Barley, himself an anthropologist and one-time television presenter remarked: ‘Television is a content-free medium’. If Balinese have any doubt as to how far they are implicated in media capitalism, just consider the difficulty of getting first class theatre performances broadcast. Instead of paying such luminaries, local television channels widely require performers to pay to appear. This is capitalism gone mad. Mocks and destroys what it feeds on.16 If this analysis has any relevance, what can concerned people do about it? What is clear is that it is not easy, otherwise corporate capitalism would have been successfully challenged all over the world. The obvious problem is where are the intellectuals who are prepared to advance the critique of what is happening instead of colluding with it? Actors, who used to be among these intellectuals, cannot be expected to be critical scholars of the social sciences as well. That is not their job. It is the latter – the historians, anthropologists, sociologists, development studies’ experts, even scholars of literature – who have signally failed. Critical approaches are widely available in these disciplines and materials are abundant on the web. So it takes some determination to miss them. That said, Bali, with its theatre and television, presents some singular problems, which probably require cultural and media studies to further understanding. That said, the kind of capitalism to which Bali is subject is not simply going to roll over and submit. John Hartley argued that the purpose of media studies was what he called ‘intervention analysis’. It is not possible to counter the monologues in the mass media until people understand what is being done to them. 16

The original quote is from Shakespeare’s Othello (Act 3, scene 3) O beware, my lord, of jealousy;  It is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock  The meat it feeds on.

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In short, we have to challenge the closure around ‘culture’ and the endlessly aired but vacuous pseudo-arguments (monologues masquerading as dialogues). So much is relatively uncontroversial, except perhaps in Bali. The next step is far more difficult. Is our understanding of capitalism adequate to its twenty-first century forms? As Gilles Deleuze has argued, capitalism is unlike previous political formations and, say, Marxist arguments do not catch it fully. It is at once terribly tangible, yet extremely slippery and evasive. For this reason he designated it a ‘body without organs’. What is fascinating is that the term originates from the French scholar of theatre, Antonin Artaud, whose ideas were revolutionized by seeing Balinese theatre at the Paris Exposition of 1931. In some way, yet to be fathomed, Bali may lie at the heart of attempts to understand capitalism itself.


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Workplace and Home: Understanding the Sai Baba Movement in Bali as an Urban Phenomenon* Gde Dwitya Arief Metera** Abstract Since the transition to post-New Order Indonesia in 1998, new religious movements such as Sai Baba have become popular in Bali. In contrast with the New Order era when Sai Baba was under strict scrutiny, these groups are now warmly accepted by a far wider audience and especially from educated affluent urbanites. In this paper, I discuss several factors that make Sai Baba movement generally an urban phenomenon. I ask how change taking place in Bali regarding the economic and demographic context may have contributed to the people’s different mode of religious articulation. The economic transformation from agricultural economy to modern industrial economy in Bali has changed people’s occupations and forced urbanization. I argue that the transformation also creates two emerging cultural spaces of Workplace in the city and Home in the villages of origin. Workplace is where people are bound to modern disposition of time and Home is where people are tied to traditional disposition of time. These two cultural spaces determine people’s mode of religious articulation. As people move from their villages of origin to the city, they also adopt a new mode of religious articulation in an urban context. I suggest that to understand the emergence of new religions and new mode of religious articulation in Bali we have to look at specific transformations at the economic and demographic level. ____________ * This paper was presented at the 6th Singapore Graduate Forum on Southeast Asian Studies, Asia Research Institute, Singapore 13-15 July 2011. I thank Michael Feener and Levi McLaughlin for the encouraging comments during my presentation as well as Tim Bunnel and Maria Platt for suggestions and editing on the earlier draft of this paper. I would like also to thank Kay Mohlman for editing my English writing and the two anonymous reviewers of Jurnal Kajian Bali for the input. Any shortcomings are fully my responsibility. ** Gde Dwitya Arief Metera is an MA student at the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies, Gadjah Mada University. He is researching Sai Baba followers in Bali for his thesis on new Balinese religious identities titled “Religious Commuters: Sai Baba and the New Balinese Religious Identification”. He has a wide range of research interests including cultural transformation, Bali studies, popular culture as well as religion and the state in Indonesia. Currently he is an Asian Graduate Student fellow at the Asian Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Contact: [email protected]

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Workplace and Home: Understanding the Sai Baba Movement in Bali...

Keywords: economic transformation, Sai Baba movement, Balinese religious identity, cultural spaces

Introduction ecent studies on Balinese religion discuss the emergence of Agama Hindu as a new religion and the proliferation of new religious movements such as Sai Baba1. Leo Howe, an anthropologist working on Balinese religion, stated that the proliferation of Sai Baba followers in Bali is a result of the introduction of various Indian religious traditions to the island by its intellectuals. A recent observation of the Sai Baba movement will clearly show that this movement is growing more popular especially since the transition to post-New Order Indonesia in 1998. In contrast with the New Order era when Sai Baba was under strict scrutiny, these groups are now warmly accepted by a far wider audience and especially from educated affluent urbanites. The urban characteristic of Sai Baba followers is notable if we put it into perspective on current trends in Balinese religious life. According to Howe (2005) the critical questions posed by the Balinese today regarding current

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Howe, L. (2005). The Changing World of Bali: Religion, Society and Tourism. New York, Routledge. Howe argues that Agama Hindu , a form of modernized, state-sponsored Hindu which promotes ortodoxy, emerged as a response from Balinese intellectuals to fit state’s definition of religion in Indonesia by producing a rationalized and theological version of its traditional religion. It was done by importing teachings of a version of Indian Hinduism to Bali. Another work by McDaniel gives accounts on the role of Parisadha Hindu Dharma Indonesia (Hindu Council) in the emergence of Agama Hindu as some sort of a new religious movement. See further McDaniel, J. (2010). “Agama Hindu Dharma as a New Religious Movement: Hindu Dharma Recreated in the Image of Islam.” Nova Religio the Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 14(1): 93-111. These two studies are actually in continuity with the discussion regarding symptoms of transformation within Balinese religion from ortopraxy to ortodoxy started by Clifford Geertz in the sixties. See Geertz, C. (1964). ‘Internal Conversion’ in Contemporary Bali Malayan and Indonesian Studies presented to Sir Richard Winsted. J. B. R. Roolvink. Oxford, Oxford University Press, and Yamashita, Shinji (2003). Bali and Beyond: Explorations in the Anthropology of Tourism, NewYork, Bergahn Books. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Gde Dwitya Arief Metera

religious life center on the efficacy of their traditional ritual actions. Is the time and money spent on such rituals worth all the effort? High expenditure makes the poor even more financially disadvantaged, relative to their affluent fellow Balinese who might still be able to afford expensive rituals. Another issue that Howe points out is that as a consequence of the emergence of Agama Hindu and devotional movements such as Sai Baba, the financially burdensome adat as the traditional version of Hinduism is no longer the only existing religious system in Bali. As Howe rightly observed, the Balinese are currently living with these three competing religious systems and a compelling question is to see to which system the Balinese give their allegiance (Howe, 2005: 56). A cursory response might be that the less-fortunate Balinese would choose to harbor their allegiance to devotional movements such as Sai Baba which put less emphasis on expensive rituals. This incentive-based thinking does not explain much of the reality I discovered in Buleleng, one of the poorest regencies in Bali besides Karangasem, where followers of Sai Baba were mostly educated, affluent urbanites. The poor in Buleleng, most of them villagers, are still bound to their traditional adat traditions, and still manage to articulate their traditional religion in the most basic format called nista2. In term of demarcating these three religious systems; adat, Agama Hindu and Sai Baba, the Balinese are very likely divided along educational and geographical lines. There is also no direct correlation whereby the poor will prefer the less burdensome religious system such as Sai Baba. A few 2

The family shrines of the poor are made from bare trees. There are three level of religious and ritual practices in Bali. Utama, meaning the greatest way which is very grandeur and expensive; Madya, meaning the midle way which is moderate in scale; and Nista, meaning the bare minimum which is very humble in scale.

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questions to ask now are; why the followers of Sai Baba are mostly affluent urbanites? What specific condition that makes possible this allegiance to devotional religious system mostly found only in urban areas? This paper will argue that Sai Baba movement is generally urban phenomenon which made possible by the economic transformation from agricultural to modern economy. The changing of occupations in the new economy has created: 1) Migration, as people move from their villages of origin to the new workplace in the city, and 2) two emerging cultural spaces of Workplace in the city and Home in the village of origin. The Workplace as a cultural space brought with it a new logic of time. Adapting to this new logic of time, Balinese urbanites find it hard to maintain their Adat religion which still uses traditional Balinese

A Ganesha statue at the front yard of the Sai Centre in Panji. Photo: author’s archive JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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calendar. Strategically, they adopt a new mode of religious articulation in an urban context where Sai Baba movement is embraced due to its several features. I suggest that to understand the emergence of new religions and new mode of religious articulation in Bali we have to look at specific transformations at the economic and demographic level. Sai Baba Movement in Bali Sai Study Group is a congregation of followers of Sri Satya Sai Baba, an Indian guru born in Putthaparthi, India in 1926 and recently passed away in March 2011. Since childhood he is believed to have been performing miracles which meant that he gained a lot of followers. Nowadays, his followers have been spread all over the world with the establishment of 1,200 Satya Sai Baba centers in 126 countries3. This makes the Satya Sai movement a remarkable globalized phenomenon. The more so as its nature as a movement that does not come from the West as the center, but from a geographically marginal India makes it an alternative direction of globalization (Srinivas, 2010). The popularity of this movement also reaches Indonesia in which there are 92 Sai Centers in 9 coordinating areas4. Coordinating area VII which includes Bali, East Nusa Tenggara and West Nusa Tenggara has 36 centers, with 32 of 3

Satya Sai Organization’s website http://www.sathyasai.org/organize/ content.htm, accessed June 8, 2011

4

Coordinating area I includes Nort Sumatera, Aceh, Riau, and West Sumatra with 4 Sai centers, coordinating area II includes Jambi, Lampung, Bengkulu with 13 Sai centers, coordinating region III includes Jakarta, Banten and Western Java with 4 Sai centers, coordinating centre IV includes Central Java, Jogjakarta, Semarang, Surakarta with 4 Sai centers, coordinating area V includes Surabaya, Malang, Blitar, Banyuwangi and Jember with 10 Sai centers, coordinating area VI includes Palangkaraya and Kalimantan with 2 Sai centers, coordinating area VII includes Bali, East Nusa Tenggara and West Nusa Tenggara with 36 centers, coordinating area VIII includes South Sulawesi and Southeast Sulawesi with 5 Sai centers, coordinating area IX includes Central Sulawesi, North Sulawesi, Manado and Gorontalo with 15 Sai centers. Data taken from http://saicenterindonesia.blogspot.com accessed June 8, 2011

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them in Bali alone. This makes Bali the region with highest numbers of centers as well as followers. In Bali, there are approximately over 12,000 followers reported (Howe, 2005). Mostly the followers in Bali are the Hindus with a few Chinese members. The first Sai Baba Center was established in Denpasar in 1984 and recently in November 2010 another one was established in Panji village, Buleleng regency, North Bali, where I conducted my fieldwork. Looking at the characteristic of Sai Baba followers, an obvious feature of their profile is the high level of education, urban-based and non-agricultural job. My informants are high school teachers, university lecturer pursuing his PhD in religious studies, NGO staff, a very succesful enterpreneur who has been to Putthaparthi twice and university student at a prominent university in Java. Only an insignificant number of them are in low profile jobs. One informant told me that there are actually a few of them working as a parking valet and labourers. These findings are substantiated by Howe’s work (2001) who conducted fieldwork observing Sai Baba in Bali. As the followers education and occupation will be an important part in my discussion later, this information deserves a considerable quotation: Such educational qualifications provide entry into good jobs. Twenty eight of the fifthy-three describe themselves as civil servant, professionals, private officials or entrepreneurs, with six more being students. The others are artisans, white collar workers, ordinary employees, labourers and a few unemployed (Howe 2001:171).

All my informants and the Sai Baba followers in general, work in the city of Singaraja; the capital city of Buleleng regency, and reside there. Only a few of them live in the outskirts. This makes the urban characteristics of the followers more obvious. This characteristic is also highlighted by Howe: JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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It is rare for a village to have more than a few individuals or families who belong to the Sai Baba movement. Center of worship are situated in the main towns and attracts devotees from the surrounding villages. Given their isolation from likeminded people, devotees often find it hard to maintain their membership in the face of opposition and criticism from suspicious villagers (Howe, 2005:107)

Economic Transformation and New Occupations As mentioned above, the occupations of the Sai Baba followers are mostly professional, non-agricultural ones. New occupations is a characteristic of the economic transformation happened in Bali. The island known for its agrarian characteristic where most of the inhabitants are farmers and working in the field has been gradually shifting to modern economy. Comparing statistical data from the year 1950 with the latest one in 2006 shows the total area of wet rice fields has decreased to only half of the total area in the fifties5. No.

Region

Total Area (1948)

Total Area (2006)

1

Buleleng

34, 429

16,301

2

Jembrana

15,016

10,924

3

Tabanan

62, 198

25,903

4

Badung

47,732

13,708

5

Gianyar

39,022

19,505

6

Bangli

7,937

4,569

7

Klungkung

11,952

4,027

8

Karangasem

19,975

9,641

9

Denpasar*

n/a

1,491

Bali

238,261

106,069

* Denpasar was previously part of Badung before granted special status as a separated city. ** All data in Ha. The 1948 data is taken from Swellengrebel (1960:10), and the 2006 data is taken from Data Bali Membangun 2006. 5

Because rice in the main agricultural produce in Bali, for the purpose of this study only rice production is taken into consideration as agricultural commodity.

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A glimpse on Bali’s current regional GDP also mirrored the transition of its economy. While the early account of Bali’s regional GDP is not available, description of its economy mostly mention the income from agricultural sector where 75 percent of the population are employed (Swellengrebel, 1960: 9-11). Nowadays, the agricultural sector contributes only 20.3 percent of the whole regional GDP. The tertiary sector of tourism industry and services has surpassed it and is now the most contributive by its 29.3 and 16.2 percent share respectively6. Below is the table of Bali’s regional GDP 2003-2005. No. Type of enterprise agriculture, animal 1 husbandry

2003

2004

2005

5,666,835.82

6,011,427.77

6,887,173.89

176,964.87

196,471.79

225,485.55

3 Manufacture electricity, gas and 4 water supply

2,384,661.40

2,610,131.31

2,950,807.40

411,013.44

522,553.47

627,986.96

5 construction trade, hotel and 6 restaurant

1,051,150.30

1,132,719.56

1,368,305.14

7,439,345.43

8,452,944.75

9,968,548.41

7 transportation

2,930,517.78

3,275,453.25

4,022,667.63

1,725,224.41

1,969,622.09

2,399,259.06

4,382,130.74

4,815,272.68

5,496,233.48

26,167,941.90

28,989,595.67

33,946,467.52

forestry, fishing 2 mining and quarrying

and communication 8 finance, renting and company service 9 services total regional GDP

*figures are in million rupiahs **data taken from Data Bali Membangun 2

From the table we can see that the three top earners are those basically under the umbrella of tourism industry (trade, hotel and restaurant), services, and those under 6

Data extracted from Data Bali Membangun 2006a JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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the umbrella of traditional economy (agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry and fishing). However, if we divide the sources of regional GDP into traditional economy (agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry, fishing) and modern economy (mining, manufacture and the rest of it), we can clearly see how Bali has been shifting away from the traditional economy. The classification holds relevance since the traditional economy, mainly agriculture, has different disposition of time with the modern economy that will be discussed later. Following the transition to the new economy, there are changes in terms of people’s occupations. Prior to the economic development of Bali, which is directed toward tourism industry since the 1970, most of the occupations are farmers, builders, smiths, priests, puppeteers, and craftsmen (undagi)7. Nowadays in the diversified and modern economy occupations are varied, especially when it is noted that the high education of the Balinese youth foster their high expectations for jobs outside the agricultural sectors. Buleleng regency, where I conducted fieldwork, is one of the poverty stricken regencies in Bali besides Karangasem. In Buleleng, the agricultural sector is still significant with 44 percent of the active workforce working in agricultural sector, however the rest of 54 percent are well integrated into the modern economy. The composition are as follows: agriculture (44%), manufacturing (12%), construction (9%), trade (21%), communication (5%), finance (1%) and services (8%)8. This change is remarkable as it marks the movement away from occupations in agricultural sector. Of the Sai Baba followers that I interviewed, none was working in the agricultural sectors. Their occupations are 7

See Howe, (2005: 73) and Swellengrebel, (1960:11)

8

The data is of the year 2007 taken from Kabupaten Buleleng dalam Angka 2009

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mostly in business and education sectors. As an example, Pak Gusti one of my informants is a successful businessman with main income from multi level marketing. He makes quite a lot of money that enables him to travel abroad regularly. He has been doing dharsan, seeing Satya Sai Bhaba physically or paying a visit to Putthaparthi India, twice. Another one is Pak Suendra, a lecturer at a local university. He is now pursuing his PhD in religious studies. New Occupations and Migration While people’s occupations in the traditional economy is based in their villages of origin, the new occupations forced them to leave their villages of origin to a new places usually in the cities. A life story from my informant illustrates this process. Ibu Putu is a teacher at a local high school in Singaraja who I encountered during a bhajan, at a house of a devotee. She has been teaching mathematics for more than twenty years. Previously she has been posted in the city of Tabanan before moved to Singaraja in 1995. She is married to a lecturer and they have three sons. Ibu Putu was educated in a local university in Singaraja which made her leave her village of origin in southern Bali to study in north Bali. She met her husband during college and they both found jobs as teacher and lecturer respectively. Their career made them migrate from their village of origin and finally live in Singaraja for good. Even though they are still visiting their villages of origin for ritual purposes they are now registered as Singaraja citizens. This is not an exclusive story for Ibu Putu alone as all my informants have similar stories of moving from their village of origin to pursue their career in the cities. It is also not a new phenomenon as we can find generally rapid urbanization marked by migration of people from JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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their villages of origin to the cities. However, in the case of the Balinese this is notable since the migration and the new occupations introduce people to a new logic of time in the workplace, and a distance from village of origin and its traditional logic of time. Workplace and Home: Two Cultural Spaces Balinese have special relation with their village of origin. Anywhere in the world they eventually live, they cannot cut off the link with their family in the village. This is because the traditional Balinese religion puts so much emphasis on ancestor worship and death ritual. All this ritual generally takes place at the original core family house in the village. As the Balinese are members of several temples’ worships in their village, they are obligated to participate in any rituals take place there9. Another thing that keeps them tied is that the Balinese traditionally want to be buried and cremated at the village where they originally belong. They want to come back and be together with the ancestors in the afterlife. This means they have to maintain harmonious relationship with fellow villagers back home in order to be still considered members and thus entitled to use the graveyard. Life in the village of origin has its own unique atmosphere to the urban Balinese. The most obvious is that they speak Balinese more often if not entirely everytime with each other in the village. This is because they encounter people of primordial ties such as elders, close relatives and fellow villagers from similar temple groups. This familiar social relationship in the village also forces them to recognize the specific language strategies utilized to address different people from different castes. The Balinese use different classes of language to address different people. More 9

Geertz, idem p. 288

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refined Balinese to the higher caste, and middle vernacular Balinese to people of similar caste. This is in contrast with the situation in the city where they speak bahasa Indonesia more often than Balinese. However the most prominent feature of life in the village of origin is its rituals and the logic of time regulating the schedule of this rituals. Balinese calendar is different to the modern Gregorian calendar in several ways. First of all, the Balinese use two parallel systems namely the believed indigenous Pawukon system and the Sasih or Caka system. The Pawukon system consists of 6 months and 35 days each month, which makes 210 days per year. The year is not counted as it mirrors the non-linear nature of its time philosophy. There are 10 different kinds of weeks in this calendar, from one day week to ten days week in which each day has its own name. Most of Balinese temple festivals are scheduled based on this calendar. Two big holy days Galungan and Kuningan are also scheduled using this calendar. The Sasih or Caka system has something in common with the Gregorian calendar in that they have 12 months and they count each year. However, the Sasih system has invariably 30 days each month. This is because it is based on the lunar cycle of full moon and new moon. Each new month begin the day after the new moon. Several temple rituals are based on this calendar and also the silent day of Nyepi is the new year day of this calendar. As life in the village is colored by endless rituals, very often I hear an elderly woman talk to her married daughter about offerings that have to be made to this ritual event at this specific temple “Kliwon (a name of a day in Pawukon system) is coming in two days, have you prepared the offerings?” This kind of conversation illustrates much about what happens in everyday life of traditional Balinese. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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I would like to call this atmosphere in the village as a traditional sphere or Home. It is a cultural space in which the Balinese articulate their traditional identity marked by traditional disposition of time, Balinese language, and primordial ties. The situation in the city is different in several ways. First of all the Balinese encounter people from more varied backgrounds in the workplace and rarely those of the same primordial ties. As a consequence they use more bahasa Indonesia or alternately with Balinese language. This language use of bahasa Indonesia is strategic as it promotes equivalent position with each other. The second feature of life in the city is that the logic of time is dominantly the modern Gregorian one. This is true since the modern life marked by modern economy uses the logic of Gregorian calendar. Students, workers, teachers and almost everyone start activities in weekdays and have days off at the weekend. They also share the same national holidays with others regardless of religious affiliation. In terms of identification the Balinese see themselves as “Hindus” in contrast to fellow Muslims, Christians and other religions they mingle with in the city. This is in contrast with what happens in the village where everyone is almost certainly Hindu so the identification tends to be directed towards clan, temple congregations and castes. This is to say that in the city life the Balinese adopt a modern articulation of themselves, including in religious life. They tend to identify themselves as Hindus and not by specific clan in encountering more people from diverse background in the workplace. I would like to call this atmosphere in the city as modern sphere of Workplace. It is a cultural space in which the Balinese articulate their modern identity marked by modern disposition of time, involvement in modern economy, bahasa Indonesia as a national language, and non88



primordial ties. The urban Balinese immerse themselves in these two cultural spaces while the agricultural villagers are relatively not very much exposed to the Workplace as a cultural space as they are still a part of agricultural economy. Life within these two cultural spaces has its own challenges which the urban Balinese found very much difficult and influences their mode of religious articulation. The challenges mainly come from the different logic of times in those two cultural spaces. Arising Problems: Juggling between Work and Rituals As has been mentioned above the logic of time in the traditional sphere is very much different from the modern one. The traditional calendar of Pawukon is used to schedule temple festivals and all the rituals in the village. This scheduling then collided with the workdays disposition of Balinese urbanites which uses modern calendar in the workplace. As a consequence the Balinese urbanites almost always cannot participate in the rituals in the village of origin. This is a dilemma as most of them want to participate in order to keep harmonious social and religious relationships with the fellow villagers and ancestors spirit. However, leaving their work will definitely jeopardize their career and in most cases their income. A Sai Baba follower that I interviewed, a journalist named Mustika, says: Let us imagine, if we always leave our work for attending the temple festival, it means we miss our income for a day. This is serious for those who make a living from opening a shop or as construction workers. And the temple festivals are many, should we leave our work frequently? No wonder there are no one who wants to employ the Balinese. Exactly because we have too many holidays! JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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An observation on a Balinese household wall calendar will give a good illustration. A Balinese household wall calendar is different from other calendars as it has all the sytems that the Balinese recognize put together in the printed paper. So they have Gregorian, Pawukon, Caka and even Chinese one. The calendar will tell the Balinese when a temple ritual will be carried out as in each days there is information on the Pawukon feature of the day. However, most likely those temple festivals happen during weekdays when the color of the day is black, meaning workdays. Most of the day that colored red, meaning holidays, are national holidays and there is only one Balinese national holidays that is the Caka new year. This means the urban Balinese need to choose between going to work or skip a day to participate in the temple ritual.

Balinese calender (photos: author’s archive)

The inability to participate in rituals has been a source for problems to the urban Balinese. It might be a trigger for social conflict between fellow villagers which has been discussed a lot in studies on Balinese traditional conflict or 90



kasus adat. Those who can not participate are risking becoming socially ostracized by their fellow villagers in the village of origin and might be denied access to the village graveyard. This anxiety of being socially ostracized is a perpetual theme arising in my interviews when the discussion touches upon difficulties of not being able to participate in the rituals in the village of origin. An interview with pak Made, a lecturer, tells me a lot about this anxiety. There was once my fellow lecturer passed away and his family had the death ritual carried out in his village. During his life he was a prominent figure and he contributed a lot financially to his village in order to compensate for his absence during ceremonies. However still he was less respected in his own village by his fellow villagers. It can be seen from the fact that the family need to pay people to shower his dead body because people from the village hesitate to do that. Shame to us that we treat our fellow Balinese like that. Just because he is unable to participate in the village ceremonies.

Modern Disposition and Religious Tolerance in Sai Baba This situation of difficulties maintaining the traditional Adat religion in the village of origin forces the Balinese to adopt a new mode of religious articulation. They seek for a simplified version of religion that fits their modern disposition. This is also a theme that appears during my interview with my informants. They seem to talk about the financial burden of the ritual, but given their affluent financial status, they actually express their puzzlement why rituals should be that meticuluously impractical. After all, if they still follow the logic of their traditional counterparts, carrying out an expensive ritual is actually a theatrical show to express status. But it is very unlikely, as they are actually very modern and educated. An interview with pak Made JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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The hall of the Sai Baba center in Panji where they usually carry out bhajan. Photo: author’s archive

A follower preparing the hall with equipment before bhajan. Photo: author’s arch

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Followers are gathering to have a discussion after bhajan at the Sai Centre in Panji. Photo: author’s archive

An announcement posted at the Sai Baba centre about their coming agenda. Photo: author’s archive


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the lecturer give me the following information on this nontraditionalist perspective: The traditionalist still want to use a lot of banten (offerings) with the argument to preserve culture. They don’t accept the fact that Bali has already imported all the resources to make banten like fruits, palm leaves and coconut. Bali is no longer able to provide all this resources in carrying out rituals. After all the banten is actually symbols that can be substituted by mantras (verses). For those who can perform mantras they don’t need banten.

This need of new mode of religious articulation, I suggest, draws the Sai Baba followers to embrace the movement as it has specific features that fit their need. Sai Baba movement has a very simple ritual of bhajan which is carried out every Thursday evening10. This schedule of doing bhajan every Thursday evening is important because it is aligned with the modern disposition of time. It is regularly carried out in the evening after work hours and it is not compulsory as the members can do bhajan at home. Also there is no sanction of being ostracized if a member cannot attend. It is flexible in nature. This simplicity of ritual 10

In Singaraja, the center is located in Panji village, an outskirt to the west of the city. The Sai center in Panji village was formally inaugurated on the 84th birthday of Satya Sai Baba on November 23, 2010. The approximately 5 acre land where the center is build is a donation from a local sympathizer who happened to be an influential politician named Rai Yusa. The center itself is moderate in term of its two storey construction. The hall to do bhajan, a singing ritual to worship Sai Baba, is upstairs while the first floor is a multifunctional room for the members. Outside the building at the yard is a statue of Ganesha and a Padmasana shrine. Members come every Thursday evening to do bhajan. According to my informant, there are aproximately 70 to 100 devotees come every Thursday. Once during my fieldwork, I counted the small mattress on which the devotees sit during bhajan and it counts up to around 73. Besides the center which devotees call Sai Study Group (SSG) there are also small congregations at devotees’ home consisted around 5-7 devotees per group which they call Sai Devotional Groups (SDG). Members coming every Thursday to an SDG is around 5-7. There is also no strict dress code to come to do bhajan quite different with traditional Balinese custom which uses specific dress code.

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is a strong feature that appeals to the urban Balinese besides also the religious tolerance that Sai Baba promotes The religious tolerance can be seen from its inclusive teaching. Its inclusive teachings make Satya Sai movement a rather open organization which is easy to join with. Followers come from every religions as Satya Sai’s teaching does not offer a new teology which might replace his followers’ original one. Instead Satya Sai enforces the idea of oneness and demands his followers to ignore differences between religions. In his own words: The main objectives of the Satya Sai Organization...is to help you organize the divinity inherent in you. So your duty is to emphasize the One, to experience the One in all your do (sic!) or speak. Do not give importance to differences of religion, sect, status or color. Have the feeling of oneness permeate all your acts. Only those who do so have a place in this Organization; the rest can withdraw (Satya Sai Speaks IX, 35, 187-88).11

There is also no commitment to always participate as members come and go as they like. They can come to enjoy the religious atmosphere during bhajan and not come the week after. Another important thing is that the members are suggested to help each other who have difficulties. At the end of each bhajan there is usually a notification and news about members. The news can be good news or bad news in which there are members who happen to get accident etc. Other members are encouraged to give help as they feel like and according to their ability. All these features of the movement which promotes religious tolerance, help each others who find difficulties, modern disposition of time in scheduling events, and 11

Via Satya Sai Organization’s website http://www.sathyasai.org/organize/ content.htm, accessed June 8 2011 JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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simplified rituals are exactly what the urban balinese need as their new mode of religious articulation in city context. The religious tolerance is important as the urban Balinese are anxious about their fellow villagers that being intolerant to them who cannot participate in village rituals. Helping each others and modern disposition of time are the demand of life in the city context. While simplified ritual is the perspective they adopt as a modern and educated who understand religion closely to its great tradition namely the Vedas. Conclusion The economic transformation from agricultural to the modern economy has made the Balinese change their traditional occupations and leave their village of origins to the cities. The migration and change of occupation introduce them to a more dominant logic of time in the workplace and city context. This new logic of time makes them difficult to participate in the traditional rituals taking place in their village of origin. However, the Balinese still want to maintain their relationship with the village of origin. This is true because of the obligation of ancestral worship and their need to be buried at home. As a consequence they are anxious about their situation and longing for a mode of religious articulation that fit their modern disposition. Sai Baba movement with its simplified rituals, religious tolerance, and modern disposition of time appeals strongly to be embraced as a shelter and a new mode of religious articulation. Urban characteristics of the Sai Baba followers in Bali has been much overlooked by the previous study conducted by Howe (2001, 2005). Observation on Sai Baba followers tend to look at the relationship among followers which is non-hierarchical. This is so since the perspective being 96



used is the one that tries to understand Sai Baba followers in light of perpetual theme of caste antagonism in Bali. The theme of hierarchies in Balinese religion and religious life is a classic discussion that has been started since the early studies by the philologist and ethnologist. The researcher will be baffled by the fact that Sai Baba followers are not exclusively commoners only as there are also members from the high castes. This paper suggests that to understand the new mode of religious articulation of the Balinese we need to look at the changes happening at the level of material infrastructure. The transformation from agricultural economy to industrial economy has changed also spatial dimension of social landscape in Bali. People are divided into those migrating to the city and involved in the modern industrial economy and those staying in the village and involved in the traditional economy. Involvement in different kind of economies affect the people’s disposition of time which in turn change their cultural articulation. In this light we see change take places from economy to space and finally to cultural identity.

Bibliography Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah. Pemerintah Provinsi Bali (2006). Data Bali Membangun BPS, Statistic of Buleleng Regency (2009). Buleleng Regency in Figures Geertz, C. (1964). ‘Internal Conversion’ in Contemporary Bali Malayan and Indonesian Studies presented to Sir Richard Winsted. J. B. R. Roolvink. Oxford,:Oxford University Press Howe, Leo (2001). Hinduism and Hierarchy in Bali. Oxford: James Currey Howe, Leo. (2005). The Changing World of Bali: Religion, Society and Tourism. New York: Routledge. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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McDaniel, J. (2010). “Agama Hindu Dharma as a New Religious Movement: Hindu Dharma Recreated in the Image of Islam”, Nova Religio the Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 14(1): 93-111 Srinivas, Tulasi (2010). Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalization and Religious Pluralism Through the Satya Sai Movement. New York: Columbia University Press. Swellengrebel J. et al (eds). (1960). Bali: Studies in Life, Thought and Ritual. The Hague and Bandung: W. van Hoeve Ltd Yamashita, Shinji (2003). Bali and Beyond: Explorations in the Anthropology of Tourism. NewYork: Bergahn Books HYPERLINK “http://www.sathyasai.org/organize/content. htm”http://www.sathyasai.org/organize/content.htm, accessed June 8 2011 HYPERLINK “http://saicenterindonesia.blogspot.com”http:// saicenterindonesia.blogspot.com accessed June 8, 2011

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’Sarad-Jatah’: Representasi Sosio-Religius pada Budaya Pangan di Bali* Nazrina Zuryani** Abstract Sarad and jatah are offerings presented during big temple ceremonies (odalan), when the gods come down for visits. One of the favorite days for such ceremonies falls on the full moon of the 10th month of the Balinese lunar-solar (Saka) calendar. The sarad and jatah offerings are visual representations of the world in its Hindu-Balinese version. This representation follows the depiction of the world given in the story of the Churning of the Milky Sea (Mandara Giri) such as told in the Old-Javanese text Adiparwa. The sarad and jatah represent the dialectics of the positive and the negative found in Hinduismm (rwa bhinneda), but their vertical structure symbolizes the symbolic tripartition (Tri Loka) of the world into Bhur Loka, Bhwah Loka and Swah Loka. This article is based on on the spot observation and in-depth interviews held at the three locations of temples: Besakih, Ulun Batur and Taro. Apart from a study of meaning of the two offerings, this article expounds the physical (food) and social processses involved in their making. From the point of view of the writer, who is a non-Balinese, this study of sarad and jatah is also a means of her own character-building in the nation-building context of multi-ethnic Indonesia. Key words: Sarad and jatah, Rwa bhinneda, Tri Loka, Ayahan, food product, character building.

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* Ditulis berdasarkan orasi ilmiah yang disampaikan pada kesempatan Dies Natalis Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha Singaraja, 11 Mei 2011. ** Nazrina Zuryani adalah dosen Sosiologi Fakultas Ilmu Sosial dan Ilmu Politik Universitas Udayana. Alumnus IKIP Negeri Jakarta tahun 1990 ini pindah ke Bali untuk membuka program studi PKK/Tata Boga di FKIP Universitas Udayana yang kelak menjadi Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha. Dia menyelesaikan studi Master dalam bidang Demografi Australian National University (ANU) 1996 dan meraih PhD dari The University of New Castle tahun 2007 dengan disertasi ‘Empowerment and Development Initiatives: Two villages from the European Union Project in North Bali”. Tahun 2006 menulis di jurnal RIMA (Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs) mengenai kendala pemberdayaan perempuan desa di lokasi proyek Uni Eropa. Topik risetnya adalah masalah gender, makanan, dan kesehatan. Email: [email protected] JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Pendahuluan ulisan ini adalah kajian sosio-antropologis atas sarana upacara Bali (banten) yang paling besar nan indah, yaitu saradpulagembal(kadang dibaca: Sarad Pregembal atau Puragembal) dan jatah. Kedua banten tersebut dikaji dari beberapa sudut: sebagai sistem makna, melalui simbolsimbol yang dikandungnya, sebagai bangunan fisikmelalui unsur tata boga yang merupakan bagian sosio-religius budaya pangan dengan cerita sastra sebagai materi dari simbol-simbol tersebut. Sebagai lokus kerja sama ritual masyarakat agraris Bali hingga pada kajian penulis dalam mempelajari agama lain sebagai unsur dari pendidikan karakter. Kajian banten sarad dan jatah ini dilakukan dengan mengambil contoh pada upacara odalan agungdi beberapa pura besara di Bali, Pura Dalem Ubud, Pura Gunung Raung di Taro, Pura Ulun Danu Batur dan Pura Besakih, pada kesempatan hari purnama bulan kesepuluh dalam kalender Saka Bali1 tahun Masehi 2011. Metode yang dipakai adalah metode observasi dan wawancara mendalam. Paparanatas sarad dan dibagi dalam empat sub bahasan: landasan simbolis, termasuk di dalamnya landasan mitologis dengan deskripsi fisik terkait serta makna filsafatnya; deskripsi sebagaiproduk tata boga; segi sosial (kerja ayahan) dengan menyangkut religi dan ritual sebagai pembinaan karakter dalam ngayah dengan upaya mempelajari agama lain sebagai pendidikan karakter. Akan ditutup dengan komentar akhir yang juga menyangkut pendidikan karakter, tetapi uraian kali ini dilihat dari sudut kebangsaan dan lintas-budaya.

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Upacara Betara Turun Kabeh (turunnya semua unsur ke-Tuhan-an)

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Landasan Simbolis dan Filsafat Agama Hindu-Bali: Agama Kaya Simbol Agama Hindu-Dharma di dalam ragam Balinya terkenal karena perhatian istimewa yang diberikan kepada ortopraksi, atau ritual (Geertz: 1973), dibandingkan dengan ortodoksi, yaitu teori tertulis. Prinsip-prinsip utama agama itu kerap diberikan bentuk simbolis visual. Simbol-simbol terlihat pada isi dan bentuk sesajen sebagai sarana upacaraupacara agama. Sesajen itu pada umumnya melambangkan dewa-dewadan butha-buthayang menjadi penguasa kekuatankekuatan alam semesta, yaitu Bhwana Agungalias ke-Tuhanan di dalam pengertian panteistik. Misalnya, warna-warna dari banten jotan(dengan dupa, bunga, air, nasi atau unsur makanan lainnya) yang sehari-hari dihaturkan oleh penduduk di tempat tertentu pada rumahnya tiada lain merupakan lambang dari Panca Dewata, yaitu keempat penguasa mata angin (Brahma, Wisnu, Iswara, Mahadewa) ditambah Siwa sebagai penunggal di tengah. Sarad dan jatah, seperti halnya sesajen lainnya, memaparkan secara visual konsepsi Bali tentang agama. Yang dilambangkan tiada lain adalah alam semesta alias Bhwana Agung. Sarad di satu pihak dan jatah di lain pihak merupakan dua sisi dari suatu kesatuan bipolar kosmik seluruh unsur dunia. Saradpulagembal, yang terbuat dari adonan beras, melambangkan kekuatan-kekuatan positif dari Bhwana Agung, sedangkan jatah, yang secara dominan terbuat dari daging dan lemak babi, menyiratkan kekuatan negatifnya.2Hal ini selaras dengan prinsip rwabhinneda, yaitu dialektika unsur positif dan/atau negatif—sekala (dunia nyata)/niskala (dunia tak nyata), purusa (jantan/male)/pradana (betina/female), dan lain-lain—yang merupakan prinsip dasar filsafat religius Bali. Secara vertikal, Sarad dan sate 2

Klian I Wayan Wianda, Mpu Laneng, Nyoman Kintami, Lorde JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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jatah melambangkan struktur tripartit dari dunia, Triloka, yaitu Bhur Loka, Bhwah Loka, Swah Loka. Kedua jenis sarana upakara ini dibuat pada kesempatan upacara pura tingkat utama dan bentuknya cenderung semakin membesar.3 Deskripsi Fisik ‘Sarad’ dan ‘Jatah’ Apa itu sarad dan Jatah secara nyata, dan bagaimana unsur-unsurdi atas dilambangkan secara kongkret. Untuk itu, lihatlah kedua foto di bawah ini.

Gambar No. 1. SaradPulagembal-Lokasi: Pura Agung Taro- Jatah

Apa yang digambarkan pada dua sesajen sarad dan jatah adalah sebagai berikut: Sarad di kiri, penuh warna-warni dan terbuat dari jajan tepung beras yang dibentuk, digorengyang melambangkan unsur positif dari Rwabhinneda. 3

Wawancara: Kertiyasa, 2011.

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Jatahdi kanan, berwarna lebih gelap, dan terbuat dari daging, melambangkan unsur negatif dari rwabhinneda. Lebih jauh, perhatikan bahwa masing masing bangunan kue atau jajan dan daging mempunyai bentuk yang spesifik. Bentuk itu tidak ditentukan secara kebetulan:melebar ke bawah dan menjulang keatas secara menyempit, meruncing. Tepat seperti suatu gunung. Terlihat sebagai isi dari masing-masing bangunan Sarad dan Jatah aneka komponen dekoratif. Yang mencolok di antaranya adalah muka suatu binatang yang mirip kurakura, dua naga, serta aneka figur yang mengerikan. Apakah figur itu? Landasan Mitologis dan Ajarannya Baik saradmaupun sate tungguh mengacu pada mitos awal pembentukan dunia di dalam mitologi Hindu, mulai dari Brahmanda –yaitu telor kosmis awal—ke awang-awung (kekacauan awal), hingga terbentuknya Mandara Giri yang mengambang di tengah Lautan Awal. Mitos awal itu berasal dari India dan, menyusul proses historis yang panjang, hingga kini menjadi bagian dari sistem simbol dasar penganut agama Hindu-Dharma di Bali. Terdapat aneka versinya, yang paling kuno di Indonesia berasal dari kitab Adiparwa, salah satu naskah prosa berbahasa Jawa Kuna (kawi) dari abad ke- 10 (Widyamanta, 1958). Kitab Adiparwa mengisahkan peristiwa ”Pemuteran Mandara Giri”, yang mengangkat cerita Gunung Kosmis dan asal-muasal amerta atau air suci kehidupanabadi yang dihasilkannya. Narasi Adiparwa adalah yang diambil dari saduran Couteau (1989) atas kitab Adiparwa (terjemahan dari bahasa Inggris) adalah sebagai berikut:


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Cerita itu terjadi di awal terjadinya dunia, ketika para dewa bertarung dengan para detya untuk menentukan kelompok apa akan menguasai amerta, yaitu air kehidupan abadi: Para dewa dan detya tengah berdiskusi tentang yang paling baik untuk mendapatkan air amerta itu ketika Batara Wisnu berkata: “Hey kamu, dewa dan raksasa, bila memang menginginkan air kehidupan, cobalah terkeburnya lautan susu (Ksira Arnawa), sebab lautan itu tempat amerta. Maka aduklah lautan susu itu”. Anjuran Wisnu itu mereka ikuti. Pertama mereka mereka menyuruh naga Anantaboga untuk mencabut Gunung Mandara Giri dan menempatkannya di tengah lautan susu, tepat di punggung kura-kura raksasa Bedawang Nala, penjelmaan lalu Batara Wisnu. Jadi Gunung itu tidak bisa tenggelam. Gunung itulah yang menjadi alat pengaduk lautan susu. Kemudia mereka meminta Naga naga Basuki untuk menjadi tali pemutar gunung Mandara Giri untuk mengaduk lautan susu. Untuk itu dia dibelitkan pada lereng gunung itu. Lalu para batara ditempatkan di ujung yang satu dan para detya di ujung yang lain, sementara Batara Indra duduk di puncak agar kestabilan terjaga. Lalu kedua pihak tarik-menarik hingga tergoncang lautan susu di dalam suasana gemuruh yang dasyat bagaikan kiamat. Lalu dari pusat putaran air susu muncullah Dewi Sri, Dewi Laksmi dan kuda Ucaiswara dan hiasan dunia Kasturbamani. Ketika keluar mereka terjatuh di pihak para dewa. Kemudian keluarlah air kehidupan (amerta) dari putaran lautan susu itu, tetapi kali ini terjatuh di pihak para detya. Melihat itu, Batara Wisnu bersiasat. Dia merubah dirinya menjadi gadis cantik. Gadis cantik ini lalu merayu para deitya untuk mempercayakan air suci kepadanya. Ketika telah mendapatkan air suci kehidupan, larilah dan berubahlah dirinya kembali menjadi Batara Wisnu. Pecahlah perang antara para batara dan deitya sejak saat itu.

Seperti sudah dikatakan di atas, sejatinya cerita pemuteran Mandara Giri ini adalah cara simbolis untuk memaparkan konsep panteistis agama Hindu-Bali. Gunung 104



sebagai kesatuan melambangkan dunia berikut segala isinya, material (deitya, butha), maupun spiritual (dewa). Terdapat sisi yang ”terang” alias positif (sarad) maupun sisi yang gelap alias negatif (jatah). Bagian bawah gunung kosmis Mandara Giri ini melambangkan elemen-elemen material, sedangkan unsur atas melambangkan elemenelemen spiritual, dan unsur tengah merupakan dunia hunian manusia. Ketiga bagian itu membentuk apa yang disebut sebagai Tri Mandala atau Tri Loka (bhur, bhwah, swah) yang dikaitkan dengan nilai nista, madya dan utama. Dinamika dan dialektika kosmik (makro dan mikro) nampak dengan jelas dalam narasi mitologis di atas. Artinya semua unsur saling berpasang-pasangan. Ada tarik menarik antara kekuatan positif dan negatif, bagaimana kekuatan para dewa/batara (ke-Tuhan-an) bertarung secara dialektik dengan kekuatan para deitya (keraksasaan) dan butha (kejailiahan). Ada juga lambang isi dunia dalam segala kompleksitasnya: Garuda yang menghancurkan naga (nafsu duniawi) dalam pencarian amerta (air suci kehidupan); Bhoma, anak dari Wisnu dan Pertiwi yang dipakai untuk menghancurkan kekuatan negatif adalah dengan perwujudan babi [oleh sebab itu sarana upacara Sarad (kue warna-warni) didampingi oleh jatah (sate tungguh yang kesemuanya berasal dari daging babi)]. Kura-kura besar yang hidup hingga ratusan tahun sebagai penyangga bumi, adanya karang bentulu(mirip wajah burung atau barong) yang berhiaskan bunga dan tanaman. Dari sudut ajaran religius Hindu, cerita pemuteran Mandara Girimelambangkan juga bagaimana upaya kita mencapai kehidupan abadi (amerta) sebagai hasil dari pertarungan antara kekuatan positif dan negatif di dalam diri kita sebagai mikrokosmos(Bhwana Alit) yang hendaknya berakhir dengan peleburan (moksa) di dalam makrokosmos (Bhwana Agung). Harus dicatat bahwa JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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konsep gunung kosmis ini, selain diejawantahkan dalam bentuk sarad dan jatah, juga merupakan landasan dari pura kecil(pelinggihpadmasana)yang boleh dikata identik dengan sarad (lihat ilustrasi).

Gambar No. 2. Lukisan karya I Gusti Nyoman Darta 2012, Keindahan Sarad dan Jatah

Isi Banten: Lambang dan Maknanya Sarad Mari kita mengkaji lebih jauh isi dari sarad serta makna dari komponen-komponennya. Komponen tersebut didistribusikan sesuai dengan posisi di dalam Tri Loka yakni dari bawah, ke tengah dan ke atas dengan pembagiannya adalah sebagai berikut: Bagian paling bawah, yang disebut Bhur Loka, mengandung lambang-lambang dari unsur-unsur dasar dunia, kura-kura dan naga. -Kura-kura, yang dikenal di Bali sebagai Bedawang Nala, melambangkan dasar bumi, yaitu ”api magma” (Putra tt: 24), sebagai unsur api. Di dalam mitologi, sebagaimana dipaparkan dalam Adiparwa (Widyatmanta 1958:44), dia 106



dianggap sebagai ”penjelmaan Batara Wisnu”. -Naga-naga melambangkan unsur dasar dari bumi. “Naga Anantaboga melambangkan unsur kulit bumi dan Naga Basuki unsur air dan lautan” (Putra tt:24). Terdapat naga ketiga, naga Taksaka, yang melambangkan unsur udara, tetapi naga itu tidak biasa diberikan wujud pada sesajen Sarad dan Jatah. Ketiga naga tersebut dibicarakan pada beberapa kesempatan di dalam cerita pemuteran Mandara Giri versi Adiparwa (Widyatmanta 1958). Menurut Putra (Putra tt: 24), “ketiga naga tersebut adalah hasil pertemuan ketiga dewa Trimurti Brahma, Wisnu dan Siwa dengan masing masing mewakili tanah, air dan udara”. Pada bagian tengah (Bwah Loka), terlihat manusia dan elemen-elemen dunia yang hidup: tumbuh-tumbuhan, binatang dan manusia. Pada kebanyakan Saradyang dibuat, hanya terdapat figur Bhoma dan Garuda sebagai wakil dunia antara, tetapi ada juga sarad yang mengandung figur-figur manusia. Kerap juga terdapat dekorasi karang-karang yang melambangkan mahkluk alam –karang asti (gajah), karang wurung, karang bentulu, karang sae, dan lain-lain). -Bhoma4 melambangkan unsur utama dunia hunian manusia, yaitu flora. Di dalam cerita klasik Linggodbawa, Wisnu and Brahma masing-masing mengaku pencipta alam semesta. Tiba-tiba muncullah lingga yang ujungnya ke atas menembus langit dan ujungnya ke bawah menembus bumi. Datanglah Siwa yang meminta Brahma agar mencari ujung Lingga ke atas dan meminta Wisnu agar mencari ujung Lingga yang ke bawah. Kedua dewa tersebut tidak berhasil menemui kedua ujung itu. Lalu Siwa menjelaskan bahwa beliau bertiga itu adalah manifestasi dari Tuhan Yang Maha 4

Cerita gugurnya Bhoma dijadikan topik dari Kekawin Bhomantaka yang antara lain dikaji oleh Zoetmulder (1974). JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Esa dalam fungsi yang berbeda-beda. Bhoma dikaitkan dengan mitos ini oleh karena, ketika Wisnu mencari ujung bawah lingga, dia mempenetrasi Pertiwi/Bumi, maka lahirnya Bhoma sebagai hasil pertemuan air (Wisnu) dan Bumi. -Garuda melambangkan makhluk yang terbang. Sebagaimana dikisahkan secara panjang lebar di dalam Adiparwa (Widyatmanta 1958:48-63). Secara singkat, Garuda, di dalam upayanya untuk mencari air suci amerta, harus menaklukan dan membunuh aneka makhluk yang mengerikan –terutama ular, gajah dan kura-kura—sebelum mencapai tujuannya dan mendapatkan amerta. Dia kemudian diminta oleh Wisnu untuk menjadi kendaraannya. Cerita itu melambangkan bahwa kehidupan abadi hanya dapat dicapai bila kita mampu mengalahkan nafsu duniawi. Bagian paling atas sarad adalah tempat yang dihuni para dewa (Swah Loka)dengan berbagai figur lambangnya. Kadang-kadang terdapat figur-figur yang melambangkan Trimurti yaitu Brahma, Wisnu dan Siwa, atau figur tunggal yang melambangkan Indra (raja para dewa) atau Sang Hyang Tunggal alias Sang Hyang Widhi. Jatah Konsepsi umum sate jatah tidak beda dengan sarad, yaitu sama-sama melambangkan isi dunia. Banyak di antara simbol yang diberikan wujud adalah sama dengan Sarad yaitu –Bedawang Nala, Naga-naga, Garuda, Bhoma. Tetapi ciri khasnya adalah senjata-senjata para dewa penguasa arah mata angin, yang terbuat dari aneka olahan daging serta lemak. Babi adalah bahan utama, tetapi dapat juga terbuat dari daging binatang suci lainnya (kecuali sapi) yaitu: kerbau, itik, kambing atau penyu.5 5

Wawancara dengan Gusti Nyoman Darta, tgl 14 Maret 2011.

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Jadi, seperti halnya sarad, Jatah memberikan wujud simbolis pada panteisme tradisional Hindu-Bali. Sarad dan Jatah sebagai Tata Boga Gambar-gambar dibawah ini mendeskripsikan saran upacara yang mendampingisarad dan jatah: -Gambar No 3 memberikan contoh sarad pada dua pura besar di Bali: yaitu Pura Ulun Danu Batur di Kintamani dan Pura Besakih. -Gambar No 4 merupakan gambar dari sajen-sajen yang dibuat sebagai pendamping Sarad danbernama wowohan (buah-buahan)yaitupalabungkah dan palagantung. -Gambar No 5 memperlihatkan persiapan pembuatan Saradoleh masyarakat desa Pakraman Ubud pada hari raya “Betara Turun Kabeh” -Gambar No 6 adalah situasi di Pura Dalam Ubud Tengah pada waktu masyarakat mempersiapkan sarad dan sajen pendamping yang akan dipersembahkan pada upacara odalan besar di Pura Dalam Gunung Raung di desa Pakraman Taro Kaja.

Gambar No. 3. Sarad Pulagembal di Pura Ulun Danu Batur dan di Pura Besakih JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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*Sarad (gambar No 3) terbuat dari bahan adonan beras, menyerupai kerupuk beras (rice cake) yang dibentuk, diwarnai, digoreng dan disusun sesuai urutan, fungsi dan perannya dalam merepresentasikan simbol. Beberapa orang ahli ukir (undagi) mendisain setiap bagian dengan mal (cetakan kertas). Di dalam pembuatan yang pertama dikerjakan adalah kerangka dasar dari bambu; kemudian setiap hari selama 5 hari berturut-turut, sekitar 20 hingga 30 orang laki-laki dan perempuan bekerja menyiapkan memasang unsur konstruksi sarana upacara dalam bentuk makanan ini. Kata penglingsir Pura Ubud, sarad pulagembal yang kita kenal ini adalah suatu fenomena relatif baru. Pada tahuntahun sebelum Eka Dasa Rudra, bentuk saradmasih kecilkecil (sebesar tampah/tempeh). Tetapi sejak empat puluh tahun ada kecenderungan untuk membuatnya semakin besar dan cantik. Hal ini kerap membebani masyarakat dan bahkan menggugah seorang salah satu penglingsir dari Puri Ubud untuk mempertanyakan kecendrungan penyajian sarana upakara yang semakin megah dan mahal. Wowohanpalabungkah dan pala gantung (gambar No 4), yang menampilkan kepala barong, terbuat dari aneka hasil bumi(terutama umbi-umbian dan buah). Wowohan digantungkan atau disusun sedemikian rupa hingga membentuk seekor barong.

Gambar No. 4 - Lokasi Pura Ulun Danu Batur-Contoh Wowohan: Pala Gantung dan Pala Bungkah

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Gambar No. 5. Pembuatan Sarad di Pura Dalem Ubud untuk ayahan di Pura Gunung Raung di Taro

Tata Laksana Pekerjaan,Pura Dalem Tengah Ubud Sajen sarad, jatah, wowohan dibuat oleh masyarakat desa di bawah bimbingan seorang undagi (ahli dekorasi/patung). Adapun pembagian kerja warga diatur di bawah pimpinan kelian adat sesuai dengan aturan ayahan yang berlaku secara lokal. Para undagimeyiapkan mall dan cetakancetakan yang disesuaikan dengan cerita sastra yang hendak diberikan bentuk simbolis artistik hasil kesepakatan paruman desa. Dalam halnya Ubud, masalah teknis ini telah disepakati sebelumnya dalam sangkep (rapat) desakarena saradpulagembal dan jatah merupakan persembahan (aturang-ayah) dari masyarakat desa sekaligus dari anggota puri Ubud. Kehadiran rakyat Ubud dikomandoi seorang Cokorda dari puri Ubud –Cokorda Kertiyasa-Pembuatan Sarad Pulagembal Supartha (1983) menjelaskan bahwa rakitan jajan dalam saradpulagembal memiliki fungsi cerita sastra. Unsur-unsur yang mewakili cerita sastra simbolis artistik itutidak boleh diperbanyak (5 tingkat cerita) dan masing-masing dibuat hanya satu saja dan bentuknya boleh besar (yaitu bedawang JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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nala, naga besuki atau barongsai, karang bentulu, bhoma dan garuda).Sedangkan unsur-unsur dekoratif non naratif seperti jajan-jajan bisa diperbanyak.Bahan tidak hanya sekali saja diadon, bisa diulang berkali-kali untuk mendapatkan bentuk yang sempurna. Klian desa pekraman Ubud Tengah menyatakan telah habis 1 kwintal tepung beras yang artinya sekitar 100 kilogram untuk menghasilkan Sarad Pulagembal setinggi kurang lebih 3 meter. Bahan-bahan yang digunakanuntuk sekali adonan: - 16 kilogram tepung beras yang dicampur 4 kilogram tepung beras ketan (yaitu 4:1) - Pewarna alami (hitam berasal dari akar alang-alang yang dibakar, hijau dari daun suji, merah dan kuning dari pewarna makanan botolan) - Minyak untuk menggoreng - Benang pengikat Cara membuat:  Adonan dicampur dan masing-masing mall/cetakan disiapkan oleh undagi dan pengerombo ( orang yang membantu undagi)  Kelompok pengayah(sukarelawan) pria dan wanita berkumpul di pura dan mulai membagi adonan  Masing-masing pengerombo telah memiliki keterampilan dalam membentuk dan mewarnai setiap cetakan. Para wanita biasanya membuat bentuk yang lebih kecil dan artistik seperti wajah Bhoma dan Garuda, sementara para pria mengerjakan bentuk yang lebih besar dan rumit misalnya sayap, tangan, dan lain-lain.  Setelah bentuk dicocokkan dengan mall dan telah pas dengan selera artistik dari para undagi maka disiapkan wajan penggorengan. Di bale banjar Pura tersebut telah 112



pula disiapkan para-para untuk meletakkan adonan yang telah di goreng. Setelah digoreng, semua bentuk jajan disusun diatas para-para dan siap untuk dirakit oleh para undagi.  Proses merakit adalah proses yang paling lama, membutuhkan ketelitian dan kehati-hatian yang tinggi agar disainnya padu dan unsur-unsurnya dapat dirakit dengan baik satu dengan yang lainnya.  Proses merakitnya bukan dalam posisi berdiri; wadah tripleks (bentuk gunungan) ditidurkan dan dibawa ke Pura Gunung Raung di Taro dalam keadaan tertidur.  Tiba hari H, setelah pewintenan (pemercikan air suci) dan pembersihan tempat dilakukan oleh para sulinggih(orang suci), SaradPulagembal siap diberdirikan. Pembuatan Jatah atau Sate Tungguh Jatah adalah penyerta atau pendamping sarana upakara saradpulagembaldari daging babi; dikenal juga sebagai sate tungguh. Sate tungguh ini mewakili kekuatan negatif/binatang babi dan menjulang ke atas. Dasarnya dari tripleks dan bambu disiapkan oleh para undagi (lihat foto). Konstruski dasar dioleskan lapisan luluh (daging babi yang dihancurkan dan dicampur parutan kelapa) yang kemudian dibakar, pada saat bersamaan bebagai bentuk sate telah diukir oleh para pangerombo untuk memekarkan konstruksi dasar. Pekerjaan ini dilakukan dua hari menjelang hari H (tgl 23 Maret 2011). Penataan sate dan semua ornamennya langsung dilakukan di tempat. Bahan-bahan yang dipergunakan: 2 ekor Babi 120 butir kelapa Tusuk sate JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Bunga Ratna Cabe merah Sprite untuk mengusir lalat Cara Membuat:  Babi dipotong (bisa dibuat dari binatang suci lainnya).  Bagian-bagian tulang, daging dan jerohan dipisahpisahkan  Daging babi dibagi sesuai ukuran dan bentuk yang akan dibuat lalu direbus  Para pengerombo duduk menerima rebusan daging babi untuk membentuk dan menusuki daging tersebut. Mereka semua pria dewasa yang siap bekerja dengan talenan (chopping board) dan pisau masing-masing untuk mengukir daging babi rebus dengan jumlah dan bentuk yang telah disepakati dengan para undagi.  Sebagian Undagi mencacah daging babi dan menjadikannya luluh (adonan kelapa parut dicampur dengan cacahan daging babi) untuk dijadikan sate lembat(sate yang dililit adonan dan bukan ditusuk) dan dijadikan pelapis konstruksi/beton dari Jatah.  Untuk menjadikan adonan luluh matang, setelah dioleskan pada konstruksi cerita dari tripleks atau rotan, tempelan adonan lalu dibakar dengan menggunakan alat pembakar untuk mengelas (alat las yang mengeluarkan api).  Agar tidak dikerumuni lalat, konstruksi Jatah diolesi dengan minuman berkarbonase (sprite).

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Gambar No. 6. Pembuatan Jatah di Pura Dalam Ubud

Kedua sarana upacara ini dalam pembuatannya membutuhkan waktu yang cukup lama (sekitar dua minggu seluruhnya yang diawali dengan pembuatan wadah/ konstruksi, proses mengatur bahan, mengolah, memasak dan membutuhkan 5 hari sampai merakitSaradPula Gembal dan 4 hari untuk pembuatan Jatah) JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Gambar No. 7. Contoh Jatah di Pura Gunung Raung di Taro, Pura Ulun Danu Batur dan Pura Besakih

Religi dan Ritual sebagai Pembinaan Karakter Bagaimana segi sosial dari saradpulagembal dan jatah? Problematik pengaruh agama atas peri-laku sosial telah menjadi topik utama dari sosiolog kenamaan Jerman Max Weber di tahun 1905. Di dalam The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2002)Max Weber berargumentasi bahwa agama sebagai sistem pemikiran berpengaruh secara determinan di dalam kehidupan ekonomi. Agama menentukan pandangan dunia yang pada gilirannya menentukan perilaku. Weber mengatakan bahwa teori predestinasi kaum Kalvinis telah menjadi determinan utama 116



munculnya etos kapitalis. Gagasan serupa dipertahankannya di dalam The Sociology of Religion(1993). Weber tidak pernah menaruh perhatian pada kebudayaan Hindu Bali, tetapi memakai metodenya tentu saja dapat dipertanyakan sejauh mana pengaruh agama Hindu-Bali terhadap perilaku sosial orang Bali. Orang Bali mengidamkan harmoni pada tahap pribadi (Bhwana Alit) agar dapat melebur/moksa ke dalam Bhwana Agung (makrokosmos). Sistem ritual dengan upacara dan upakaranya, berikut pekerjaan kolektif (ngayah) yang dibutuhkan di dalam kaitan dengan itu, menjadi sarana menuju moksa yang diidamkan. Ia memperkuat ‘jiwa’ kolektifyang sudah terpatri di dalam sistem agraris masyarakat Bali. Saradpulagembal dan Jatah lahirbermula dari kewajiban beryadnya (beribadah atau ber-ritual) masyarakat Bali. Beryadnya merupakan sarana bagi manusia [mikrokosmos, atau bhwana alit] untuk melebur diri atau moksa ke dalam makrokosmos [Semesta/ Ketuhanan]. Bila menjalankan tugas ritualnya sebagaimana mestinya, manusia dipercaya dapat meyelaraskan diri dengan ritme bhwana agung dan dengan demikian melangkah mendekati ujung proses punarbawa (reinkarnasi) hingga moksa (naik ke surga) yang merupakan tujuan akhir semua insan beragama Hindu. Proses manusia menjalankan kewajiban ritualnya [ke-lima kelompok ritual kunci, yaitu Panca Yadnyanya (bhuta yadnya, manusa yadnya, pitra yadnya, dewa yadnya dan rsi yadnya)] adalah melalui aneka lembaga sosial-religius [(klen, pekramandalam pura-pura) dalam pengamong pura atau kelompok jemaat pura] yang membingkai semua segi kehidupan masyarakat Bali. Oleh karena memang di Bali, kehidupan sosial dan ekonomi tidak pernah terpisahkan dari kehidupan beragama. Berkeluarga, bertani, berdagang, bertetangga tak ayal berarti juga mengambil bagian pada kelompok ritual yang menjalankan tugas sebagaimana JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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ditentukan oleh wariga (pedewasaan sistem kalender Bali) serta oleh aturan-aturan tradisional pembuatan banten. Menjalankan tugas ritual di atas disebut ngayah atau ngaturang-ayah sedangkan tugas ritual sendiri disebut ayahan. Tugas Ayahan dan “Ngayah diatur oleh kelompok yang berkepentingan. Di dalam hal ngaturang-ayah di pura yang disebut diatas tugas ayahandiserahkan kepada desa adat”. Nazrina menjelaskannya ngayah sebagai ‘obligation to perform social duties’ atau bentuk kewajiban sosial (Zuryani 2007:237). Desa adat dengan klian/ketua banjar yang mengatur pembagian kerja nyata pada kelompokkelompok krama desa secara bergiliran dan sesuai dengan keahlian anggota masyarakat yang bersangkutan. Ayahan disesuaikan dengankemampuan anggota masyarakat desa pakraman yang pada umumnya menjunjung tinggi kebersamaan dalam ritual (Warren 1993; Sujana dkk 1999; Surpha 2004). Ayahan dapat dianggap unsur utama pendidikan budi pekerti di Bali oleh karena tugas ayahan seperti diterapkan pada banten seperti sarad dan jatah menuntut adanya kolaborasi yang efisien antara berbagai anggota masyarakat, didukung oleh pengetahuan keahlian yang tinggi serta sikap komit dan ketekunan yang andal. Jiwa kolektif tersebut, hasil pendidikan karakter adat Bali, merupakan modal yang utama dalam ketrampilan masyarakat Bali modern. Beberapa contoh dapat diketengahkan disini. Pada jenis pekerjaan modern misalnya di kapal pesiar, pekerja dari Bali sudah biasa menggabungkan diri di dalam kelompok dan menyajikan pertunjukan musik atau berkesenian secara bersama. Oleh sebab itu, banyak perusahaan kapal pesiar mencari tenaga kerja dari Bali. Begitu juga dalam berbagi keriangan pada tamu-tamu hotel, konsep ngayah untuk pekerja hotel di Bali adalah hal yang biasa.

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Penutup Pembinaan karakter kita di Indonesia menuntut kepada seluruh bangsa Indonesia agar kita mampu bukan hanya hidup di tengah masyarakat yang majemuk, tetapi menerima, sekali lagi sangat menerima kemajemukan itu sebagai keniscayaan yang baik. Sebagai jendela dalam melakukan dialog antar-agama. Kita memang telah mempelajari Pancasila, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika dan semboyan-semboyan lainnya yang semuanya menekankan keberanekaan. Tetapi saya mengulang, apakah hal ini cukup? Memang, budaya kita masing masing telah juga mengajarkan kepada kita unsur toleransi. Di Bali dikenalnya ”Tatwam Asi”, Aku adalah Kamu. Penulis terlahir dari keluarga Minangkabau dari kerajaan Pagaruyung, Sumatera Barat. Budaya merantau Minang warisan keluarga, yang menganut paham pradana/matrilineal, telah mensinkretisasi kepribadian penulis dengan motto ”dimana bumi dipijak disitu langit dijunjung”. Sejak kecil penulis dididik untuk belajar untuk mengerti komunitas tempat keluarga tinggal, baik ketika di tempat kelahiran Jakarta, di tanah Minang ataupun di Pulau Bali sehingga penulismeyakini konsep pendidikan karakter harus dimulai dari pendidikan dan pola asuhan yang terbuka dalam rumah tangga. Namun, kini perlu kita meyakini bahwa mencari sumber-sumber toleransi pluralisme dan multikulturalisme di dalam kebudayaan lokal kita masing-masing tidaklah cukup. Indonesia tengah mengalami penguatan dari rasa identitas religius dengan kata lainmengalami kristalisasi agama. Suatu penelitian yang telah dilakukan oleh dosen senior di Australia menunjukkan bahwa di dalam konstruksi identitas sosial leader(pemimpin) Indonesia mendatang, unsur agama kini semakin mengemuka, lebih mengedepan daripada unsur kebangsaan (Komunikasi JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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personal denganAss. Prof. Pam Nilam 2005). Apakah kita dapat menerima hal ini?Tidak, itulah sebab ide mempelajari secara mandiri apa itu sarad dan jatah, telah memperbesar keyakinan penulis bahwa mempelajari agama lain adalah bagian dari pendidikan karakter. Tidaklah cukup mempelajari semboyan nasional, tidaklah cukup menerima ”kelainan” agama lain. Tetapi, harus juga mempelajarinya. Pemeluk agama Islam hendaknya mempelajari logika berpikir dan beribadah dari orang beragama Hindu, Kristen dan agama lain. Begitu pula sebaliknya, orang beragama Hindu hendaknya mempelajari logika berpikir dan beribadah umat lain, dan seterusnya. Pemeluk agama Kristen mempelajari isi dan karakter agama sepertiIslam, Hindu,Katolik, Budha maupun Kong Hu Cu. Akhirnya akan terjadi saling tukar menukar informasi yang dialogis dalam bingkai kebangsaan dan kerakyatan Indonesia. Ucapan terima kasih saya ucapkan kepada: 1. Suami tercinta: budayawan Dr Jean Couteau yang telah menekankan teori Weber dan bahan kepustakaan utama. 2. Nara Sumber: Cok Kertiyasa dari Puri Ubud, I Wayan Windia dari Ubud, I Nyoman Redita di Abang, Guru Nyoman Kawat di Pura Ulun Batur, I Gusti Nyoman Darta dari Campuhan, Drs. I Wayan Sundra dari Peninjoan – Batuan, Pak Londre dan Ibu Lita di Belanda. 3. Seluruh panitia Dies Natalis ke V dan civitas akademika Undiksha tahun 2011 yang telah mendukung kuliah umum dalam Lustrum I Undiksha ini dan kepada teman, handai tolan yang tak dapat disebutkan satu persatu serta hadirin sekalian. 120



Daftar Pustaka Artadi IMP. 2011. Keketusan, Pepatraan dan Kekarangan, format PFD diambil tgl 18 April 2011 dari www.arsitekturbali20%kara ng20%bentulu20% Couteau, J. 1987.“From Myth to National Symbol”, Majalah ArchipelaGo Vo. 1 No. 1, Bali diambil tgl 20 April 2011 dari www.archipelaGo.com Desa Pekraman Taro Kaja. 2011.“Selayang pandang Kahyangan Jagat Pura Agung Gunung Raung & Karya Agung panca Wali Krama penyegjek Jagat”, Desa Taro, Kecamatan Tegallalang, Kabupaten Gianyar, Provinsi Bali Geertz, C. 1973.The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Kaler, I G K. 1983.Butir-butir Tercecer tentang Adat Bali.Denpasar: Bali Agung. Pemayun, Tj.U. N. 2007.“Memahami Makna Garuda di Bali dalam Perspektif Pemikiran Postmodernisme”,RUPA Jurnal Ilmiah Seni Rupa ISI Denpasar; Vol 6 No 1 September (hal. 26-39) Prime R. 2006.Tri Hita Karana Ekologi Ajaran Hindu (Benih-benih Kebenaran). KG Wiryawan (penerjemah). Surabaya: Penerbit Paramita. Putra (tanpa tahun) ”Cudamani” (kumpulan kuliah-kuliahadat agama Hindu) Jilid I. PT Masa Batu Offset Sujana, N.N. 1999.“Kompleksitas dan Dinamika di Tengah Bangunan Kebudayaan Bali”, dalam Manuaba, A et.al (eds). Bali dan Masa Depannya.Denpasar: Pustaka Bali Post. Sukadi. 2010.”Belajar dan Pembelajaran Berbasis Yadnya sebagai Sarana Pendidikan Karakter dan Budi Pekerti”, Orasi dalam pengangkatan Guru Besar Bidang Ilmu PPKn, Undiksha, Singaraja Sumjadi, As. et.al. 2001.Manusia dan Dinamika Budaya (dari kekerasan sampai Baratayuda).Yogyakarta: Badan Penelitian dan Publikasi Fakultas, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Gadjahmada dan BIGRAF Publishing, Surpha, I W. 2004.Eksistensi Desa Adat dan Desa dinas di Bali. Denpasar: Penebit Bali Post. Supartha, I.M. 1983.”Suatu Studi tentang ”Sarad Pulagembal” JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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yang Mengambil Ceritera Simbolis Pemutaran Mandhara Giri”, Skripsi Sarjana Muda, Fakultas Agama dan Kebudayaan,Tidak dipublikasikan.Denpasar: Institut Hindu Dharma. Surasmi, I.G.A. 2007.Jejak Tantrayana di Bali. Denpasar : CV Bali Media Adhikarsa. Warren, C. 1993.Adat and Dinas. Balinese Communities in the Indonesian State. New York:Oxford University Press. Weber, M. 2002.The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Penguin Twenty Century Classic. Weber, M. 1993.The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon Publisher. Widyatmanta, S. 1958.Kitab Adiparwa. Lembaga Adat Istiadat dan Cerita Rakyat, Ditjen Kebudayaan Dep. P & K Cabang Yogyakarta, Penerbit UP Spring. Zoetmulder, P.J. 1974.Kalangwan (Sastra Jawa Kuno Selayang Pandang). Jakarta: Penerbit Djambatan. Zuryani, N. 2007.“Empowerment and Development Initiatives: Two villages from the European Union project in North Bali”. Disertasi yang tidak dipublikasi, Newcastle University, Australia

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Aktualisasi Nilai-nilai ‘Puputan’ dalam Pembangunan Karakter Bangsa I Gde Parimartha*1 Abstract This article seeks to analyze the actualisation of the values and spirit of puputan (war until the end) by connecting it to current attempts of nation and charater building in Indonesia. It examines the values of puputan in its social and historical context and relates them to contemporary issues in Indonesia. The topic of character building gains high currency in the backdrop of moral degradation marked by cases of corruption, destruction, and violence. Bali has inherited the spirit of puputan from the struggle against Dutch colonialism; it is therefore a challenging task to examine how far this set of values can contribute to the development of national character. The article argues that values inherent in the spirit of puputan, such as loyalty, honesty, bravery, trust, and optimism, are relevant to the current attempts at national character building. Key words: Bali, puputan war, national character, Dutch colonialism

Pendahuluan rtikel ini membahas aktualisasi nilai-nilai puputan (perang habis-habisan) dikaitkan dengan pembangunan karakter bangsa. Dalam hubungan ini perlu disadari ada dua nilai yang perlu dijelaskan, yakni ‘nilai puputan dan aktualisasinya’ dan ‘pembangunan karakter bangsa’. Tema ini menarik apabila dihubungkan dengan keadaan bangsa yang kini sedang terpuruk dalam memahami karakter bangsa dan aktualisasinya di lapangan. Masyarakat Indonesia seperti sedang bingung dengan karakternya,

A

*1 I Gde Parimartha adalah guru besar ilmu sejarah Fakultas Sastra Universitas Udayana. Bidang riset yang ditekuni antara lain mengenai desa adat/pakraman, warisan budaya, dan sejarah. Bukunya yang sudah terbit antara lain Perdagangan dan Politik di Nusa Tenggara 1815- 1915 (Jakarta: Djambatan, 2002). Email kontak: [email protected] JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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sehingga kini perlu digali, diangkat-angkat lagi, untuk selanjutnya dijadikan pedoman hidup berbangsa, mengisi dan menata negara menuju kehidupan bangsa yang lebih baik. Usaha itu tentu perlu mendapat dukungan dari seluruh lapisan masyarakat agar bangsa ini tidak terlalu lama menemukan yang menjadi cita-cita perjuangan bangsa sebelumnya. Dalam hubungan itu, di sini akan dijelaskan secara singkat pengertian “puputan dan nilai-nilainya’, dan ‘karakter bangsa’. Istilah ‘puputan’ sebenarnya muncul dari kata/bahasa Bali “puput” yang berarti selesai, tamat, berakhir. Dalam bahasa Bali ditunjuk pula dengan kata, matelasan. Puputan berarti habis-habisan (Kamus Bali-Indonesia, 1978:460). Maka “Perang Puputan”, berarti ‘perang habis-habisan sampai mati membela kebenaran.’ “Membela kebenaran” merupakan nilai hakiki dari peristiwa puputan yang pernah terjadi di Bali dan Lombok. Selanjutnya, ‘karakter bangsa’ atau yang disebut juga ‘watak bangsa’ dapat dilihat sebagai watak kebudayaan atau gagasan kolektif masyarakat (Danandjaja, 1988:69). Hal ini sejalan dengan pemahaman tentang karakter bangsa menurut strategi kebudayaan Kementerian Kebudayaan dan Pariwisata (Strategi Pembangunan Karakter, nd: vi), bahwa karakter bangsa artinya ‘akhlak, budi pekerti, watak dan kepribadian yang menjadi ciri-ciri bangsa berdasarkan nilai dan norma yang merupakan budaya bangsa’. Sebagaimana dikemukakan oleh Koentjaraningrat (1982), suatu nilai budaya berfungsi sebagai tata kelakuan yang mengatur, mengendalikan, dan memberi arah kepada kelakuan dan perbuatan manusia dalam masyarakat. Nilai budaya terdiri atas konsepsi-konsepsi yang hidup dalam alam pikiran sebagian besar warga masyarakat mengenai hal-hal yang harus mereka anggap amat bernilai atau baik dalam hidup. Dengan begitu, nilai-nilai puputan di sini, dapat dimengerti 124


Aktualisasi Nilai-nilai ‘Puputan’ dalam Pembangunan Karakter Bangsa

sebagai: nilai kejujuran membela kebenaran, nilai kesetiaan, nilai ketulusan dalam bertindak, nilai jengah kerja keras untuk mencapai cita-cita, nilai ke-Tuhan-an percaya bahwa sesuatu itu telah dikehendaki oleh Yang Maha Kuasa. Dikaitkan dengan cita-cita bangsa secara keseluruhan, karakter bangsa, maka hal itu dapat dihubungkan dengan nilai-nilai dasar yang dituangkan dalam butir-butir nilai Pancasila, dasar negara, sebagai nilai-nilai kearifan bangsa, karakter bangsa Indonesia secara keseluruhan (Lihat Strategi Pembangunan Karakter, nd: 15-18). Konteks Peristiwa Nilai-nilai puputan Dalam catatan sejarah di Bali dan Lombok, istilah dan peristiwa puputan awalnya muncul di Lombok. Pada tahun 1839, Raja Cakranegara (Lombok) melakukan puputan menghadapi lawannya kekuatan kerajaan Mataram. Sebanyak 300-an orang laki dan perempuan berbaris, berbusana serba putih, memegang keris, tombak berperang menghadapi pasukan Mataram, dan mati sebagai pahlawan perang di pihak Kerajaan Cakranegara. Peristiwa puputan juga terjadi pada tahun 1894 ketika Raja Mataram menghadapi kekuatan pasukan Belanda di Sasari, Lombok Barat. Itu memang mengejutkan, karena mereka membela rasa jengah, rasa memiliki kebenaran, sampai mati, karena malu takhluk di bawah telapak musuh. Itu terjadi antara raja-raja yang sesungguhnya masih ada hubungan darah, perang rebutan kekuasaan. Setelah itu, Kerajaan Mataram memegang hegemoni untuk wilayah di Lombok (Parimartha, 1980). Dalam konteks keadaan di Bali, peristiwa puputan pertama terjadi pada tahun 1906 yang dikenal dengan Puputan Badung. Badung memang telah diincar oleh kekuasaan kolonial Belanda jauh sebelumnya. Pada tahun 1902, pemerintah Belanda telah memberikan pengesahan JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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pada penggantian raja, Raja I Gusti Gde Ngurah Denpasar (wafat) diganti oleh I Gusti Ngurah Made Agung (adik lain ibu), yang kemudian menggunakan gelar sama, I Gusti Gde Ngurah Denpasar (Surat-surat: 173-175). Raja terakhir ini yang selanjutnya membawa hubungan Badung dengan pemerintah Belanda menjadi krisis, karena raja menilai pemerintah Belanda telah memanipulasi hubungan persahabatan menjadi kontrak politik yang merugikan di pihak Badung. Raja merasa hubungan baik yang dibuat 13 Juli 1849 tidak sesuai dengan hati nurani, mengecewakan pihak kerajaan. Apabila pihak Belanda melihat hubungan itu sebagai kontrak politik, pengakuan atas kekuasaan Belanda, namun Raja merasa bahwa itu hanyalah persahabatan biasa (H.H.Kol, 1914:387), seperti juga yang terjadi dengan Raja Buleleng pada tahun 1846. Maka ketegangan semakin menjadi antara pihak Belanda dan pihak kerajaan Badung pimpinan Raja I Gusti Gde Ngurah Denpasar. Pada tahun 1904, ketegangan muncul di bawah Gubernur Jenderal J.B.van Heutz, yang menekankan prinsip-prinsip Pax Neerlandica diterapkan juga di Bali. Kebetulan atau bukan, pada tahun 1904 terdampar pula di Pantai Sanur sebuah perahu (schoener) Sri Kumala milik saudagar Cina dari Banjarmasin. Peristiwa terdamparnya kapal ini membawa bibit atau alasan terjadinya ketegangan dan kemudian perang antara Raja Badung dengan Belanda. Awalnya, perahu yang terdampar itu ditolong oleh rakyat beramai-ramai sehingga seluruh penumpang selamat, hanya ada barang-barang yang dikatakan hilang. Dalam peristiwa seperti itu, atas laporan dari pemilik perahu, rakyat Sanur dikatakan telah merampas isi perahu tersebut. Tuduhan ini yang tidak dapat diterima oleh rakyat Sanur. Lebih dari 2800 orang penduduk Sanur dan Kesiman bersumpah di sebuah pura, membuktikan kebenarannya. Hal itu dibela oleh Raja Badung. Raja tidak mau membayar ganti rugi yang dituntut 126



oleh pemilik perahu. Rupanya itu hanya gara-gara, agar terjadi pertengkaran. Karena menolak membayar ganti rugi, Raja Badung dituduh membangkang, tidak menuruti peraturan pemerintah Belanda, dan karena itu perlu ditindak. Bulan Januari tahun 1905 pemerintah Belanda melakukan blokade laut di pantai sanur, yang menimbulkan banyak kerugian di pihak Badung. Raja Badung tidak merasa bersalah, maka menuntut balik atas akibat dari blokade itu, menuntut kerugian kepada pemerintah Belanda. Ditaksir kerugian terjadi sekitar 1500 ringgit setiap harinya (Agung, 1989: 519-522). Diplomasi gagal, Belanda mengirimkan pasukan tempur ke Bali. Pada tanggal 15 September 1906 pasukan Belanda mulai bergerak menekan desa-desa Badung seperti Sanur, Kesiman, Sanglah, dan lainnya didatangi pasukan, menakut-nakuti rakyat (Tonningen, 1906:108-109). Dalam hubungan ketegangan dengan Belanda, masyarakat Bugis yang tinggal di Serangan memberikan dukungan kepada Raja Badung. Tampak hubungan timbal balik antara rakyat dan rajanya (Jawa: jumbuhing kaula-gusti) menunjukkan fungsinya secara nyata. Tanggal 16 September satu koloni (colonne) pasukan Belanda bergerak menyasar Desa Panjer dan Sesetan, menunjukkan kekuatan di depan masyarakat. Ada juga pasukan yang bergerak dari jalur Sanur-Kesiman, dengan menembaki tempat-tempat yang dilalui seperti Kepisah, Kedaton, Kelandis. Pada tanggal 17 September telah terjadi kebakaran di pantai. Di selatan Kesiman terjadi perlawanan, yang membawa korban jiwa di kalangan penduduk. Situasi semakin tegang, membawa pasukan Belanda semakin memanas, menghamburkan tembakan-tembakan di desadesa yang dilewati, karena di sana juga terjadi perlawanan. Disebut bahwa sepanjang hari tanggal 18 September dilakukan tembakan oleh pasukan Belanda sebanyak 216 JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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kali, tanggal 19 September sebanyak 200 kali, dan malam antara 19 ke 20 sebanyak 100 kali. Sementara pagi-pagi sekitar pukul 8.00 sebanyak 60 granat dilemparkan ke arah puri di Denpasar (Bruijn, 1925: 36). Hal itu membuktikan betapa gencar serangan pasukan Belanda menyerang rakyat Badung. Pada waktu itu, kekuatan militer Belanda yang mendesak masuk tercatat sebanyak: 92 opsir, 1332 bawahan, 980 orang pribumi, dan sejumlah tenaga administrasi, pembantu (Tonningen, 1906:108-109). Rupanya pada saat-saat kritis seperti itu, pihak Belanda menggunakan pula kesempatan memecah belah. Di Puri Kesiman, benteng terpenting Kerajaan Badung terjadi intrik, peristiwa chaos. Seorang Raja Tua (I Gusti Ngurah Gde Kesiman) terbunuh (hebben gekrist) yang dipandang sebagai akibat menyusupnya campurtangan Belanda. Diduga ada orang yang disogok dan disuruh membuat kekacauan untuk melemahkan kekuatan puri. Keadaan itu dilaporkan sampai ke Puri Denpasar (De Bruijn, De Expeditie. hal. 36). Pasukan Belanda nampak semakin masuk ke wilayah kerajaan. Puputan di Puri Denpasar Pada tanggal 19 September 1906 - sehari sebelum puputan kebetulan di Puri Denpasar dilaksanakan pelebon atas layon (mayat) raja yang belum diaben. Atas perintah Raja, tampak hal itu segera dilakukan, mengingat keadaan genting yang mendesak. Disebut bahwa pelebon dilakukan atas layon almarhum Raja I Gusti Ngurah Gde Denpasar, yang selama kurang lebih empat tahun sejak kematiannya (tahun 1902), disimpan di istana (Wawancara di Puri Satria, tanggal 28-121989). Pada saat pelebon di Puri Agung Denpasar, keluarga puri juga melaksanakan upacara jaya-jaya untuk keselamatan raja dan rakyatnya. Di sana raja memanggil seisi puri dan penduduk untuk mendengarkan wejangannya. Dengan tenang Raja berbicara di hadapan keluarga dan rakyat yang 128



Tentara kolonial Belanda menyerang Kerajaan Badung, bersenjata api, sedangkan rakyat tanpa senjata bertekuk lutut di hadapan tentara di sekitar Puri Denpasar (Foto: KITLV, Repro Seabad Puputan Badung, 2006).


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hadir pada saat itu. “Sebaiknya kamu sekalian pulang saja bersama keluarga dan anak-anak. Yang dicari oleh Belanda adalah hanya aku (raja)”. Rakyat yang hadir menjawabnya, “Tidak tuanku, kita akan mati ikut tuanku semua”. Saat itu semua orang sudah memakai pakaian putih, siap untuk puputan (Wawancara dengan Ida AA.Rai, tanggal 30-102005). Peristiwa pertemuan di puri itu menunjukkan satu sikap karakter raja, rakyat yang memahami musyawarah, berbagi perasaan, dan rasa jujur, setia membela kebenaran. Peristiwa puncak yang paling seru adalah kejadian “perang puputan”, Kamis, 20 September 1906. Rakyat Badung dan seluruh keluarga turun serempak melakukan perlawanan, setia mengikuti rajanya. Dengan berpakaian serba putih, laki-laki, perempuan semua turun ke jalan mengikuti rajanya ke luar puri, berbelok ke utara menuju perempatan jalan yang kini dikenal dengan Banjar Taensiat (Satriya). Titik itu tepat menghadang, menghadap arah timur, ke Jalan Gianyar, arah dari mana pasukan Belanda datang. Diceritakan, selain barisan laki-laki, di depan barisan raja, berdiri barisan perempuan (sejenis pasukan Srikandi dalam revolusi), ada sekitar 360-an orang, memakai pakaian laki-laki, serta menghunus keris, tombak, siap melakukan perang. Dalam keadaan kritis di medan laga itu Raja Anak Agung Made menyampaikan lagi pesannya, “Mari kita Puputan”. Begitu, perang puputan meletus, serangan balasan pasukan Belanda pun terjadi secara membabi buta, seluruh isi kerajaan hancur (Wawancara dengan Ida A.A. Rai, 30-10-2005). Lagi-lagi Raja Badung memberikan kesan tidak memaksakan kehendak untuk semua puputan. Melainkan siapa saja yang mau setia membela kebenaran. Sampai di sini tampak Raja Badung sangat memahami maksud dari puputan yang direncanakan, untuk membela kebenaran dengan tulus dan jujur, hanya dengan demikian akan mencapai kejernihan budi, kebersihan pikiran. Hal 130



itu tercermin dari karya tulis, gaguritan (tembang) yang ditulis sebelumnya. Dalam karyanya, Gaguritan Purwa Sanghara (1905), termasuk karya besar, Raja Badung melihat tanda-tanda zaman yang mulai berubah. Di sini raja mengungkapkan tentang adanya tanda-tanda zaman kehancuran (kali sanghara). Di era kaliyuga (zaman kali) pikiran manusia menjadi pecah, menjadi kurang harga diri, kurang awas, kurang kritis (tuna panrima), dan tidak mengenal diri (lali ring awak). Di zaman kali senghara banyak orang menjadi bingung, karena dipenuhi oleh kekotoran pikiran, namun berbicara tentang kesucian. Maka di zaman kali senghara itu, orang hendaknya menegakkan kesusilaan budi, memiliki keteguhan, dan ketetapan hati untuk berbakti kepada Tuhan Yang Maha Kuasa (Agastya, 2006: 30-31). Pikiran demikian tampak ikut menjiwai puputan, selain secara jujur ingin membela kebenaran bersama rakyatnya. Dari Gaguritan Purwa Senghara itu pula Raja Badung mengungkap semangat kekesatriaannya untuk membela kebenaran, yang disebut sebagai wirarasa. Agastya (2006) menyebutkan bahwa terinspirasi oleh cerita-cerita yang terdapat dalam teks-teks lontar seperti Mosala Parwa, Asramawasa Parwa, yang menceritakan tentang pentingnya setia membela kebenaran. Juga terdapat karya-karya sastra yang lain yang mengungkap isi budi, karakter dari Raja Badung yang melakukan puputan. Puputan di Puri Pemecutan Setelah kejadian puputan di Puri Denpasar yang memakan banyak korban, pasukan Belanda tampak ingin menunggu Raja Pemecutan, memastikan sikapnya, berharap agar langsung menyerah. Tentu Raja Pemecutan pun tidak suka menyerah, apalagi peristiwa besar puputan telah meletus, menghancurkan Puri Denpasar. Raja Pemecutan tampak sangat sejalan pikirannya dalam hal berhadapan dengan JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Korban meninggal di pihak Kerajaan Badung dan kehancuran Puri Pemecutan pascapenyerangan (Foto KITLV, Repro Seabad Puputan Badung, 2006).

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Belanda itu, ikut puputan. Raja Pemecutan juga sudah merasa terikat, karena telah menjodohkan putrinya yang cantik, I Gusti Ayu Oka, dipersiapkan menjadi istri Raja Badung (Putra Dharmanuraga, 2006). Saat itu, pihak Belanda menunggu Raja Pemecutan di Puri Dangin (sekarang lokasi Hotel Pandawa), berharap raja datang dan menyerah. Lama tidak datang sehingga pasukan Belanda bergerak ke barat di Jalan Hasanudin (sekarang), turun di Tukad Badung (belum ada jembatan) untuk menyerang Puri Pemecutan. Turun di sungai, para komandan pasukan turun dari kuda, dan naik kuda kembali ketika tiba di seberang sungai, di seberang barat itu, pasukan kerajaan sudah menunggu, siap berperang. Oleh karena itu, begitu para komandan pasukan Belanda naik kuda kembali di seberang sungai, langsung diserang oleh pasukan kerajaan, dan perang puputan pun pecah lagi di sana. Mendapat serangan yang hebat itu, pasukan Belanda melakukan serangan balik, mengamuk membabi buta, menembak ke segala arah. Atas serangan balik pasukan Belanda, pimpinan pasukan kerajaan Anak Agung Rai (Raja Tua Pemecutan) dan Anak Agung Ngurah Bima pun gugur dalam puputan. Sesudah itu, Puri Pemecutan yang terletak di sebelah barat Jalan Thamrin (sekarang) pun diserang dan dihancurkan (Wawancara dengan Ide Anak Agung Rai, tanggal 30-10-2005). Juga putri raja, IGA Oka ikut puputan, mengikuti jejak calon suami (Raja Badung). Dalam laporan Rost van Tonningen disebutkan bahwa pasukannya mendapat serangan balik dari rakyat Pemecutan. Tonningen menulis “walaupun kami sangat waspada, berulang kali kelompok kecil mengadakan serangan tombak yang mengakibatkan banyak korban pada pihak kami” (Creese, Putra, Schulte Norhodlt 2006:39). Dalam laporannya, Van Tonningen juga mencatat dampak keseluruhan dari Puputan Badung seperti berikut:


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Di pihak kami, seorang sersan Eropa dan 3 prajurit Eropa gugur; seorang perwira Eropa, seorang sersan Eropa, seorang sersan pribumi, seorang kopral Eropa, 2 prajurit Eropa dan 5 prajurit pribumi dan seorang pekerja paksa terluka, namun hanya beberapa orang yang nampaknya terluka parah (Creese, Putra, Schulte Nordholt 2006:39).

Dari peristiwa perang puputan di Puri Denpasar dan Pemecutan itu, banyak jatuh korban jiwa dari rakyat dan raja-raja Badung. Van Kol mencatat, perang Puputan Badung menjatuhkan korban jiwa sekitar 1000 sampai 1500 jiwa (Van Kol, 1914: 406). Sementara itu, Gaguritan Bhuwana Winasa mengungkapkan perkiraan jatuh korban sampai 3600 jiwa. Terlepas dari korban yang begitu besar, ada banyak nilai yang bisa dihayati sampai sekarang yaitu sikap tulus, setia, percaya pada nilai-nilai luhur yang diwarisinya, sikap bahu-membahu, tolong-menolong antara tiga pusat kerajaan Badung (Denpasar, Pemecutan, dan Kesiman) dan masyarakat yang tampak di dalam puputan. Nilai Puputan dan Aktualisasinya Nilai-nilai Puputan tampak dari apa yang diungkapkan oleh pahlawan puputan itu sendiri Ida Cokorda Mantuk Ring Rana (Raja Badung). Dalam Gaguritan Nitiraja Sesana, misalnya, diajarkan bagaimana seorang pemimpin harus bersikap, berbuat, menjadi panutan, dan mengayomi masyarakat. Hal itu dapat dikaitkan dengan konsep kepemimpinan Hindu Asta Brata dalam Kakawin Ramayana. Dalam kakawin itu juga ada pesan bahwa orang yang mati dalam peperangan membela kebenaran akan mendapat sorga yang diharapkan. Selanjutnya dalam karyanya yang berjudul, Dharma Sasana, dijumpai ajaran-ajaran moral untuk seorang pemimpin, seorang yang patut menjadi panutan (Bali Post, 19 September 1986). Dalam karyanya Gaguritan Nengah Jimbaran Raja Badung telah menggunakan 134



Patung Tjokorda Mantuk ring Rana atau I Gusti Ngurah Made Agung di Jalan Veteran (ujung utara), di depan Banjar Taensiat (atas). Nama beliau juga diabadikan sebagai nama Lapangan Puputan Badung (bawah).


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bahasa Melayu. Inovasi bahasa ini membuat karyanya dapat dimengerti pembaca lebih luas (Putra 2011:48-49). Semua itu menunjukkan satu karakter kepribadian, kepemimpinan yang luas pandangan, terbuka dengan nilai-nilai yang berkembang, dan pantas menjadi teladan bagi generasi selanjutnya. Selanjutnya aktualisasi dari nilai-nilai itu dapat dilihat dalam praktik kehidupan beliau, seperti bagaimana sikap Raja Badung yang legowo kepada rakyatnya yang setia ikut puputan. Beliau tidak memaksakan kehendak untuk harus semua ikut. Akan tetapi, menyerahkan pada kemauan rakyatnya. Karena sikap seperti itu, maka ada seorang putra raja yang bisa lolos (Cokorda Alit Ngurah), yang kemudian menjadi Raja Badung, pasca-Puputan. Sikap jujur pula ditunjukkan oleh Raja, ketika seorang utusan Belanda datang diam-diam ke istana, menyampaikan kehendak pemerintah Belanda, agar raja tidak perlu gusar menghadapi tuntutan pemerintah yang berupa uang. Berapa pun raja memerlukan akan dibayari. Tawaran pihak Belanda itu pun ditolak mentah-mentah, menunjukkan kejujuran pada sikap yang sudah disampaikan kepada rakyat, bahwa pihak Belanda salah (Terbetik saat wawancara dengan Ida Anak Agung Rai di Denpasar). Sebaliknya rakyat juga setia mengikuti kehendak raja untuk berperang secara jujur, bersungguh-sungguh sebagai ungkapan rasa setia dan jujur membela yang benar. Ada yang menilai (pandangan Barat), bahwa model perang puputan itu sebagai ungkapan putus asa atas apa yang dihadapi, dan karenanya menyerah, konyol. Hal semacam itu tentu dapat diperdebatkan, karena memang merupakan sudut pandang dengan nilai tertentu yang diwarisi. Bagaimana nilai-nilai itu dikaitkan dengan nilai karakter bangsa masa kini? Hal itu, memang tampak memperihatinkan. Banyak orang tidak dapat bersikap jujur, 136



setia pada apa yang semestimya dibela sebagai kebenaran. Segalanya dapat berubah karena berbagai pengaruh yang menggoda, seperti janji-janji, nilai pasar (uang), dan sebagainya. Nampak bahwa sikap jujur, setia itu, semakin menjauh. Perilaku korupsi yang semakin meluas sekarang ini, membuktikan terjadi degradasi nilai-nilai karakter bangsa, seperti apa yang kita alami sekarang. Dalam satu diskusi di Universitas Udayana, Prof. Suhartono, sejarawan UGM, menyampaikan bahwa telah terjadi degradasi karakter bangsa selama kemerdekaan ini. Antara lain disebut karakter itu, seperti sikap kemandirian, antikolonialisme, semangat partisipasi, gotong royong, kristalisasi nilai Pancasila. Semua itu meredup, tidak jelas arahnya, lebih-lebih pada masa reformasi ini. Maka dapat dimengerti, kalau kesadaran, semangat mempertahankan nilai-nilai yang tertuang di dalam Pancasila, dasar Negara, menjadi tidak jelas. Itu memprihatinkan, karena nilai-nilai yang perlu disebarluskan, dipahami sebagai landasan dasar berpikir, berbuat sebagai warga bangsa, semakin gamang. Tampak kesadaran kesetiaan, kejujuran warga semakin menjauh, meski kita tidak boleh pesimistis. Oleh karena itu, nilai-nilai yang baik itu perlu tetap dikumandangkan, disosialisasikan, agar dimengerti, dipahamai oleh generasi muda yang tidak mengalami pahit getir perjuangan bangsa sebelumnya. Untuk mengatasinya, perlu pelaksanaan undang-undang, sanksi hukum yang tegas, sehingga orang enggan berbuat yang menyimpang dari kebenaran yang sudah disepakati. Maka penggalian nilai-nilai puputan yang hidup di Bali, dapat memberi dukungan pada nilai-nilai karakter bangsa secara nasional, yang juga memerlukan rasa kebersamaan, kesetiaan, kejujuran, dan percaya kepada Tuhan Yanga Maha Kuasa. Teraktualisasinya nilai-nilai puputan, berarti juga terbangunnya nilai karakter bangsa JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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yang perlu diperjuangkan bersama. Simpulan Apa yang dapat dipetik dari uraian singkat di atas adalah bahwa nilai-nilai puputan, tidak berbeda dengan nilainilai karakter bangsa yang sekarang ditegakkan, agar citacita bangsa dapat segera dicapai. Nilai-nilai itu adalah kejujuran, kesetiaan, ketulusan, kekesatriaan, kemandirian, semangat jengah, berbakti kepada Tuhan Yang Maha Kuasa, bekerja keras untuk mencapai keberhasilan yang lebih baik kemudian. Aktualisasi nilai-nilai puputan akan mempengaruhi aktualisasi nilai-nilai karakter bangsa yang diharapkan mampu mengemban kehidupan bangsa yang lebih baik. Secara teori, ideal, berbagai konsep tentang kebenaran, kebersamaan, tolong-menolong, mandiri, anti penjajahan, partisipasi, yang tercermin dalam nilai puputan, tampak telah dipahami secara baik. Namun dalam praktek, nilai-nilai itu sulit dilaksanakan. Hal itu tampak karena pengaruh zaman, di mana berbagai kepentingan menggoda, sementara sulit menemukan sosok tangguh yang pantas menjadi panutan. Dalam hal seperti itu, ketulusan menjadi menipis, kejujuran terganggu, semangat etos kerja keras juga mengendor karena gempuran barang-barang jadi yang gampang didapatkan. Untuk mengatasi memudarnya pemahaman nilainilai puputan dan aktualisasinya, sebagai bagian dari karakter bangsa, perlu dilakukan suatu pembinaan nilainilai puputan secara terus menerus, melalui pendidikan nilai-nilai budaya, budi pekerti bangsa sejak dini, dipandu dengan contoh, sikap-sikap jujur para pendahulu dan pendidiknya. Konsep nilai “satunya kata dengan perbuatan” menjadi penting artinya, agar berusaha dilaksanakan sehingga dapat menuntun generasi muda ke arah berpikir 138



dan berbuat yang lebih baik. Bibliografi Agastia, Ida Bagus Gde, 2006. Cokorda Mantuk Ring Rana. Pemimpin Yang Nyastra. Denpasar: Yayasan Dharma Sastra. Agung, Ide Anak Agung Gde. 1989. Bali Pada Abad XIX. Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press. Creese, Helen, Darma Putra, Henk Shculte Nordholt (eds). 2006. Seabad Puputan Badung; Perspektif Belanda dan Bali. Denpasar: Pustaka Larasan dan KITLV Jakarta. Dharmanuraga, AA Ngr Putra. 2005. “Jiwa Semangat Puputan Badung Sebagai Suri Tauladan”, makalah pada Seminar Sejarah Puputan Badung, diselenggarakan UPTD Monumen Perjuangan Rakyat Bali, 12 September 2005. Gaguritan Bhuwana Winasa. Singaraja: Gedong Kirtya. Kamus Bali-Indonesia, 1978. Kol, H.H.van, 1914. Drie maal dwars door Sumatra en Zwerftochten door Bali. Rotterdam: W.L. & J.Brusse’s. Mirsha, Rai. 1976. Puputan Sebagai Ungkapan Kepahlawanan. Prasaran dalam Rapat Pengarahan Proyek Biografi Pahlawan Nasional (Cibogo-Bogor) Parimartha, I Gde. 1980. Pergolakan dan Perlawanan Terhadap Kekuasaan Belanda di Lombok, 1891-1894. Tesis Universitas Gadjah Mada. Putra, I Nyoman Darma. 2011. “Metamorfose Identitas Bali Abad ke-21 dan Kontribusinya dalam Pembentukan Kebudayaan Bangsa”, dalam I Nyoman Darma Putra dan I Gde Pitana (eds) Bali dalam Proses Pembentukan Karakter Bangsa, hlm. 3156. Denpasar: Pustaka Larasan. Strategi Pembangunan Karakter Bangsa dan Pekerti Bangsa. nd. Jakarta: Direktorat Pembangunan Karakter Bangsa. Direktorat Jenderal Nilai Budaya, Seni dan Film. Kementerian Kebudayaan dan Pariwisata R.I. Surat-surat Perdjandjian antara Keradjaan-keradjaan Bali/Lombok dengan Pemerintah Hindia Belanda, 1841 s/d 1938. Djakarta: Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia (1964). Tonningen, Rost van, 1906. “Over Expeditie naar bali 1906”, dalam Indisch Militair Tijdschrift (Majalah Militer Belanda), bij.no.27, 1906. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Globalisme dan Multi-Versalisme: Beberapa Catatan tentang Dinamika Sosial Budaya di Bali I Ketut Ardhana* Abstract Globalism has variously impacted on the social, cultural, economic, legal and political life of the Balinese, which in turn has changed the structure of Balinese society. Ultimately, this could also create conflicts or other social problems. Indeed, there are many regulations to anticipate and to deal with such issues, but these have not been satisfactory due to weaknesses in implementation. This can be seen in the way issues on globalism affect ideas of multi-versalism, which could in turn foster particular changes towards sustainable development in Balinese society. The majority of people who reside in the Bali Island are Balinese, who are adherents of Hinduism. The Balinese have attempted to solve the problems caused by globalization not only in the context of their daily life, but also in the context of religion. It is important to note here that the religious issues are closely linked with the local issues, especially those dealing with their longstanding cultural. This essay will address several issues: firstly, how globalism affects social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of Balinese life; secondly, how the Balinese anticipate or solve contemporary problems; and finally how the global and national issues have been tackled by the Balinese society through local wisdom. An analysis of these important issues is expected to offer a better understanding of globalism in the context of Balinese local wisdom and the ideas of multi-versalism. Keywords: globalism, multi-versalism, regional autonomy, security, landscape, and border conflicts. ____________ * Vice-President dari IFSSO (International Federation of Social Science Organizations) dan founding members dari World Social Sciences and Humanities (WSSH). Sebelumnya adalah Kepala Bidang Penelitian Asia Tenggara di LIPI, kini Ketua Pusat Kajian Bali (PKB) dan Ketua International Office (IO) Universitas Udayana. Risetnya berkaitan dengan multikulturalisme dan diaspora, serta wacana sejarah dan politik di Asia Tenggara. Menulis disertasi yang terbit di Jerman, Nusa Tenggara nach Einrichtung der Kolonialherrschaft von 1915 bis 1950, dan telah diterjemahkan Penataan Nusa Tenggara Pada Masa Kolonial 1915-1950 (Jakarta: RajaGrafindo Persada).

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Pendahuluan erakhirnya era Orde Baru yang dicirikan dengan adanya pemerintahan yang autoritarian yang berkuasa selama lebih kurang 32 tahun di Indonesia memberikan dampak perubahan pada kehidupan sosial budaya, ekonomi, politik masyarakat baik di pusat, maupun di daerah (Hisyam 2005). Bali sebagai sebuah mosaik Hindu di Asia Tenggara di mana penduduknya mayoritas beragama Hindu memiliki dinamikanya yang khas dalam perjalanan sejarah dari masa Orde Baru hingga memasuki masa Reformasi ini. Ada kenangan positif yang masih tertinggal dalam kehidupan masyarakat Bali dan ada juga kenangan yang negatif. Kenangan positif yang masih berbekas dalam memori kelompok masyarakat misalnya bagaimana bangsa ini yang pernah dipimpin oleh orang militer memberi kesan akan adanya rasa proteksi pada masalah stabilitas keamanan pada masyarakat. Lihat saja misalnya bagaimana ketika mengakhiri rasa tidak aman di masa lalu pernah dilakukannya apa yang dikenal sebagai “penembakan misterius” yang dianggap dapat menurunkan tingkat kejahatan. Memori negatif misalnya bagaimana selama berkuasanya “rezim militer” di masa Orde Baru itu seolaholah terkesan tidak adanya ruang untuk mengembangkan nilai-nilai demokrasi dan hak azasi manusia. Paradigma seperti inilah yang berkembang di masyarakat pada akhir masa pemerintahan Orde Baru (Klinken 2005). Akan tetapi, dengan berakhirnya rezim Orde Baru (1966—1998) itu tampaknya banyak dipengaruhi oleh rasa ketidakpuasan masyarakat terhadap karakter yang telah terbentuk yang dicirikan oleh “kolusi, korupsi dan nepotisme” (KKN). Noda hitam seperti inilah seolah-olah berhasil menutupi segala keberhasilan yang pernah diraih di masa Orde Baru. Adanya persoalan-persoalan kemiskinan, ketertinggalan dalam pengembangan kebijakan dalam ilmu

B


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sosial dan kemanusiaan (Ardhana 2010), keterbelakangan yang dikategorikan sebagai desa-desa tertinggal dianggap hasil kebijakan yang salah di masa Orde Baru. Masyarakat pun bergerak seolah-olah bangkit dari ketidakberdayaan di masa Orde Baru, sehingga adanya tuntutan akan kehidupan masyarakat yang demokratis, terkesan seolaholah kebablasan sebagaimana terjadi di ajang demonstrasi di jalan-jalan yang hampir bisa dilihat setiap saat di jalan-jalan ibu kota, demikian pula dengan timbulnya berbagai konflik yang multidimensional itu yang kadang-kadang tercampur antara persoalan agama, suku, yang apabila dibiarkan muncul ke permukaan berubah menjadi anarkhis. Dalam konteks ini, apa yang ditampilkan para demonstran di jalan-jalan seolah-olah menunjukkan akan tipisnya nilai-nilai adiluhung yang dahulu pernah ada yang dimiliki mereka yang berdasarkan kehidupan yang aman dan cinta perdamaian di masa lalu, namun karena berbagai terobosan dilakukan ternyata tidak mampu menyalurkan aspirasi mereka, perubahan tindakan mereka menjadi tanpa kendali atau anarkhis. Dari gambaran ini terlihat bahwa masyarakat seolaholah tercabik-cabik dari akar budayanya, sehingga harga sebuah kehidupan yang nyaman, aman, dan damai menjadi mahal di negeri ini pada saat-saat sekarang ini. Ini tentu tidak mengisyaratkan bahwa tidak adanya aturan di negeri ini, namun yang menjadi masalah adalah tingkat implementasi yang belum jelas, tumpang tindih dan kadang-kadang tidak konsisten. Inilah beberapa hal yang memunculkan beberapa persoalan dalam masyarakat dewasa ini berkaitan dengan kemana negeri ini akan diarahkan? Mampukan masyarakat kita dewasa ini eksis menghadapi berbagai persoalan itu? Adanya perkembangan kehidupan yang semakin mengglobal sudah sangat mengkhawatirkan kehidupan mereka. Sebut saja misalnya bagaimana masyarakat yang memiliki 142



pasar-pasar tradisional mereka semakin terkepung oleh mallmall besar. Mereka pun tanpa pernah menyadari bagaimana sebenarnya kehidupan café-café di daerah-daerah pedesaan juga mengubah pola kehidupan masyarakat di pedesaan (Cf. Tirtosudarmo 2005). Masyarakat pun mulai berlombalomba menjual tanah mereka untuk dapat membuka usahausaha yang bergerak di sektor pariwisata, akan tetapi karena kurangnya keterampilan yang dimilikinya, tampaknya mereka pun tidak bisa bersaing dengan usaha-usaha besar di sektor pariwisata ini (Penguasaan Tanah Adat, 2008; Ardhana 2011). Masyarakat menjadi khawatir terhadap segala perkembangan yang berasal dari luar dan mulai menanyakan apakah eksistensi tradisi dan budaya mereka yang diturunkan oleh nenek moyang mereka ratusan tahun yang lalu itu akan dapat terus dipertahankan dan berkelanjutan di masa yang akan datang? Inilah beberapa pertanyaan yang muncul berkaitan dengan persoalan yang sifatnya multidimensi baik menyangkut isu konflik multidimensi, ekonomi kreatif, daya saing, tata ruang, sengketa batas desa, perebutan pendapatan asli daerah (PAD), isu putra daerah, nasionalisme, karakter bangsa, kearifan lokal, dan sebagainya (Ardhana, 2007). Untuk itu, dalam melihat bagaimana kompleksnya perkembangan di daerah khususnya di Bali, maka dalam pembahasan berikut akan dilihat beberapa topik yang dianggap relevan untuk dikaji lebih mendalam dalam upaya memahami secara lebih baik tentang persoalan-persoalan sosial, budaya, sejarah dan kemasyarakatan di daerah Bali dalam kaitannya dengan upaya mempertebal rasa nasionalisme atau keindonesiaan (Elson 2008), peningkatan nilai-nilai karakter bangsa, upaya membangun semangat atau daya saing yang tinggi, menumbuhkan ekonomi kreatif sehingga upaya mewujudkan masyarakat yang adil dan sejahtera dapat dilakukan dengan lebih baik (Ardhana JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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2009). Otonomi Daerah dan Konflik Batas Konsep otonomi daerah yang digulirkan tahun 2001 merupakan salah satu produk masa Reformasi yang telah dimulai tahun 1998. Dengan adanya kebijakan tentang otonomi daerah ini euphoria demokrasi dan transparansi semakin berkembang (Reuter 2011). Tekanan-tekanan terhadap daerah sebagaimana terjadi di masa lalu pada rezim Orde Baru, akhirnya muncul peluang atau angin segar bagi daerah-daerah di masa Reformasi ini untuk dapat berkiprah secara lebih luas. Melalui kebijakan otonomi daerah tampaknya memberikan penyegaran pada perkembangan di daerah dan berbagai strategi kebijakan dalam aspek politik, ekonomi, dan sosial-budaya dikembangkan. Namun, seringkali karena daerah-daerah itu berlomba-lomba untuk mengembangkan daerahnya dalam kaitannya dengan pemerolehan pendapatan asli daerah yang lebih banyak, maka berbagai konflik kepentingan di daerah-daerah pun tidak terhindarkan. Banyak daerah-daerah yang dimekarkan akan tetapi karena persoalan ini berkaitan dengan masalah Pendapatan Asli Daerah (PAD), maka tidak jarang terjadi benturanbenturan di tingkat akar rumput (grass roots). Terlebih-lebih dengan dikedepankannya konsep putra daerah, maka konflik tidak terhindari dalam terjadinya perebutan pengaruh mengenai siapa yang dapat dikategorikan sebagai putra daerah. Tidak jarang terjadi, karena alasan nama tempat suci misalnya terjadi konflik perbatasan antara desa yang satu dengan desa yang lainnya. Padahal mereka menggunakan nama tempat suci itu sudah sejak lama. Namun demikian, karena alasan untuk memasukkan tempat suci itu ke dalam sebuah wilayah yang diinginkan, maka wilayah masyarakat yang tidak diinginkan untuk dimasukkan ke sebuah wilayah 144



merasa keberatan dan memaksa kelompok lainnya itu tidak menggunakan nama tempat suci atau wilayah itu. Inilah konflik yang berlangsung di salah satu desa di Kabupaten Gianyar. Selain di Kabupaten Gianyar misalnya, juga terjadi konflik antardesa dan antarbanjar yang kalau dilihat penyebabnya didasari atas bagaimana memperoleh PAD yang lebih besar atau kemungkinan untuk memekarkan wilayah agar memperoleh PAD sendiri. Ini menjadi hal yang menarik untuk dikaji misalnya bagaimana dampak implementasi kebijakan otonomi daerah yang sangat berpengaruh pada perkembangan di daerah Bali. Karena kebijakan otonomi daerah yang menempatkan kebijakan di tingkat kabupaten, tidak mengherankan peran kabupaten yang dipimpin para bupati menjadi dominan. Inilah sebabnya mengapa dengan kebijakan otonomi daerah ini memunculkan peran bupati sebagai “raja-raja kecil” di daerahnya masing-masing. Tidak jarang bahkan bupati konflik dengan pimpinan daerah lainnya dalam kaitannya dengan persoalan tanah adat misalnya dengan gubernur dalam pelaksanaan kebijakan, karena bupati menganggap posisi mereka lebih berperan dibandingkan dengan gubernur. Berbagai upaya dilakukan dengan melihat kemungkinan penyelesaian beberapa konflik yang muncul, misalnya dengan melihat kembali kesepakatan-kesepakatan yang pernah dibuat sebelumnya antar pemuka agama Hindu di Bali yang diprakarsai oleh lembaga tertinggi umat Hindu di Bali yaitu Parisada Hindu Dharma, yaitu dengan apa yang disebut dengan bhisama. Hal ini biasa terjadi dalam masyarakat Timur di mana kalau memiliki persoalan-persoalan sehingga diupayakan mencari solusinya dengan mencari pandangan-pandangan yang diberikan oleh agama atau lembaga agama yang ada. Namun, perlu dicatat, bahwa bhisama yang pernah JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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dikeluarkan itu tampaknya sering bersifat multitafsir, sehingga seringkali diinterpretasikan dengan cara pandang yang berbeda dari kepentinngan masing-masing. Oleh karena itu, persoalan bhisama ini perlu diteliti lebih jauh mengenai kapan sebenarnya berlakunya dan dalam konteks bagaimana bhisama itu perlu dilaksanakan. Selama ini ada pandangan yang melihat bahwa bhisama itu sebagai sesuatu yang sakral dan sulit disentuh oleh kalangan publik. Secara hukum, aturan-aturannya ada, namun di tingkat implementasinya yang mengalami kesulitan-kesulitan sehingga perlu pembahasan secara integral mengenai substansi bhisama dan strategi implementasinya yang tepat sasaran. Dari Tokoh Pahlawan hingga Putra Daerah Dampak otonomi daerah berpengaruh terhadap upayaupaya untuk menggali potensi-potensi daerah baik yang menyangkut sumberdaya alam dan sumber daya manusianya. Dari sumber daya alam memang Bali lebih banyak tergantung dengan perkembangan dari luar.1 Sementara sumber daya manusia diharapkan Bali mampu memiliki figur-figur pimpinan dari daerah sendiri seperti munculnya konsep putra daerah. Untuk itulah, tidak mengherankan peran tokoh menjadi penting yang dikaitkan dengan peran sejarah di masa lalu. Isu sejarah yang berkembang di Bali adalah dengan dikedepankannya paradigma untuk mengangkat seorang tokoh di masa lalu menjadi pahlawan nasional. Misalnya saja bagaimana keinginan masyarakat untuk mengangkat tokoh Cokorda Ngurah Agung atau Cokorda Mantuk Ring Rana (Cokorda yang gugur dalam peperangan) untuk diajukan 1

Lihat saja misalnya bagaimana pada pelaksanaan upacara-upacara besar di Bali, maka kebutuhan peralatan upacara seperti daun kelapa atau janur, buahbuahan yang berasal dari Jawa Timur.

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sebagai pahlawan nasional. Persoalan ini dilematis karena peran raja waktu itu ada yang menganggap mengadakan puputan dengan membunuh diri sebagai sebuah ide yang kurang pertimbangan matang. Sementara di lain pihak, adanya anggapan bahwa raja melakukan puputan (perang habis-habisan, tanpa menyerah kalah) karena mempercayai bahwa ia dan rakyatnya tidak mau dijajah, oleh karena itu melakukan bunuh diri dalam puputan yang dipercaya bisa memperoleh surga daripada terhina dijajah Belanda. Kekonsistenan sikap raja ini dianggap juga sebagai salah satu karakter yang bisa diangkat menjadi karakter bangsa yang rela berkorban demi nusa dan bangsa dan patut diteladani dalam upaya meningkatkan nilai-nilai karakter bangsa di masa kini dan masa depan. Dapat dikatakan bahwa di satu pihak, pengajuan tokoh daerah untuk menjadi pahlawan nasional ––dilakukan dalam upaya meningkatkan rasa nilai-nilai heroisme di kalangan masyarakat di daerah yang terbentuk terutama setelah mendapat pengaruh secara tidak langsung ketika penjajahan Jepang yang menebarkan semangat anti Belanda-memang penting (Ardhana 2011b). Namun di pihak yang lainnya, muncul paradigma yang mengedepankan bahwa seolah-olah dengan semakin banyaknya tokoh-tokoh dari pewaris kerajaan-kerajaan yang ada itu diajukan sebagai pahlawan nasional maka muncul kesan untuk memperoleh modal atau asset yang dianggap berjasa di masa lalu, untuk diturunkan legitimasi itu kepada keturunannya, sehingga semakin banyak posisi bupati atau wali kota yang kemudian diisi oleh paradigm ini. Perlu dicatat bahwa di masa lalu tampaknya tidak semudah sekarang bagi kalangan aristokrat mencapai posisi ini. Alasannya adalah bahwa di masa lalu sering terjadi konflik antarcalon yang karena konflik itu dianggap mengganggu stabilitas nasional (di mana konsep ini menjadi jargon yang digunakan di masa Orde Baru), JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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maka daripada konflik secara terus-menerus, maka biasanya diangkat kepala daerah bukan orang Bali, tetapi orang luar Bali. Misalnya ketika itu Soekarmen seorang militer yang berasal dari etnis Jawa diangkat menjadi Gubernur Bali sehingga pertikaian antarcalon yang berasal daeri etnis Bali yang bertikai itu dapat dihindari. Solusi yang ditempuh ini dianggap tepat pada waktu itu dalam menyelesaikan persoalan konflik di Bali. Namun, sekarang di era Otonomi Daerah ini, tampaknya masyarakat mendapat peluang kembali untuk memenuhi kerinduan akan munculnya pimpinan-pimpinan mereka itu dari kalangan yang dahulunya dianggap berjasa di masa lalu, yang masih dikenang sampai sekarang. Oleh karena itu, tidak mengherankan sekarang ini banyak jabatan Bupati untuk menyebutkan beberapa contoh seperti Bupati Badung (yang dijabat oleh keturunan Raja Mengwi, sebagai raja tersohor di Bali abad ke-18 sebelum munculnya Kerajaan Badung).2 Posisi Wakil Gubernur Bali (2008-2013), misalnya dijabat oleh Anak Agung Ngurah Puspayoga, keturunan Raja Denpasar, Wali Kota Denpasar (2010-2015) yang dijabat oleh Ida Bagus Rai Dharmawaijaya Mantra keturunan mantan Gubernur Bali, almarhum Ida Bagus Mantra yang pernah menjabat sebagai Dirjen Kebudayaan di era Orde Baru. Tokoh-tokoh yang mempunyai garis keturunan dari penguasa atau raja atau mantan gubernur di masa lalu itu, tampaknya masih mendapat apresiasi di hati pendukungnya di era Bali memasuki masa modern. Terpilihnya tokoh-tokoh ini memang erat kaitannya dengan dengan proses demokrasi yang sedang berlangsung di masyarakat, di mana pemilihannya melalui pemilihan langsung, dan parallel dengan adanya semangat atau konsep Pada saat itu, Kerajaan Mengwi menaklukkan Kerajaan Blambangan, di Jawa Timur. Henk Schulte Nordholt, The Spell of Power: Sejarah Politik Bali, 1650-1940. Denpasar: Pustaka Larasan dan KITLV Jakarta, 2006.

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“putra daerah” yang tidak terlepas dari basis-basis akarakar sosial budaya atau ikatan primodiarlisme yang ada di masyarakat Bali. Tidak mengherankan juga, bahwa dengan terpilihnya tokoh-tokoh ini, maka dilakukan rangkaian kegiatannya yang ada kaitannya dengan persoalan adat, agama yang dominan di Bali. Ini berarti, bahwa bagaimana persoalan-persoalan asset sosial dan budaya itu bisa dimanfaatkan untuk mengembangkan ke arah terciptanya komoditas politik sebagaimana sekarang dilakukan oleh puri-puri ini. Dari gambaran ini dapat dilihat, di satu pihak memang masyarakat yang tidak mampu merasa dibantu dalam pelaksanaan ritual atau upacara ini, dan di lain pihak tampak bagaimana tradisi lama tampaknya masih berkembang di saat sekarang. Akan tetapi, dalam hal ini perlu dilihat bahwa hubungan-hubungan antara puri (yang dahulu merupakan pusat kekuasaan) tampak dikembangkan.3 Untuk saat ini yang bisa dicatat adalah bagaimana pelaksanaan upacara memukur massal secara gratis yaitu upacara yang dilakukan setelah upacara ngaben selesai, yang diprakarsai oleh pimpinan-pimpinan ini dalam upaya melestarikan ikatan-ikatan tradisi itu. Tidak hanya persoalan otonomi daerah yang menjadi pembahasan dewasa ini, tetapi juga fenomena keinginan memiliki otonomi khusus juga terjadi di Bali, sebagaimana yang berkembang di daerah lainnya. Misalnya, Aceh yang sudah memiliki konsep otonomi khusus yang jelas, juga sebagaimana yang terjadi di Papua. Persoalanpersoalan otonomi khusus ini menyangkut bagaimana kue pembangunan bisa dinikmati secara adil dan sejahtera di masyarakat.

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I Ketut Ardhana, Balinese Puri in Historical Perspective: the Role of Puri Satria and Puri Pamacutan in Social and Political Changes, in Badung, South Bali. Unpublished Master Thesis. Canberra: Faculty of Asian Studies-the Australian National University, 1993. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Perkembangan pariwisata telah membuat pembangunan fasilitas akomodasi di tepi Pantai Kuta mengikis ruang hijau yang rimbun.

Pariwisata dan Keamanan Manusia Bila fenomena di atas tetap berkembang maka masyarakat Bali sebenarnya menghadapi berbagai persoalan yang tidak hanya menyangkut keamanan kelompok, tetapi juga menyangkut keamanan individu. Terlebih-lebih pariwisata adalah handalan utama masyarakat dimana sebagian besar masyarakatnya berkecimpung di sektor ini, Bali menjadi barometer tidak hanya di tingkat Bali, tetapi juga bagi barometer keamanan di Indonesia. Lihat saja misalnya bagaimana dampak peristiwa bom Bali yang terjadi pada tahun 2002 (Gaborieau 2005). Seketika mempengaruhi perkembangan ekonomi masyarakat, di mana pemulihan (economic recovery) secara lambat laun bisa dilakukan, meskipun tidak secara cepat seperti di Asia Tenggara misalnya yang dilakukan oleh Thailand yang mampu menangani konflik, bencana karena adanya manajemen konflik dan bencana yang baik (Chongkittavorn 2003; Azra 2003). Pada masa lalu wisatawan mencari keamanan di Bali, demikian juga masyarakatnya merasa aman, sehingga tidak 150



mengherankan pulau yang kecil ini disebut sebagai “Pulau Surga” (Vickers 1989). Namun, sekarang keamanan dalam konteks keamanan manusia menjadi mahal harganya. Rasa aman tidak hanya bertitik tolak pada kelompok tertentu, rasa aman mestinya ada pada setiap insan individu. Kalau rasa aman individu bisa tercipta, maka berpengaruh pada rasa aman tingkat kelompok bahkan dalam skala yang lebih besar di tingkat bangsa. Rasa tidak aman mulai terlihat misalnya lihat saja di mana-mana setiap ada kegiatan upacara atau ritual untuk menjaga ketertiban maka ditugaskanlah para pecalang atau polisi tradisional Bali (Suyadnya 2011), demikian juga pada bangunan hotel bahkan di beberapa rumah pribadi mulai memasang kamera CCTV. Ini menunjukkan bagaimana Bali menjadi tidak aman. Apabila rasa tidak aman muncul maka berpengaruh pula tingkat kunjungan wisatawan dalam kaitannya dengan peningkatan pemerolehan devisa Negara. Tata Ruang dan Pembangunan Pertanian yang Berkelanjutan Perkembangan industri pariwisata seperti yang terjadi dewasa ini telah berdampak multidemensi dalam aspek sosial budaya, ekonomi, hukum dan politik masyarakat. Meskipun demikian di Bali sebenarnya sudah ada nilainilai lokal yang mengatur hubungan keseimbangan antara manusia dengan Tuhan, manusia dengan alam lingkungan dan hubungan antara manusia dengan manusia yang disebut dengan Tri Hita Karana. Intensitas pengaruh pariwisata yang terjadi di Bali secara cepat mengusik nilai-nilai keseimbangan yang terjadi di masyarakat, meskipun tingkatan pengaruhnya memang berbeda-beda. Ada daerah-daerah yang begitu cepat mengalami perubahan akibat perkembangan pariwisata seperti di kawasan pantai dan ada juga daerah yang lamban JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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dalam mengakomodasikan kepentingan dunia pariwisata ini seperti wilayah yang berlokasi di pegunungan. Sebut saja misalnya di daerah Tenganan yang termasuk Bali Aga atau yang dikenal dengan Bali Mula atau Bali Asli tampak cukup lamban dalam mengalami perubahanperubahan masyarakatnya, akan tetapi sangat tergantung dengan perkembangan sektor pariwisata (Geriya 2003:189). Masyarakat di sini secara ketat menjaga lahan yang dimilikinya dan tidak diperbolehkan menjual tanah, karena tanah-tanah di sini merupakan tanah yang dimiliki secara kolektif atau tanah desa. Masyarakatnya pun di bawah naungan prebekel dan bendesa adat mengawal berbagai program pembangunan yang dilaksanakan di desa. Misalnya saja, bagaimana misalnya semua rumah yang ada di baris paling depan setiap warga harus mempertahankan atap dari daun kelapa atau ijuk sebagai upaya mempertahankan tradisi atau rumah adat yang sudah diwarisinya secara turun temurun. Begitu pula dalam hal sanitasi misalnya yang sudah terpelihara dengan baik dan adanya semangat gotong royong yang masih dijalankan secara berkelanjutan. Namun demikian, perlu dicatat, bahwa rumah-rumah di desa ini dipertahankan bentuknya dan jarang yang direnovasi tembok yang terbuat dari tanah, sehingga desa ini termasuk desa tertinggal di Bali. Meskipun demikian desa ini bersyukur sebagai desa tertinggal, karena bantuan pemerintah terhadap desa yang tergolong tertinggal ini berjalan terus. Oleh karena itu, meskipun tergolong desa tertinggal, sebenarnya penduduknya tidak kekurangan dalam arti tidaklah miskin. Inilah gambaran desa yang mempertahankan tradisi budayanya di Bali ini menjadi salah satu aset promosi pariwisata dimana produk-produk kerajinan yang dipromosiklan dan dijual di sini tidak hanya dari Desa Tenganan saja seperti kain Pegringsingan, tetapi 152



juga produk-produk kerajinan yang berasal dari luar Bali seperti dari Dayak, Papua, Timor dan daerah-daerah lainnya di Indonesia (Ardhana 2011a). Sementara iti bagi daerah-daerah kawasan pantai seperti di Kabupaten Badung yaitu Kuta, Jimbaran, Legian, Sanur dan Nusa Dua, di Kabupaten Tabanan seperti Tanah Lot, di Kabupaten Klungkung seperti Goa Lawah, di Kabupaten Karangasem yaitu Candi Dasa, dan di Kabupaten Buleleng yaitu Pantai Lovina telah mengalami perubahan-perubahan terhadap tata lingkungan dan pola kehidupan masyarakat. Di Kabupaten Badung, seperti Jimbaran meskipun telah ada yang disebut Rancangan Tata Ruang Wilayah (RTRW) tingkat kabupaten (landscape regulation), namun tetap saja tanah-tanah di kawasan itu semakin lama semakin habis terjual kepada investor untuk kepentingan infrastruktur pariwisata. Keluhan akan tidak jelasnya masalah tata ruang Bali di tingkat provinsi dan di tingkat kabupaten seperti adanya perdebatan yang tanpa akhir mengenai konsep tinggi bangunan menunjukkan akan adanya kepentingan yang lebih besar terhadap perubahan tata ruang di Bali. Dahulu misalnya memang tidak diizinkannya membuat tinggi bangunan tingkat baik hotel atau rumah di Bali yang melebihi 10 meter atau melebihi tinggi pohon kelapa. Kecuali bangunan Grand Bali Beach yang sudah terlanjur dibangun di kawasan Pantai Sanur pada tahun 1966. Sekarang konsep tentang ketinggian bangunan mulai dipertanyakan, karena dengan tidak adanya konsep bangunan tingkat itu, maka pembangunan dilakukan tidak secara vertikal tetapi secara horizontal dan akibatnya adalah luas lahan yang dijamah semakin banyak diantaranya lahan sawah yang subur termasuk adanya subak yang dikenal sebagai organisasi pengairan yang sangat handal di Bali dalam kaitannya dengan pengaturan atau pembagian air bagi lahan-lahan sawah. Beberapa lahan pertanian sudah JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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tidak berfungsi lagi dan bahkan, subak-subak yang ada di dalamnya semakin lenyap ditelan masa perubahan akibat berdirinya bangunan-bangunan beton. Sangat jarang ditemukan sekarang adanya lumbung-lumbung penyimpan padi di rumah-rumah penduduk di Bali. Para petani yang masih menekuni profesi petaninya itu, kalah bersaing dengan profesi lainnya seperti PNS, pengusaha hotel, restaurant, café, pedagang, dan pengrajin. Di Kabupaten Gianyar misalnya bagaimana menjamurnya usaha-usaha kerajinan telur hias yang dihiasi yang terdapat di pinggir-pinggir jalan dari Denpasar ke Gianyar. Mereka membuka usaha-usaha itu, akan tetapi karena mereka kurang memiliki keterampilan mereka pun kalah bersaing (competitiveness) dengan usaha-usaha yang lebih besar. Padahal profesi sebagai petani sudah ditinggalkan oleh masyarakatnya. Apresiasi terhadap profesi sebagai petani pun menjadi tidak diminati oleh generasi muda Bali, inilah menjadi salah satu sebab mengapa penjualan lahanlahan gencar terjadi. Ada akibat krusial yang terjadi terhadap penjualan lahan-lahan ini. Apabila lahan-lahan dijual maka subak pun akan hilang, ini berpengaruh terhadap eksistensi lembagalembaga adat yang ada di pedesaan, yang apabila tidak diantisipasi dengan baik, maka lama kelamaan identitas mereka pun sebagai orang Bali akan hilang (cf. Ramstedt 2003; Berger 2000). Perlu dikaji secara mendalam bagaimana misalnya sebuah identitas menghilang yang di dalamnya tentu persoalan-persoalan karakter ini semakin dipertanyakan. Inilah ancaman terberat yang terjadi di Bali, karena persoalan pariwisata adalah persoalan yang dilematis. Di satu pihak, sangat dibutuhkan karena menjadi sektor handalan terbesar masyarakat Bali, namun di pihak lainnya apabila tidak diatur berdasarkan aturan-aturan yang jelas dan payung hukum serta implementasi yang jelas, maka pemaksaan154



pemaksaan terhadap apa yang sudah ada sejak dahulu sebagai warisan nenek moyang bangsa akan mengalami pengikisan-pengikisan budaya secara terus-menerus. Bagaimana pun juga perlu dicatat bahwa citra pariwisata Bali yang dikembangkan selama ini menitikberatkan pariwisata budaya (cultural tourism) yang bertitik tolak dari konsep adat dan agama ini. Hal ini bisa dimengerti karena kedua konsep ini saling terkait dan tidak bisa dipisahkan dalam kehidupan sehari-hari masyarakat Bali. Simpulan Dari pembahasan di atas dapat dilihat bagaimana dinamika yang terjadi di masyarakat Bali sebagai akibat perkembangan global atau globalisme yang terjadi, dan masyarakat Bali memberikan respons dalam kaitannya dengan pemahaman mereka di tingkat lokal atau multi-versalisme. Perkembangan globalisasi ini di satu pihak, berdampak positif dalam arti semakin adanya diversifikasi lapangan pekerjaan terutama di sektor pariwisata. Akan tetapi, akibat globalisasi ini ternyata tidak hanya menyentuh kehidupan masyarakat kota, tetapi juga kehidupan masyarakat pedesaan yang sebagian besar tergantung di sektor pertanian (Ardhana 2004). Perkembangan industri pariwisata yang cepat membutuhkan akses dan infrastruktur yang cepat yang pada gilirannya tanpa diperkirakan sebelumnya telah menyebabkan terjadinya alih fungsi lahan yang berakibat tersingkirnya tanah-tanah pertanian yang subur yang dijadikan usaha di sektor pariwisata. Tidak hanya tanah yang tergusur, tetapi juga organisasi pertanian seperti subak mulai kehilangan maknanya. Apabila hal ini dibiarkan terus berlangsung, maka ditengarai akan merusak lingkungan, tatanan sosial budaya yang sudah terbentuk sejak lama dan menjadi akar kebudayaan masyarakat Bali. Inilah sebabnya mengapa JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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perdebatan dan pembahasan terhadap perubahan sosial yang terjadi di masyarakat mendapat perhatian di berbagai kalangan dalam upaya untuk menghidupkan kembali nilainilai tradisi budaya yang dianggap mampu menghadapi berbagai ancarman terhadap masyarakat Bali. Perubahanperubahan krusial yang terjadi terutama dalam kaitannya dengan fenomena yang mengarah pada terjadinya alih fungsi lahan termasuk lembaga-lembaga adat dan agama yang ada di dalamnya yang tampaknya mulai tersingkir. Karena fenomena ini menyangkut inti karakter sebagai orang Bali terutama dalam kaitannya dengan persoalan identitas sebagai manusia Bali, maka persoalan-persoalan ini pun menjadi semakin krusial yang dibahas dalam berbagai pertemuan adat, agama, akademik dalam berbagai kesempatan. Karena semua prasarat sebagai manusia Bali sebenarnya berlandaskan pada prinsip adat dan budaya itu yang saling berkaitan. Untuk itu, respons pun muncul di kalangan masyarakat Bali yang berusaha mengangkat kembali nilai-nilai kearifan lokal dalam kaitannya dengan nilai-nilai multi-versalisme yang ada di masyarakat. Hal ini dianggap signifikan untuk diangkat dalam upaya mempertahankan nilai-nilai karakter manusia Bali yang berakar pada nilai-nilai tradisi budaya masyarakat dalam memasuki era Bali modern dewasa ini. Daftar Pustaka Ardhana, I Ketut. 2011a. “Review of the Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War: In cooperation with the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation” in the Journal of Indonesia, Vol. 91, Cornell, the United States. Ardhana, I Ketut (et al.). 2011b. Masyarakat Multikultural Bali: Tinjauan Sejarah, Migrasi dan Integrasi. Denpasar: Pustaka Larasan. Ardhana, I Ketut dan Yekti Maunati. 2010. Indonesian Experiences: Research Policies and the Internatiomnalization of 156



the Social Sciences”, dalam Michael Kuhn dan Doris Weidermann (eds.). Internationalization of the Social Sciences: Asia, Latin America-Middle East-Africa-Eurasia. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Ardhana, I Ketut. 2009. “Harapan Kita, Sebuah Renungan”, dalam Kasijanto Sastrodinomo (ed). Pancasila: Nilai Budaya, Ideologi Bangsa dan Harapan Kita”, Buku Kenangan Peringatan Hari Kesaktian Pancasila 1 Oktober 2009. Jakarta: Panitia Peringatan Hari Kesaktian Pancasila Departemen Kebudayaan dan Pariwisata Republik Indonesia. Ardhana, I Ketut. 2007. ”The Question of Nationalism and Local Identity: Decentralization in Bali”, dalam Questions of Nationalism and Cultural Identities in the Present Day Asia. Jakarta: Research Center for Regional Resources-the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (PSDR-LIPI) and the Japan Foundation. Ardhana, I Ketut. 2004. “Kesadaran Kolektif Lokal dan Identitas Nasional dalam Proses Globalisasi”, dalam I Wayan Ardika dan I Nyoman Dharma Putra. Politik Kebudayaan dan Identitas Etnik. Denpasar: Fakultas Sastra Universitas Udayana dan Balimangsi Press. Ardhana, I Ketut. 1993. Balinese Puri in Historical Perspective: the Role of Puri Satria and Puri Pamacutan in Social and Political Changes, in Badung, South Bali. Unpublished Master Thesis. Canberra: Faculty of Asian Studies-the Australian National University. Azra, Azyumardi. 2003, “Bali and Southeast Asian Islam: Debating the Myths”, dalam Kumar Ramakhrisna and See Seng Tan. After Bali: The Threat of Terrorism in Southeast Asia, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies and Nan Yang Technological University, Singapore. Berger, Arthur Asa. 2000. Tanda-tanda dalam Kebudayaan Kontemporer. Yogya: Tiara Wacana. Chongkittavorn, Kavi. 2003. “Evaluating Western Media Perceptions of Thailand: After the Bali Bombing” dalam Kumar Ramakhrisna and See Seng Tan. After Bali: The Threat of Terrorism in Southeast Asia, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies and Nan Yang Technological University, Singapore. Elson, R.F. 2008. The Idea of Indonesia, University Press, Cambridge. Gaborieau, Marc. 2005. “Konflik Hindu-Muslim di India dalam Perspektif Sejarah” dalam Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Helene Bouvier, Glenn Smith and Roger Tol (ed.), Konflik Kekerasan JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Internal: Tinjauan Sejarah, Ekonomi Politik, dan Kebijakan di Asia Pasifik, Yayasan Obor, LIPI, Lasema-CNRS, KITLV, Jakarta. Geriya, I Wayan. 2003. “Pola Partisipasi dan Strategi Perjuangan Hak-hak Komuniti Lokal dalam Pembangunan Pariwisata di Era Multikultural (Perspektif Pariwisata Budaya Bali)”, dalam I Gde Semadi Astra (ed.). Guratan Budaya dalam Perspektif Multikultural (Katurang ri Kalaning Purnabakti). Denpasar: Fakultas Sastra dan Budaya Universitas Udayana. Hisyam, Muhamad (ed.), (Kata Pengantar Taufik Abdullah). 2005. Krisis Masa Kini dan Orde Baru. Jakarta: Obor. Klinken, Gerry van. 2005, “Pelaku Baru, Identitas Baru: Kekerasan Antar Suku Pada Masa PascaSoeharto di Indonesia”, dalam Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Helene Bouvier, Glenn Smith and Roger Tol (ed.), Konflik Kekerasan Internal: Tinjauan Sejarah, Ekonomi Politik, dan Kebijakan di Asia Pasifik, Yayasan Obor, LIPI, Lasema-CNRS, KITLV, Jakarta. Pemerintah Republik Indonesia-Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional. 2008. Penguasaan Tanah Adat: Dokumen Teknis Pedoman Pengakuan Hak Penguasaan Bersama Atas Tanah Adat. Jakarta: PT BILPAS Asri Kersana. Ramstedt, Martin. 2004, “Introduction: Negotiating IdentitiesIndonesia Hindus’ between Local, National and Global Interest”, dalam Martin Ramstedt (ed.), Hinduism in Modern Indonesia: A Minority Religion between Local, National and Global Interests. Routledge Curzon, Oxford. R, Thomas. 2011. “Understanding Fortress Bali: The Impact of Democratization and Religious Revival in Indonesia”, dalam Jurnal Kajian Bali (Journal of Bali Studies), Vol. 1, No. 1. April. Schulte Nordholt, Henk. 2006. The Spell of Power: Sejarah Politik Bali, 1650-1940. Denpasar: Pustaka Larasan dan KITLV. Suyadnya, I Wayan. 2011, “Securitization, Belonging and Politics of Belonging in Bali”, in Jurnal Kajian Bali (Journal of Bali Studies), Vol. 1, No. 1. April. Tirtosudarmo, Riwanto. 2005. “Kegagalan Indonesia Melaksanakan Proyek Pembangunan Bangsa”, dalam Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Helene Bouvier, Glenn Smith and Roger Tol (ed.), Konflik Kekerasan Internal: Tinjauan Sejarah, Ekonomi Politik, dan Kebijakan di Asia Pasifik, Yayasan Obor, LIPI, LasemaCNRS, KITLV, Jakarta. Vickers, Adrian. 1989. Bali: A Paradise Created. Singapore: Periplus Editions. 158


Mungkinkah Menganggap Akhir Abad ke-20 Sastra Bali Memasuki Sebuah Era Keemasan?* I Nyoman Darma Putra** Abstract In the last two decades there have been pessimistic views on the future of Balinese language and literature. These views hold that the young Balinese generation is not interested in Balinese literature anymore and is reluctant to speak their mother tongue; hence the argument is that soon this language and literature will be extinct. Close observation, however, shows that there is much evidence to indicate that toward the end of the twentieth century or early twenty first century the life of Balinese literature has been lively, making it possible to argue that this literature has entered a new golden era. This article examines and discusses how vigorous Balinese literature has been by showing the lively literary reading and appreciation activities, the growing number of literary writing and publication, and the emergence of literary appreciation through electronic mass media, especially ‘kidung interaktif’ programs on radio and television stations. This study also discusses the contribution of Balinese literature to the process of knowledge production and application of social and critical theories. Key words: Balinese literature, Balinese language, literary appreciation, kidung interaktif, electronic media

____________ * Sebagian dari materi artikel ini diambil dari proyek Textual Traditions, Identity and Media in Contemporary Bali, sebuah riset kolaborasi antara A/Prof. Helen Creese dari The University of Queensland dan penulis dari Universitas Udayana. Riset ini dibiayai Australian Research Council (ARC) untuk periode tiga tahun 2010-2013. ** I Nyoman Darma Putra adalah guru besar bidang ilmu sastra Indonesia, Universitas Udayana. Minat penelitiannya adalah sastra Indonesia, sastra Bali modern, media massa dan kebudayaan. Bukunya yang baru terbit adalah A Literary Mirror; Balinese Reflections on Modernity and Identity in the Twentieth Century (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2011). Email: idarmaputra@yahoo. com. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Pengantar alam dua dekade terakhir sering terdengar komentar sinis-pesimistis terhadap masa depan bahasa dan sastra Bali. Ada yang mengatakan bahwa bahasa dan sastra Bali akan mati. Generasi muda Bali telah menjauhi bahasa dan sastra Bali karena mereka lebih senang berbahasa Indonesia dan belajar bahasa Inggris daripada berbahasa Bali. Mereka dikatakan lebih senang menonton sinetron, film, dan novel daripada menekuni cerita atau menikmati pertunjukan kesenian Bali yang menggunakan bahasa Bali. Sejalan dengan itu, ada juga tuduhan bahwa kehidupan sastra Bali merupakan kesukaan segelintir orang tua atau aktivitas yang marginal oleh karenanya tidak akan bertahan lama. Sebenarnya, jika kita sudi melihat dengan mata dan hati terbuka, justru di era global sekarang ini, di era internet dan teknologi digital ini, kehidupan sastra Bali memasuki masa yang sungguh semarak, tidak kalah meriah dibandingkan zaman-zaman sebelumnya. Kalau Agastia (1994b:3) berpendapat bahwa zaman Gelgel atau abad ke16 merupakan ‘puncak perkembangan kesusastraan Bali’, sesungguhnya perkembangan sastra Bali dewasa ini tidak kalah semaraknya dengan zaman itu. Kalau zaman Gelgel dianggap sebagai ‘zaman keemasan’ maka abad ke-20 atau awal abad ke-21 ini juga bisa dianggap seperti itu. Artikel ini akan menunjukkan fenomena-fenomena yang bisa dijadikan alasan untuk mengatakan bahwa perkembangan sastra Bali modern dewasa ini memasuki ‘zaman keemasan’. Selain itu, juga akan dibahas kontribusi sastra Bali dalam proses produksi pengetahuan dan teori sosial secara global. Yang dimaksud dengan sastra Bali di sini adalah sastra Bali tradisional (purwa) dan sastra Bali modern (anyar). Mengingat perkembangan sastra Bali anyar sudah penulis

D

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uraikan dalam buku Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern (Putra 2010), maka uraian berikut lebih banyak diberikan pada sastra Bali tradisional dan tradisi-tradisi apresiasi yang mengikutinya seperti menembangkan dan memberikan arti teks baris demi baris yang dalam bahasa Bali dikenal dalam beberapa istilah termasuk mabebasan, makakawin, mageguritan, atau makidung. Lintasan Perkembangan Sastra Bali Tradisi sastra Bali merupakan kelanjutan dari tradisi sastra Jawa Kuna. Tradisi Jawa Kuna berawal dari abad ke-9, namun baru bermula di Bali setelah runtuhnya Kerajaan Majapahit di Jawa yang disusul dengan bermigrasinya dari Jawa ke Bali peminat sastra dan tradisi. Saat berpindah ke Bali mereka membawa naskah-naskah yang mereka miliki. Dalam bukunya Kesusastraan Hindu Indonesia; Sebuah Pengantar, Agastia menyebutkan bahwa Bali memainkan peran penting dalam kesusastraan Hindu setelah zaman Majapahit (1994b:3). Agastia tidak menyebutkan bagaimana kehidupan sastra sebelum zaman Majapahit. Kemungkinan besar tradisi sastra sudah ada di Bali sebelum zaman Majapahit, tetapi ketiadaan bukti-bukti membuat sulit untuk mengetahuinya secara pasti bagaimana kehidupan sastra di Bali waktu itu (Creese 1999:52). Para sarjana sepakat bahwa zaman keemasan sastra Bali terjadi pada abad ke-16. Misalnya, Helen Creese, ahli sastra Jawa Kuna dari Australia, dalam bukunya PARTHAYANA—The Journeying of Partha; An Eighteenth Century Balinese Kakawin (1998) menulis: Balinese tradition places literary golden age of Bali during the sixteenth century at the height of the Gelgel period and the dissemination of literacy, through the archetypal poet and priest, Nirartha, to the period after the Islamic conquest of Java (1998:143). JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Artinya bahwa tradisi (sastra) Bali menempatkan masa keemasan sastra atau golden age pada abad ke-16, periode kejayaan Kerajaan Gelgel. Zaman ini merupakan era penting kehidupan sastra Bali karena merupakan tonggak penyelamatan dan pemekaran karya sastra Jawa Kuna setelah daerah dan masyarakat Jawa dimasuki pengaruh Islam. Agastia (1994b:3) menyebutkan bahwa Dang Hyang Nirartha dan muridnya Ki Gusti Dauh Baleagung adalah dua pengarang produktif zaman ini. Beberapa karya Nirartha, seperti Nirarthaprakrta dan Nitisastra merupakan karya penting dalam khasanah sastra Bali dan masih digemari sampai sekarang. Penulisan sastra Bali sering anonim dan informasi tahun penulisannya sering juga tidak begitu jelas. Namun demikian, studi-studi atas sastra Jawa Kuna tidak meragukan lagi bahwa abad-abad berikutnya, ke-17 dan ke-18, sejumlah sastra Bali terus ditulis, disalin, dan dibaca. Teks Usana Bali, misalnya, secara tentatif dianggap ditulis antara 1550 dan 1600 (Creese 1999:53). Sedangkan dari abad ke-18, muncul Kakawin Parthayana, yang sudah diteliti dan diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Inggris oleh Helen Creese (1998). Abad ke19 mencatat lahirnya Babad Buleleng, yang memuat silsilah Panji Sakti (Worsley 1972). Penilaian positif dan optimistik tentang kehidupan sastra Bali dalam abad ke-19 dan ke-20 juga tersirat dari dua buku yang ditulis sarjana Bali yang terbit tahun 1990an. Yang pertama adalah buku karya IBM Dharma Palguna, berjudul Ida Pedanda Ngurah, Pengarang Besar Bali Abad ke19 (1998). Kedua, buku karya IBG Agastia Ida Pedanda Made Sidemen, Pengarang Besar Bali Abad ke-20 (Agastia 1994a). Predikat sebagai ‘pengarang besar Bali’ kepada kedua kawiwiku (penyair-pendeta) ini dapat diterima. Kedua kawiwiku tersebut tidak saja cukup produktif tetapi beberapa karya yang mereka ciptakan menjadi monumental dalam 162



kehidupan sastra Bali. Ida Pedanda Ngurah menulis banyak karya seperti Kidung (Geguritan) Bhuwanawinasa, Geguritan Yadnyeng Ukir, Kakawin Gunung Kawi [Kusuma Wicitra], dan Kakawin Surantaka. Di antara karya itu, Bhuwanawinasa yang paling populer, antara lain, karena melukiskan kisah perang Puputan Badung (Creese, Darma Putra, Schulte Nordholt [eds.] 2006). Dalam setiap diskusi-diskusi tentang Puputan Badung atau dalam peringatan tahunan setiap bulan September, kisah Bhuwanawinasa selalu muncul dan menjadi bahan pembahasan atau pembicaraan. Sementara itu, Ida Pedanda Made Sidemen sudah menulis sekitar delapan karya termasuk Siwagama (prosa), Kakawin Kalpha Sanghara, dan Geguritan Salampah Laku. Konsep ‘karang awakè tandurin guna dusun nè kanggo ring dèsa-dèsa‘ (‘bangunlah potensi diri, dengan keterampilan yang berguna bagi publik’) merupakan ungkapan dalam Geguritan Salampah Laku yang kerap dikutip dalam perbincangan sehari-hari. Ungkapan ‘karang awakè tandurin’ sudah hadir sebagai sebuah pepatah atau peribahasa dalam masyarakat Bali. Popularitasnya juga bisa dilihat ketika kegiatan internasional Ubud Writers and Readers Festival menjadikan ungkapan “karang awake tandurin“ sebagai tema festival tahun 201l. Ungkapan “karang awake tandurin“ diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Inggris Cultivate the Land Within. Pemilihan tema ini adalah bukti lain kehebatan sastra Bali tradisional memasuki arena global. Selain menulis karya sastra, Pedanda Made menyalin ratusan cakepan lontar. Keterampilan Pedanda Made tidak sebatas dunia sastra, tetapi juga dalam dunia arsitektur sehingga beliau dijuluki ‘seniman serba bisa’ atau juga ‘ilmuwan Timur yang komplit’ (Agastia 1994a:v). Di luar dua sastrawan besar tersebut, terdapat banyak penyalin, penyadur, dan pengarang sastra Bali. Peran mereka JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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telah terbukti signifikan dalam meneruskan nafas-hidup sastra Bali. Salah satu pengawi terkenal adalah Tjokorda Ngurah Made Agung (1876-1906). Tjokorda Ngurah Made adalah Raja Badung yang menjadi panglima perang dalam perang Puputan Badung September 1906. Antara tahun 1903-1906, beliau menulis enam (ada yang menyebutkan tujuh) karya sastra penting dalam bahasa Jawa Kuna dan Melayu. Salah satu karya Tjokorda Made atau dikenal juga dengan sebutan Tjokorda Denpasar atau Tjokorda Mantuk ring Rana (artinya ‘dia yang mangkat dalam peperangan’) yang terkenal adalah Geguritan Nengah Jimbaran. Geguritan adalah puisi tradisional yang ditulis dalam bentuk tembang, berbait-bait, menggunakan bahasa Bali. Ceritanya biasanya diambil dari Tantri atau mitos-mitos dari kalangan elite istana. Karya Tjokorda Ngurah Made Geguritan Nengah Jimbaran ini rada unik karena ditulis dalam bahasa Melayu, mengisahkan pengalaman magis rakyat biasa, seorang petani bernama Nengah Jimbaran. Inilah karya sastra Bali pertama yang menggunakan bahasa Melayu, yang oleh Liem dianggap memiliki ‘inovasi linguistik’ (2003:97). Para peneliti menilai karya ini dan karya Tjokorda Made Agung lainnya lahir dalam masa transisi (Vickers 1996; Liem 2003; Wijaya 1993) yakni saat Bali memasuki abad ke-20, abad yang kemudian dikenal sebagai abad modern. Keseluruhan karya-karya Tjokorda Ngurah Made sudah diterbitkan dengan terjemahan oleh Weda Kusuma lewat buku Naskah-naskah Karya I Gusti Ngurah Made Agung Pemimpin Perang Puputan Badung 1906 (2006). Yang penting dicatat pada abad ke-20 adalah tumbuhnya kesadaran kalangan intelektual Bali untuk lebih memasyarakatkan karya sastra Bali. Hal ini dilakukan lewat pendirian rumah baca sastra yang dibuka untuk umum. Contohnya adalah perpustakaan dan taman bacaan Taman 164



Ayun, di Singaraja. Taman bacaan ini sekaligus merupakan kantor redaksi surat kabar Bali Adnyana (1925-1931). Tokoh di balik promosi sastra Bali ini adalah IGP Tjakratenaja, pemimpin redaksi Bali Adnyana. Lewat Bali Adnyana yang terbit tiga kali sebulan itulah perpustakaan dan taman bacaan Taman Ayun dipromosikan untuk mendorong masyarakat Bali mau membaca dan mencintai sastranya. Bali Adnyana juga memuat iklan buku-buku agama terjemahan yang ditulis dengan huruf Latin. Pengunjung ke taman bacaan yang ingin meminjam buku boleh, yang ingin menjual buku juga bisa. Pemerintah kolonial Belanda tahun 1929 mendirikan Gedong Kirtya, bernaung di bawah Yayasan Liefrinck-Van der Tuuk, dua intelektual yang mengabdikan dirinya dalam perkembangan bahasa dan sastra Jawa Kuna di Bali. Dana pembangunan perpustakaan ini berasal dari sumbangan dari raja-raja seluruh Bali waktu itu. Perpustakaan ini mengumpulkan lontar dan buku tentang dan sastra Bali. Untuk lebih memasyarakatkan isi lontar, Gedong Kirtya menerbitkan majalah budaya Bhawanegara (1931-1935). Majalah ini memuat berbagai artikel kebudayaan termasuk, dan ini yang penting, sinopsis beberapa isi lontar. Lontarlontar yang sinopsisnya diterbitkan adalah naskah yang terkoleksi di Gedong Kirtya (Putra 2000b:75). Tujuan penerbitkan sinopsis itu adalah memperkenalkan dan merangsang masyarakat membaca lontarnya secara utuh, baik dalam aktivitas membaca biasa maupun mabebasan. Usaha memperkenalkan sastra Bali lewat media massa berlanjut terus sesudah kemerdekaan. Hal ini bisa dilihat dari pemuatan secara bersambung karya sastra Bali di majalah Bhakti (1952-1954) dan Damai. Majalah Bhakti (terbit di Singaraja) pernah memuat secara bersambung naskah Geguritan Megantaka dengan terjemahan bahasa Indonesia, sedangkan majalah Damai (terbit di Denpasar 1953-1955), JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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pernah memuat secara bersambung naskah Dharma Sunya dan terjemahannya dalam bahasa Indonesia yang dikerjakan IGB Sugeriwa (pemimpin redaksi Damai). IGB Sugeriwa sendiri membuka rubrik pelajaran bahasa Kawi di majalah Damai sebagai pembuka jalan bagi masyarakat untuk dapat membaca karya sastra berbahasa Kawi atau Jawa Kuna. Keputusan Bhakti dan Damai memuat karya sastra tradisional menunjukkan komitmen pengelolanya untuk mempromosikan sastra melalui media massa modern (Putra 2000a:141). Kepercayaan yang memandang bahwa sastra Bali bersifat ‘sakral’, yang hanya bisa dipelajari orang kalangan tertentu (aja wera), mulai terkikis lewat sosialisasi sastra tradisional semisal Dharma Sunya melalui media massa. Kemauan intelektual Bali untuk meneliti kakawin dan tradisinya mulai tumbuh, walau sangat terbatas jumlahnya. Tahun 1937, misalnya, seorang intelektual Bali, I Wayan Bhadra, menulis artikel tentang kakawin. Tulisannya dianggap memberikan kontribusi penting dalam pemahaman sarjana (lokal dan internasional) terhadap tradisi kakawin Bali (Rubinstein 2000:2). Pernyataan Bhadra yang menarik dalam artikel itu adalah ketika dia menegaskan bahwa bukan saja penyalinan yang membuat orang Bali mampu mencegah teks sastra dari kerusakan atau kehancuran, tetapi juga kegiatan mabebasan atau mapepaosan, yaitu kegiatan apresiasi sastra lewat penembangan dan pemberian makna teks baris demi baris. Kegiatan mabebasan sendiri kemudian menjadi perhatian sarjana Bali dan Barat, terbukti dari munculnya beberapa penelitian tentang mabebasan, di antaranya Robson (1972), Jendra (1979), Wallis (1980), dan Zurbuchen (1987). Rubinstein mengungkap perkembangan pepaosan dalam artikelnya “Pepaosan: Challenges and Change” (1993) dengan mencatat adanya perubahan perkembangan 166



mabebasan dari inisiatif peminat sastra ke tangan pemerintah. Pemerintah mengambil inisiatif untuk membentuk organisasi seperti Sabha Sastra yang merupakan bagian dari Majelis Pertimbangan dan Pembinaan Kebudayaan atau dikenal dengan Listibiya. Studi-studi ini menunjukkan bahwa sastra Bali hidup terus, selain sebagai aktivitas seni, juga bagian dari aktivitas riset akademik. Dengan demikian, pendapat Bhadra dapat dilengkapi dengan menyatakan bahwa keberlanjutan kehidupan sastra Bali tradisional tidak saja karena penciptaan, penyalinan, dan apresiasi (mabebasan), tetapi juga berlanjutnya aktivitas penelitian akademik dan publikasi-publikasi yang menyusulnya. Tradisi Sastra di Panggung Elektronik Kuatnya gelombang modernisasi dan kemudian globalisasi dalam kehidupan masyarakat Bali sempat menimbulkan kekhawatiran akan merosotnya kehidupan seni sastra tradisional Bali. Siaran radio dan televisi, sebagai

Foto 1: Tiada upacara di Bali yang lewat tanpa diiringi kegiatan makidung atau gita shanti. Terkadang yang dibaca atau ditembangkan adalah teks huruf Bali, sering pula teks dalam huruf Latin. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Foto 2: Koran Bali Orti terbit sebagai suplemen Bali Post Minggu yang memuat cerpen, cerita bersambung, puisi Bali modern. Bali Orti ikut menyemarakkan perkembangan sastra Bali modern sejak 2006.

representasi budaya Barat yang serba spektakuler dan canggih, dikhawatirkan dapat menghilangkan minat masyarakat terhadap kesenian Bali termasuk tentu saja seni sastra. Dalam sebuah berita di koran, Ngurah Bagus pernah 168



dikutip mengatakan bahwa bahasa Bali akan mati tahun 2000-an (Merta 2002:154). Sudah satu dekade pernyataan itu lewat, nyatanya bahasa Bali masih hidup sebagai bahasa komunikasi masyarakat Bali, demikian juga halnya sastra Bali. Kehidupan sastra Bali justru kian semarak. Bukan sastra Bali yang takluk di depan teknologi modern, sebaliknya teknologi modern membuka diri untuk kehidupan sastra Bali. Teknologi atau alat komunikasi modern seperti radio dan televisi lalu menjadi panggung baru bagi kegiatan mabebasan, makidung, atau melakukan gita shanti. Tradisi sastra Bali mulai tampil di panggung elektronik, yaitu lewat program interaktif di radio dan televisi lokal Bali. Pintu pertama bagi seni mabebasan masuk ke dunia piranti komunikasi modern dimulai sekitar pertengahan 1980-an lewat handy talkie (HT) di seluruh Bali dan khususnya di Kota Negara (Jembrana) menggunakan kontek, sebuah alat komunikasi terbatas menggunakan kabel. Dari sini, aktivitas mabebasan memasuki dunia radio siaran pemerintah. Radio dan televisi yang semula dikhawatirkan akan menghabiskan ruang hidup seni tradisi justru menyediakan diri sebagai panggung sastra Bali yang baru yang dapat diistilahkan sebagai ‘panggung elektronik’ (Putra 1998). Pentas wayang, topeng, sendratari, dan kesenian lainnya juga ikut memanfaatkan panggung elektronik. Lakon pementasan-pementasan ini umumnya berasal dari karya sastra sehingga dapat dikatakan bahwa mereka juga menyemarakkan kehidupan sastra Bali. Kehadiran panggung elektronik membuat kehidupan sastra Bali khususnya aktivitas mabebasan menjadi kian semarak. Kalau dulu, kegiatan mabebasan merupakan kegiatan kalangan terbatas elite tradisional di lingkungan puri (istana raja) atau griya (rumah pendeta) dan saat ada kegiatan ritual, sejak awal tahun 1990-an kegiatan mabebasan mulai muncul dan terus semarak di radio-radio dan televisi. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Masuknya seni mabebasan ke dunia elektronik ini mau tidak mau menjadikan mabebasan muncul sebagai budaya populer dalam pengertian massa atau audiensnya luas sama luasnya dengan jangkauan siaran radio atau televisi tersebut. Meski demikian, nuansa tradisinya tidak lenyap sama sekali. Radio RRI mulai awal 1990-an dan TVRI beberapa tahun kemudiannya serta Bali TV mulai awal 2000-an menayangkan program acara mabebasan atau kidung secara interaktif. Di RRI ada acara Dagang Gantal dan Tembang Warga, di Bali TV ada program Kidung Interaktif dan Githa Shanti, sedangkan TVRI Bali menayangkan setiap minggu acara Gegirangan. Isinya sama, yakni memakai format mabebasan, di mana seorang membaca/menembangkan teks (pangewacen) sastra yang lain memberikan arti (paneges). RRI Singaraja juga menggelar acara serupa yang disebut dengan ‘Jukut Undis Sudang Lepet’ sejak 1994 dan ‘Penglipur Sore’ sejak 2005. Radio-radio swasta di Denpasar dan Singaraja dan radio pemerintah di Gianyar dan Denpasar juga memiliki

Foto 3: Siaran langsung Kidung Interaktif Bali TV banyak digemari pemirsa. Penonton bisa ikut menembangkan lagu lewat telepon, presenter di studio memberikan arti.

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program yang serupa. Radio Yudha di Denpasar, misalnya, memiliki program gegitaan yang bangga tampil dengan selogan ‘asli Bali’. Kegiatan mabebasan biasanya dilaksanakan di suatu tempat dengan peserta duduk berdekatan, dalam kidung interaktif, penembang atau penafsir teks tidak mesti duduk berdekatan, tetapi jstru berjauhan. Pendengar acara interaktif menelpon ke studio dan melantunkan tembang lewat telepon, sedangkan penyair di studio memberikan arti. Hal yang sama juga terjadi dalam mabebasan lewat HT. Matembang secara interaktif di radio dan televisi jelas merupakan lompatan besar dalam perkembangan dalam tradisi apresiasi sastra Bali sejak akhir abad ke-20 yang berlanjut pada awal abad ke-21. Fenomena ini tidak pernah terjadi sebelumnya sehingga pantas dihargai dan dihormati sebagai ruang baru tumbuh-suburnya tradisi bersastra di Bali. Aktivitas apresiasi sastra seperti ini pasti tidak pernah ada sebelumnya, apalagi zaman Gelgel, zaman yang dianggap sebagai zaman keemasan sastra Bali.

Foto 4: Sebuah kelompok pesantian tampil dalam acara Kidung Interaktif di Bali TV. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Penampilan mabebasan di panggung elektronik memiliki banyak kelebihan. Pertama, jangkauan siarannya luas secara geografis dan sosial. Gema mabebasan lewat alat komunikasi modern bisa dinikmati banyak orang secara serentak berarti melampaui batas-batas tembok puri, griya, dan aktivitas ritual. Kedua, memberikan corak baru mabebasan dan semangat baru bagi penggemar dan pelakunya. Tampil di radio atau televisi sering merupakan dambaan setiap kelompok pesantian meskipun untuk itu mereka harus menghabiskan waktu dan uang. Ketiga, mengangkat tradisi mabebasan menjadi tradisi yang bernuansa modern. Keempat, kegiatan mabebasan di panggung elektronik ikut mendorong penguatan kesadaran akan fungsi mabebasan/ makidung dalam kehidupan keagamaan. Maksudnya, mereka yang tampil di radio dan televisi, berpendirian bahwa aktivitas di program radio/tv itu bukanlah satu-satunya tujuan tetapi merupakan proses belajar matembang. Kalau mereka sudah bisa matembang mereka memiliki modal budaya untuk mengabdikan diri (ngayah) dalam kegiatan ritual. Memang sekarang ini gampang sekali mencari orang yang bisa makidung. Dulu orang yang memiliki keterampilan daya tarik suara itu adalah makhluk langka. Dalam satu dekade terakhir, di Bali bertumbuhan klompok mabebasan. Hampir di setiap banjar, desa, ada kelompok mabebasan. Di Bali terdapat sekitar 1483 buah desa pakraman, dan tiap desa pakraman terdiri dari beberapa banjar, dan masing-masing banjar umumnya memiliki kelompok matembang (pesantian) atau sekaa santi. Dalam satu desa pekraman tidak sulit mencari lima kelompok pesantian. Berarti untuk seluruh Bali ada lebih dari 7000 kelompok pesantian. Di luar desa pakraman itu, terdapat juga kelompok-kelompok pesantian di lembaga pemerintah seperti Puskesmas, hotel, bank, kantor polisi, dan usaha swasta yang sifatnya lebih fleksibel atau tak-permanen, 172



serta di sekolah-sekolah atau lembaga pendidikan. Dengan perhitungan kasar, jumlah sekaa pesantian di Bali bisa mencapai 7500-an grup di seluruh Bali. Jumlah sebanyak ini kiranya tidak pernah ada dalam sepanjang sejarah Bali sejauh ini. Fakta ini bisa digunakan untuk menyebutkan semaraknya kehidupan sastra Bali dan tradisi apresiasinya dewasa ini. Yang menarik juga bahwa penggemar dan atau anggota sekaa shanti itu tidak saja orang dewasa, tetapi juga banyak anak-anak. Di sekolah-sekolah, kegiatan mesanti didorong sehingga banyak anak yang mampu matembang dengan baik. Perlombaan makidung atau utsawa dharma gita juga mempercepat generasi anak-anak berbakat menguasai kegiatan mabebasan. Kehadiran sekaa-sekaa mabebasan memang fungsional secara ritual. Namun, tampil di radio atau layar televisi adalah juga dambaan setiap sekaa shanti. Kebangkitan mabebasan juga tampak dalam dunia rekaman, yang di satu pihak bisa dilihat dari perpanjangan panggung elektronik, di pihak lain sebagai bentuk industri budaya dalam sekala kecil. Selain gamelan Bali, belakangan banyak kaset yang khusus berisi pembacaan dan pengartian karya sastra. Pengasuh acara Dagang Gantal RRI Denpasar, Mbok Luh Camplung (Jero Murniasih), telah merilis beberapa kaset rekaman yang berisi contoh aneka tembang dan pembacaan geguritan. Semua produksi dan aktivitas ini hadir sebagai penyanggah kuat kehidupan sastra Bali dewasa ini. Tulisan ini tidak memiliki ruang cukup untuk menganalisi isi dan kualitas aktivitas dinamika sastra Bali dewasa ini, namun kalau itu bisa dilakukan hasilnya akan menunjang data kuantitatif yang ditunjukkan di atas dan di bawah tentang kebangkitan sastra Bali menuju ‘puncak’. Dinamika kehidupan sastra Bali juga ditandai dengan penciptaan karya baru, baik yang bersumber dari epos Mahabharata dan Ramayana, maupun kisahJURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Foto 4: Beberapa buku gaguritan dan kidung yang merupakan koleksi sekaa shanti, yang dibaca dalam kegiatan gita shanti atau mashanti. Penggubah terrangsang menerbitkan karyanya.

kisah baru dari kehidupan modern. Helen Creese sudah melakukan inventarisasi kakawin Bali secara lengkap (1999), sementara ini karya baru yang muncul setelah penelitian itu dilaksanakan dan genre karya lain seperti geguritan dan kidung perlu ditelusuri juga. Tahun 2004 lalu terbit Kakawin Rahwana karya Nyoman Pamit (Denpasar), dan Pekak Yunika (Padangsambian) kini sedang memublikasikan secara bersambung Geguritan Tembok Tegeh (tentang penjara dan narapidana) di sebuah tabloid yang terbit di Denpasar. Pengarang dari Singaraja, I Ketut Bagiasa,S.Pd. menerbitkan Geguritan Budi Pekerti (2007). Majalah bahasa dan sastra Bali 174



Buratwangi yang terbit di Karangasem juga sring memuat karya-karya geguritan, karya lama tau baru. Penting sekali dicatat kreativitas penggubah sastra yang merupakan mantan guru agama Hindu, I Nyoman Suprapta. Antara tahun 2000-2009, dia menggubah 109 judul geguritan. Setiap judul diisi nomor, dicetak sekitar 200 buku, diterbitkan oleh penerbit milik atau sanggarnya yaitu Pustaka Gita Santi atau Sanggar Sunari. Buku ini dijual antara Rp 10.000-Rp 15.000/buah. Buku geguritan ini sebagian besar merupakan simplifikasi cerita atau geguritan yang sudah ada seperti Calon Arang dan Mayadenawa. Karya barunya seperti Geguritan Narkoba. Biasanya satu buku terdiri dari sekitar 30-an halaman, tertuang dalam berbagai pupuh. Karena simplifikasi atau penyederhanaan karya klasik, penggubahan karya ini lebih bertujuan untuk sarana bagia masyarakat untuk belajar matembang atau mabebasan. Di kalangan sekaa shanti di Bali, karya-karya Suprapta memang banyak dibaca, ditembangkan, karena ringkas dan bisa ditembangkan dalam waktu satu sampai dua jam, jauh lebih ringkas dibandingkan dengan cerita atau geguritan asli yang terdiri dari lebih dari seratus bahkan beratus-ratus bait. Sementara ini, fakta-fakta bahwa karya sastra tradisional Bali terus muncul sudah mendapat pemantauan yang intensif. Buktinya, karya-karya yang baik dipilih diberikan penghargaan Sastra Nugraha, yang penyerahannya dilaksanakan 15 September 2006 di Taman Budaya. Karya yang mendapat penghargaan adalah Kakawin Sabha Lango karya Prof. Dr. dr. Adiputra, MOH dan Kakawin Nila Candra karya pengawi I Made Degung. Menurut Nyoman Suarka (salah satu anggota tim juri), kedua karya ini mampu mempertahankan tradisi sekaligus menunjukkan inovasi (Bali Orti, 24 September 2006, hlm 11). Inovasi Kakawin Sabha Lango ini tampak karena karya ini tidak lagi mengambil inti JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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cerita dari epos Ramayana Mahabharata seperti kakawinkakawin sebelumnya, tetapi tema baru dari kegiatan Pesta Kesenian Bali. Di luar data yang disebutkan di atas, pasti banyak penciptaan karya dan aktivitas bersastra yang ada, yang belum sempat didata dalam artikel ini. Khusus mengenai sastra Bali modern, yang ikut menyemarakkan kehidupan sastra secara umum, sudah diuraikan secara cukup komprehensif dalam buku Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern (2010), sehingga tidak diuraikan lagi untuk mencegah repetisi. Yang jelas, semua fakta di atas cukup dijadikan bukti untuk mengatakan bahwa pada akhir abad ke-20 dan awal abad ke-21 ini, kehidupan sastra Bali sanat semarak sehingga pantas disebut memasuki zaman keemasan alias golden age. Sastra Bali dalam Produksi Pengetahuan Sastra Bali tidak saja berarti penting dalam kehidupan tradisi adat dan agama di Bali, tetapi juga telah memberikan kontribusi penting dalam proses produksi pengetahuan sosial humaniora. Hal ini terjadi karena terjunnya kalangan akademik dalam dan luar negeri melakukan penelitian terhadap sastra Bali dan tradisi ikutannya. Mula-mula studi atas sastra Bali, khususnya yang dilaksanakan sarjana Barat seperti C.C. Berg (1927) dan Peter Worsley (1972), diarahkan untuk menerangkan apa yang terjadi di masa lalu dan asal-usul keturunan (genealogi). Berg adalah sarjana Barat pertama yang meneliti babad, mula-mula dengan keinginan “to publish all the available texts in order to produce a large and comparative body of historical data” (Schulte-Nordholt 1994:246). Keinginan ini menunjukkan adanya pandangan yang menganggap pentingnya babad sebagai data sejarah. Sejak awal pemakaian teks sastra sebagai sumber sejarah, perdebatan selalu berada dalam persoalan apakah 176



yang tertulis dalam karya sastra (babad, kakawin, geguritan) dapat dijadikan sumber sejarah atau harus diolah sehingga akurat sebelum digunakan dalam historiografi. Persoalan ini masih berlanjut sampai sekarang tetapi dalam kenyataannya sangatlah tidak arif untuk mengabaikan teks sastra (babad, kekawin, geguritan) dalam historiografi, apalagi teks lain dari periode yang diteliti absen sama sekali. Untuk alasan ini, Helen Creese dalam buku Women of the Kakawin World, Marriage and Sexuality in the Indic Courts of Java and Bali (2004) menulis: As source of cultural and social history, kakawin provide insights that are simply not available in other sources. The personal experiences of men and women were rarely documented in the public records that survive from the Indic courts, but kakawin do open one window into their social and cultural environtment (2004:249).

Creese berpendapat bahwa sebagai sumber sejarah sosial dan kebudayaan, kekawin menyediakan pemahaman yang tidak bisa diperoleh dari sumber lain. Pengalaman personal laki-laki dan perempuan jarang didokumentasi dalam catatan publik atau kolonial yang tersisa dari istanaistana Indic (istana yang terpengaruh India), tetapi kakawin membukakan satu jendela untuk lingkungan sosial budaya mereka. Memang, betapa tidak bijaksananya kalau teksteks sastra diabaikan, sementara sumber lain dari sebuah periode di masa lalu, termasuk misalnya sumber-sumber kolonial, tidak menyediakan catatan-catatan pengalaman manusia secara pribadi. Sejarawan dari Belanda, Henk Schulte Nordholt menghargai tinggi karya sastra sebagai sumber sejarah. Dalam tulisannya “Kawitan, Keturunan dan Kehancuran: Teks dan Konteks dalam Gambaran Orang Bali tentang Masa Lampau” (2002), dia mengatakan bahwa “dalam JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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sastra Bali tak ada gaya menulis tersendiri yang dinamakan ‘sejarah’ dan ‘fiksi’”. Oleh karena itu, perbedaan antara yang nyata dan fiksi tidak begitu berarti. Schulte Nordholt selanjutnya menulis bahwa meskipun ‘sejarah’ sebagai gaya tulisan tidak ada, bukan berarti bahwa orang Bali dulu dan sekarang tidak sadar akan masa lampau mereka. Schulte Nordholt lalu menegaskan: Sebaliknya, malah banyak naskah merujuk ke masa lampau, untuk mencari asal-usul sesuatu, dan dengan sendirinya untuk menunjukkan kebenarannya. Asal-usul dan kebenaran adalah hal yang kembar (2002: 77)

Dalam bukunya tentang sejarah politik di Bali yang memfokuskan kajian pada kemunculan, kebangkitan, dan kejatuhan Kerajaan Mengwi, yang baru saja diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Indonesia, Schulte Nordholt (2006), menggunakan teks sastra dalam hal ini babad sebagai salah satu sumber penting, sama pentingnya dengan sumber lain seperti wawancara dan pengamatan lapangan. Banyak realitas politik raja-raja Mengwi bisa direkonstruksi dengan menggunakan karya sastra, dalam hal ini babad. Kajian Schulte Nordholt menunjukkan bahwa posisi babad sebagai sumber sejarah bisa saling melengkapi dengan catatan-catatan kolonial sepanjang pemahaman terhadap teks disesuaikan dengan konteksnya. Dalam memanfaatkan naskah sebagai sumber sejarah, Schulte Nordholt menyatakan persetujuannya dengan salah satu tokoh penting teori sejarah baru (new historiscism) Stephen Greenblat yang mengatakan bahwa ada penetrasi antara ‘naskah’ dan ‘dunia’ sehingga perlunya masing-masing memandang dari perspektif lawan. Atau, meminjam kiasmus Aletta Biersack yang berbunyi ‘naskah-dalam-dunia’ dan ‘dunia-dalam-naskah’ (Schulte Nordholt 2002:130). Teks sastra Bali sebetulnya lebih dari sekadar info 178



atau wacana (dari) masa lampau. Schulte Nordholt sendiri melihat bagaimana teks sastra juga digunakan sebagai alat oleh pendamba kekuasaan untuk mendapatkan legitimasi, baik dari rakyat maupun dari pemerintah kolonial. Setelah mendalami Babad Mengwi dan Babad Buleleng, Schulte Nordholt menulis bahwa: Since the authors of both the Babad Mengwi and Babad Buleleng could not use violence to seize power, they used the power of words in order to convince the Dutch that they should be appointed as legitimate rulers. Their literary texts became, in other words, an important weapon, since literary beauty had replaced warfare in order to achieve political goals (1994:260). Artinya, mengingat penulis-penulis Babad Mengwi dan Babad Buleleng tidak dapat menggunakan kekerasan untuk meraih kekuasaan, mereka menggunakan kekuatan katakata (sastra) dalam rangka meyakinkan Belanda bahwa merekalah yang harus ditunjuk sebagai raja yang resmi. Dengan kata lain, teks karya sastra mereka menjadi senjata mengingat keindahan karya sastra dapat mengganti peperangan untuk mencapai tujuan-tujuan politik.

Fakta-fakta historis di seputar teks sastra Bali seperti yang dibahas Schulte Nordholt memberikan kontribusi dalam proses penciptaan pengetahuan kita tentang hubungan antara teks sastra dan kekuasaan. Artinya, kalau selama ini orang melihat sastra memendam ideologi kelompok tertentu, dalam studinya atas teks-teks babad, Schulte Nordholt dengan tegas menunjukkan kepada kita bahwa konsepsi ideologi yang abstrak itu tampak kongkret dalam sastra Bali. Dia menunjukkan salah satu dimensi sastra Bali sebagai senjata (weapon) dalam upaya mencapai tujuan politik atau kekuasaan. Kekayaan sastra Bali akan teks Malat telah JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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memungkinkan kalangan sarjana untuk melakukan pendekatan baru dalam analisis sastra. Kalau sejak awal dunia akademik kajian sastra Bali didominasi minat akan pendekatan filologi, belakangan, seperti yang ditunjukkan Adrian Vickers dalam bukunya yang sudah terbit berjudul Journeys of Desire; A Study of the Balinese Text Malat (2005), bergeser kepada pendekatan sosial-kultural-politikhistoris. Teks Malat tidak dikaji oleh Vickers dengan filologi dengan alasan tidak kuat alasan dan tidak besar manfaat untuk mendapatkan teks asli seperti yang menjadi tujuan filologi, tetapi dianalisis dengan pendekatan sejarah, sosial, politik, dan pertunjukan, karena jauh lebih penting meneliti bagaimana teks digunakan dalam kehidupan sosial budaya. Pendekatan Vickers ini tidak saja menunjukkan beberapa kelemahan filologi tentang eksistensi dan kegunaan teks ‘asli’, tetapi pada saat yang sama menunjukkan produktivitas pendekatan multidimensional atau interdisipliner ini, khususnya dalam memahami sejarah kebudayaan melalui teks dan seni pertunjukkan yang mengadopsinya ke panggung. Dengan demikian, teks Malat Bali memberikan kontribusi dalam menjadikan dirinya sebagai objek untuk mempraktekkan pendekatan sosial kritis yang baru. Naskah sastra Bali tradisional juga membuka diri untuk penerapan teori-teori baru dari gugus poststrukturalisme yang menjadi bagian dari pemikiran di era global. Untuk studi feminisme tentang gender, misalnya, Helen Creese telah menunjukkan dalam bukunya Women of the Kakawin World, Marriage and Sexuality in the Indic Courts of Java and Bali (2004) bagaimana sastra Bali, dalam hal ini kekawin, dapat memberikan pemahaman baru tentang ideologi gender di Indonesia. A gendered analysis of kakawin not only provides new insights into gender ideologies in the premodern Indonesian 180



archipelago that continue to resonate in contemporary social practice, but also allows kakawin to be viewed from new perspectives (2004:246).

Helen Creese berpendapat bahwa analisis gender terhadap kakawin dapat memberikan dua keuntungan, di satu pihak memberikan pemahaman baru terhadap ideologi gender dari masa pra-Indonesia, dan di lain pihak memungkinkan untuk kakawin dilihat dalam perspektif baru. Studi Helen Creese ini memberikan sumbangan penting dalam studi gender di Indonesia dengan menjadikan naskah kakawin sebagai sumber. Selama ini, studi gender di Indonesia terbatas pada kehidupan sosial dewasa ini, sedangkan yang ditawarkan Helen Creese adalah apa yang terjadi dari masa lalu. Kalau kajian-kajian para ahli di atas menunjukkan bahwa teori-teori kritis bisa diterapkan dalam memahami sastra Bali, maka itu berarti bahwa sastra Bali menyediakan diri untuk aplikasi teori modern. Sastra Bali memberikan kontribusinya dalam aplikasi dan juga perkembangan teori-teori modern. Sebagai contoh terakhir, dari sekian kemungkinan yang ada, tepat disebutkan dua geguritan yang ditulis awal tahun 1900-an di Karangasem, yaitu Geguritan Lunga ka Jembrana (Puisi Perjalanan ke Jembrana) dan Geguritan Mawali ke Amlapura (Puisi Kembali ke Amlapura), keduanya karya Anak Agung Istri Agung, yang sangat potensial dikaji dengan pendekatan postkolonial. Alasanya karena kedua geguritan ini berisi kesan bahwa keduanya ditulis dengan rasa kebencian pengarangnya terhadap kebijakan dan strategi pemerintah kolonial dalam merendahkan martabat kaum terjajah. Bagaimana potret kolonial dan kebijakannya dituangkan dalam geguritan ini menarik diselami untuk mengetahui sejauh mana pengarang berkreasi dengan pendekatan postkolonial, yaitu keberanian JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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atau ketakutan melakukan manuver politik atas kolonial melalui teks. Kajian terhadap kedua karya geguritan sudah pernah dilakukan (Suastika 1999; Mulyawati 2005) terbatas dalam pertimbangan nilai-nilai estetika, artinya kemungkinankemungkinan aplikasi analisis postkolonial belum diusahakan. Kalau ini dilaksanakan, bukannya tidak mungkin sastra Bali tradisional memberikan kontribusi dalam produksi pengetahuan seputar wacana dan teori postkolonial. Penutup Dari awal tulisan ini sudah menunjukkan bahwa perkembangan sastra Bali dalam masa transisi dari akhir abad ke-20 ke awal abad ke-21 memasuki realitas yang unexpected, alias tidak terduga. Zaman globalisasi yang membawa teknologi komunikasi modern dan budaya kosmopolitan yang sempat dikhawatirkan akan memberangus apa saja yang berbahu tradisional termasuk sastra Bali dan tradisi apresiasinya ternyata menunjukkan realitas kebalikan. Sastra Bali khususnya aktivitas mabebasan ternyata mampu menyesuaikan diri dengan atau berhasil menjadikan teknologi modern sebagai panggung baru untuk mementaskan dan melestarikan diri, sesuatu yang tidak pernah terjadi sebelumnya dalam skala yang cukup besar. Dalam kehidupan pragmatisme global yang antara lain ditandai dengan pemberian prioritas pada pemenuhan kebutuhan materi dan kegandrungan pada hal-hal yang modern ternyata tidak menyurutkan minat masyarakat terhadap kegiatan seni sastra yang jauh dari glamor harta. Buktinya, penciptaan karya sastra baik dalam bentuk geguritan, kakawin, maupun sastra-sastra modern lainnya berlanjut terus. Demikian juga apresiasi terhadapnya yang secara kombinatif telah membuat kehidupan sastra Bali 182



dalam era pragmatisme global ini semakin semarak. Pagisore, siang-malam, di rumah atau melalui media massa elektronik, terus menggema tembang-tembang geguritan, kidung, atau kakawin. Kesemarakan kehidupan sastra Bali juga terlihat dalam geliat penelitian akademik. Sejak akhir abad lalu, banyak sastra Bali yang diteliti secara akademik. Studistudi para ahli menunjukkan bahwa sastra Bali memberikan kontribusi pada penemuan atau aplikasi teori ilmu humaniora, mulai dari filologi sampai dengan historiografi; dari strukturalisme sampai post-strukturalisme. Belakangan ini misalnya, studi Helen Creese (2004) atas perkawinan dan kedudukan wanita dalam kakawin Bali dan kajian atas teks Malat atau cerita Panji oleh Adrian Vickers (2005) terbukti telah membuat sastra Bali ikut menyumbangkan gagasan baru dalam perdebatan atas teori-teori seperti filologi dan gender. Dengan berlanjutnya penciptaan, kian dinamis dan inovatifnya format seni mabebasan, serta berlanjutnya kajian akademik atas sastra Bali seharusnya kita merasa galang apadang (lapang dada) untuk mengatakan bahwa memasuki mulai akhir abad ke-20 atau awal abad ke-21 ini sastra Bali memasuki sebuah zaman keemasan. Daftar Pustaka Agastia, IBG. 1994a. Ida Pedanda Made Sidemen, Pengarang Besar Bali Abad ke-20. Denpasar: Yayasan Dharma Sastra. Agastia, IBG. 1994b. Kesusastraan Hindu Indonesia (Sebuah Pengantar). Denpasar: Yayasan Dharma Sastra. Creese, Helen. 1998. PARTHAYANA—The Journeying of Partha: An Eighteenth Century Balinese Kakawin. Leiden: KITLV Press. Creese, Helen. 1999. “The Balinese Kakawin Tradition, A Preliminary Description and Inventory”, Bidjragen, 155-1, pp.45-96. Creese, Helen. 2004. Women of the Kakawin World, Marriage and JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Sexuality in the Indic Courts of Java and Bali. London, New York: M.E. Sharpe. Creese, Helen, Darma Putra, Henk Schulte Nordholt (eds). 2006. Seabad Puputan Badung: Perspektif Belanda dan Bali. Denpasar: Pustaka Larasan, KITLV Jakarta, Fakultas Sastra Unud. Putra, I Nyoman Darma. 1998. “Kesenian Bali di Panggung Elektronik: Perbandingan Acara Apresiasi Budaya RRI dan TVRI Denpasar”, Mudra (6) March, pp. 18-41. Putra, I Nyoman Darma. 2000a. “Bali and Modern Indonesian Literature: The 1950s”, Adrian Vickers, Darma Putra and Michel Ford (eds) To Change Bali Essays In Honour of I Gusti Ngurah Bagus, pp. 135-53. Denpasar: Bali Post and Institute of Social Change and Critical Inquiry, University of Wollongong. Putra, I Nyoman Darma. 2000b. Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern. Yogyakarta: Duta Wacana University Press. Liem, Maya H.T. 2003. The Turning Wheel of Time, Modernity and Writing Identity in Bali 1900-1970. PhD Thesis Leiden University. Merta, I Made, 2002. “Sepintas Pengajaran bahasa Bali di SMU: Harapan dan Kenyataan”, dalam Kumpulan Makalah Kongres Bahasa Bali V, Ida Bagus Darmasuta et al (ed.), pp 153-62. Denpasar: Balai Bahasa Denpasar. Mulyawati, Tjok Istri Agung. 2005. “Geguritan Lunga ka Jembrana dan Geguritan Mawali ke Amlapura karya Anak Agung Istri Agung: Sebuah Karya Sastra Protes Sosial”. Thesis S-2 Kajian Budaya, Unud. Palguna, IBM Dharma. 1998. Ida Pedanda Ngurah, Pengarang Besar Bali Abad ke-19. Denpasar: Yayasan Dharma Sastra. Rubinstein, Raechelle. 1993. “Pepaosan: challenges and change”. In Danker Schaareman (ed.), Balinese music in context: A sixty-fifth birthday tribute to Hans Oesch.Winterthur: Amadeus Verslag, pp. 85–113. Rubinstein, Raechelle. 2000. Beyond the Realm if The Sense, The Balinese Ritual of Kakawin Composititon. Leiden: KITLV Press. Schulte Nordholt, Henk. 1994. “The Invented Ancestor, Origin and Descent in Bali”, dalam Texts From The Islands, Etnological Bernensia 4/1994, hlm 245-64. Schulte Nordholt, Henk. 2002. Kriminalitas, Modernitas dan Identitas 184



dalam Sejarah Indonesia. Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar. Schulte Nordholt, Henk. 2006. The Spell of Power: Sejarah Politik Bali 1650-1940. Terjemahan Ida Bagus Putrayadnya. Denpasar: Pustaka Larasan. Suastika, I Made. 1999. Transliterasi, Terjemahan, dan Kajian Nilai Karya Anak Agung Istri Agung, Berjudul Geguritan Lunga ka Jembrana dan Geguritan Mawali ke Amlapura. Jakarta: Program Penggalakan Kajian Sumber-sumber Tertulis Nusantara. Vickers, Adrian. 1996. “Modernity and Being ‘Modern’ in Bali“ in Adrian Vickers (ed.), Being Modern in Bali, Image and Change, pp. 1-36. Monograph 43/Yale Southeast Asia Studies. Vickers, Adrian. 2005. Journeys of Desire, A Study of the Balinese Text Malat. Leiden: KITLV Press. Wijaya, I Nyoman. 1993. “Syair Menyongsong Perang: mitos dan Kekuasaan dalam Geguritan I Nengah Jimbaran”, Majalah Prapanca, 1993. Jurusan Sejarah Universitas Gadjah Mada. Weda Kusuma, I Nyoman. 2006. Naskah-naskah Karya I Gusti Ngurah Made Agung, Pemimpin Perang Puputan Badung 1906. Denpasar: Pustaka Larasan. Worsley, Peter. 1972. Babad Buleleng. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.


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Menapak Sejarah dan Kritik Sastra Bali Modern I Made Sujaya* Judul buku

: Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern

Penulis

: I Nyoman Darma Putra

Tebal

: 212 (termasuk index)

Penerbit

: Pustaka Larasan

Tahun terbit : 2010 (2000)

T

atkala pertama kali terbit tahun 2000, buku Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern karya I Nyoman Darma Putra mendapat sambutan hangat. Buku ini dianggap penting, tidak saja karena mengisi kekosongan literatur mengenai sejarah dan kajian sastra Bali modern (SBM), tetapi karena keberhasilannya mematahkan pendapat lama mengenai awal kelahiran SBM. Sebelumnya, muncul semacam mitos bahwa SBM lahir pada tahun 1930-an, ditandai dengan terbitnya novel Nemoe Karma karya I Wayan Gobiah yang diterbitkan Balai Pustaka pada tahun 1931. Pendapat ini dikemukakan I Gusti Ngurah Bagus tahun 1969 dalam makalah “Situasi Sastra Bali Modern dan Masalahnya”. Sesudahnya, pendapat Ngurah Bagus ini diikuti para cendekiawan dan peneliti SBM tanpa repot-repot memeriksa lagi kesahihan pendapat tersebut. Bahkan, klaim ini seolah-olah telah menjadi mitos dalam dunia SBM. ____________ * I Made Sujaya adalah Mahasiswa Program Pascasarjana S2 Linguistik, Konsentrasi Wacana Sastra.

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Akan tetapi, melalui ketekunan mengumpulkan data, Darma Putra meruntuhkan mitos mengenai awal kelahiran SBM itu. Penelitian Darma Putra menemukan fakta bahwa sebelum Nemoe Karma yakni pada tahun 1910-an, sudah muncul karya SBM dalam bentuk cerpen. Darma Putra menunjukkan bukti cerpen-cerpen I Made Pasek dan Mas Nitisastro. Cerpen-cerpen I Made Pasek dimuat dalam buku Catur Perenidâ, Tjakepan kaping doeâ pâpeladjahan sang mâmanah maoeroek mâmaos aksarâ Belanda yang terbit tahun 1913 di Semarang-Brukerij en Boekhandel H.A. Benjamins. Karya-karya Mas Nitisastro termuat dalam buku Warna Sari, Batjaan Hoeroef Belanda yang terbit tahun 1925 di Weltevreden. Kedua buku ini menggunakan bahasa Bali huruf Latin (waktu itu, huruf Latin dikenal sebagai huruf Belanda). Untuk meyakinkan orang mengenai pendapatnya itu, Darma Putra pun menyertakan cerpen-cerpen karya I Made Pasek dan Mas Nitisastro dalam bukunya. Kesangsian mengenai kualitas karya kedua pengarang itu pun dipatahkannya dengan memberikan ulasan sepintas mengenai mutu karya I Made Pasek dan Mas Nitisastro. Menurut Darma Putra, ada dua catatan yang menyebabkan cerpen-cerpen I Made Pasek dan Mas Nitisastro layak dianggap sebagai pelopor SBM. Pertama, evolusi di bidang isi yakni dari karya yang mereproduksi dongeng ke karyakarya baru yang mengangkat tema-tema kontemporer. Kedua, evolusi dalam hal bentuk, yakni dari cerpen pendek ke cerpen yang relatif panjang dengan alur kilas balik dan teknik penceritaan bervariasi. Oleh karena itu, buku Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern memang berhasil menancapkan tonggak baru sejarah kelahiran sastra Bali modern. Tak hanya itu, buku ini juga menepis pendapat yang menyebut SBM sebagai ‘karya blasteran’ yang dipengaruhi sastra Indonesia modern. Pada JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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awalnya justru SBM berkembang sendiri tanpa banyak pengaruh dari sastra Indonesia modern. Kalau predikat ‘karya blasteran’ dengan pengaruh dominan dari sastra Indonesia modern diberikan pada karya-karya SBM pasca1970-an, barangkali masih bisa diterima. Pasalnya, mulai saat itulah banyak pengarang SBM adalah juga pengarang sastra Indonesia modern atau menerjemahkan karya sastra Indonesia modern ke dalam SBM atau sebaliknya. Seabad Sastra Bali Modern Sepuluh tahun setelah terbitnya cetakan I, buku Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern diterbitkan lagi cetakan II yang dilabeli sebagai edisi baru. Penyebutan edisi baru tampaknya dikarenakan adanya tambahan tulisan mengenai perkembangan SBM sejak tahun 2000 (manakala buku cetakan I terbit) hingga tahun 2010. Tambahan tulisan yang mencapai 40% itu berupa catatan mengenai rangsangan hadiah sastra Rancage dalam memacu perkembangan SBM, lengkap dengan daftar penerima untuk sastra Bali sejak tahun 1998-2010. Turut disinggung pula peranan terkini Bali Post dalam menumbuhkan gairah SBM melalui lembaran khusus bahasa Bali saban hari Minggu Bali Orti, karya monumental Nyoman Manda berupa antologi puisi setebal 3654 halaman, generasi baru wanita sastrawan Bali modern, ihwal terjemahan sastra Indonesia modern ke dalam SBM, wafatnya sastrawan gaek SBM, I Made Sanggra, wawancara ‘telanjang’ dengan sastrawan SBM I Made Suarsa serta kajian ringkas karya-karya mutakhir. Jika Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern cetakan I diterbitkan Duta Wacana University Press dan Program Studi Kajian Budaya Unud, edisi terbaru diterbitkan Pustaka Larasan. Cover edisi baru juga lebih menarik karena memuat foto I Made Pasek dan para sastrawan Bali penerima hadiah sastra Rancage. Isi buku juga menjadi lebih segar karena 188



dilengkapi dengan foto-foto pendukung tulisan. Kendati pun memancangkan tonggak kelahiran SBM pada tahun 1910-an, Darma Putra tampaknya tak menyadari bahwa edisi terbaru Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern terbit pada saat SBM mencapai usia seabad. Tak sedikit pun Darma Putra menyinggung mengenai momentum seabad SBM itu di dalam bukunya. Menggugat Sejarah Sastra Jika diselami, Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern sejatinya merupakan upaya Darma Putra untuk menggugat penulisan sejarah sastra di Indonesia yang berkembang menjadi mitos. Sekali seorang atau sejumlah peneliti atau intelektual berwibawa menyebut karya atau pengarang tertentu sebagai tonggak kelahiran sastra tertentu, peneliti atau intelektual berikutnya cenderung mengamini dan mengekorinya tanpa sikap kritis untuk berupaya memeriksa sendiri kesahihan data dan fakta pendukung pendapat tersebut. Dalam jagat sastra Indonesia modern, gugatan terhadap penulisan sejarah sastra Indonesia modern juga muncul tahun 2000-an. Jakob Sumardjo dalam buku Kesusastraan Melayu Rendah Masa Awal (Galang Press, 2004) dan Maman S Mahayana dalam buku 9 Jawaban Sastra Indonesia Sebuah Orientasi Kritik (Bening Publishing, 2005) mempertanyakan kesahihan klaim mengenai awal kelahiran sastra Indonesia modern ditandai oleh terbitnya novel Merari Siregar Azab dan Sengsara Seorang Gadis (1919). Penelusuran lebih kritis menunjukkan sastra Indonesia modern sudah mulai ditulis pada akhir abad ke-19 dan awal abad ke-20. Pada masa itu sudah muncul cerpen-cerpen berbahasa Melayu Rendah yang dimuat di surat kabar dan majalah. Sayangnya, karya-karya berbahasa Melayu Rendah itu diabaikan dalam penulisan sejarah sastra Indonesia modern. Padahal secara kuantitas, keberadaan sastra JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Melayu Rendah sangat melimpah, melebihi jumlah karyakarya sastra Indonesia modern terbitan penerbit resmi pemerintah, Balai Pustaka atau pun terbitan penerbit swasta berwibawa seperti Pujangga Baru. Pengabaian karya-karya sastra Melayu Rendah tampaknya dikarenakan politik pelabelan yang dilakukan pemerintah kolonial Hindia Belanda dengan menyebut karya-karya itu disebut sebagai ‘bacaan liar’. Oleh karena itu, penulisan sejarah sastra Indonesia modern dicurigai kental dengan pengaruh politik kolonial. Oleh karena itu, buku Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern karya Darma Putra dapat disejajarkan dengan karya-karya peneliti sastra di tingkat nasional itu. Hanya saja, objek dan ruang lingkup kajiannya berbeda. Namun, berbeda dengan sastra Indonesia modern, klaim Nemoe Karma sebagai tonggak kelahiran SBM sejak 1969 hingga 2000 bukan karena pengaruh politik kolonial lantaran melihat novel itu diterbitkan penerbit resmi pemerintah Hindia Belanda, Balai Pustaka. Munculnya klaim Nemoe Karma itu tampaknya lebih karena memang belum ditemukan karya SBM sebelum Nemoe Karma hingga akhirnya Darma Putra menemukan karya-karya I Made Pasek dan Mas Nitisastro. Dalam dunia penelitian hal semacam ini tentu lumrah. Memperkokoh Tonggak Meski menggunakan judul Tonggak Baru SBM, buku Darma Putra pada kenyataannya hanya memuat satu makalah yang diperkaya lagi mengenai karya-karya SBM sebelum Nemoe Karma dilengkapi dengan lampiran cerpen-cerpen karya I Made Pasek dan Mas Nitisastro. Pembaca belum mendapat informasi yang lengkap mengenai sosok I Made Pasek dan Mas Nitisastro yang dinobatkan Darma Putra sebagai pelopor SBM. Kajian terhadap karya-karya kedua 190



pengarang itu pun baru dilakukan sepintas, belum secara mendalam. Edisi terbaru Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern seyogyanya bisa memperkokoh tonggak itu dengan menampilkan biografi yang relatif lengkap mengenai I Made Pasek dan Mas Nitisastro. Begitu juga kajian lebih mendalam mengenai karya-karya mereka. Fakta bahwa SBM diawali dengan cerpen, seperti halnya kelahiran sastra Indonesia modern, merupakan hal yang menarik untuk ditelaah lebih jauh. Memang, tidak mudah untuk menulis biografi lebih lengkap mengenai I Made Pasek dan Mas Nitisastro karena terbatasnya data dan informasi yang bisa didapat. Namun, seperti diceritakan Darma Putra dalam pengantar edisi baru, usaha untuk mengungkap sosok I Made Pasek sudah dilakukannya. Bahkan, saat dilakukan seminar mengenai kepeloporan I Made Pasek dalam SBM di Buleleng, 18 Oktober 2008, Darma Putra menyumbangkan makalah mengenai daftar karya I Made Pasek yang didapatnya dari katalog perpustakaan asing (melalui internet). Yang tak kalah penting tentu saja kajian mendalam mengenai karya-karya I Made Pasek dan Mas Nitisastro. Pengungkapan mengenai kualitas karya kedua pengarang ini secara mendalam tidak saja akan memberikan gambaran yang lebih utuh mengenai karya-karya awal SBM, tetapi juga memperkokoh tonggak kelahiran SBM yang dipancangkan Darma Putra. Bagian penting yang perlu digali dalam karya-karya awal SBM ini misalnya, apa yang memengaruhi munculnya tema-tema kontemporer dalam cerpen-cerpen I Made Pasek dan Mas Nitisastro. Sejauh mana tema-tema itu bertemali dengan dinamika sosial budaya masyarakat Bali pada masa itu? Terlebih lagi, jika disimak, karya-karya I Made Pasek mengungkap awal bergeraknya modernisasi di Bali. Salah JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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satu cerpennya, “Ajam Mapaloe” misalnya tak semata mengungkap pentingnya pendidikan bagi masyarakat Bali tetapi juga menyelipkan gagasan kesamaan kesempatan memeroleh pendidikan bagi perempuan Bali. Kendati begitu, Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern tetap merupakan merupakan karya terpenting dalam jejak kajian SBM. Tidak saja karena Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern mampu memancangkan tonggak baru kelahiran SBM tetapi karya ini juga kaya dengan data dan informasi mengenai perjalanan SBM sejak awal kelahiran hingga perkembangan terkini. Ini memang keunggulan seorang Darma Putra yang memiliki latar belakang sebagai seorang wartawan. Karyakarya Darma Putra mengenai sastra Indonesia modern atau pun kajian mengenai wanita dan media di Bali selalu melimpah dengan data dan menunjukkan seorang peneliti yang tekun dan sabar mengumpulkan data sekecil apa pun. Ini yang membuat karya-karya Darma Putra banyak diacu para peneliti sesudahnya. Urgensi Tonggak Baru Sastra Bali Modern juga ditunjukkan dengan hadirnya kritik terhadap sejumlah karya SBM mutakhir. Selama ini kritik SBM terbilang sangat minim. Padahal, pertumbuhan SBM sepuluh tahun terakhir sangat pesat. Namun, kita tetap memendam harapan akan lahir sebuah buku atau penelitian yang mengungkap sejarah SBM yang lebih lengkap dan mendalam sejak awal kelahiran hingga kini. Usia seabad sebetulnya sudah cukup untuk lahirnya buku sejarah SBM yang memadai. Harapan semacam ini pernah diungkapkan IDK Raka Kusuma, sastrawan Indonesia modern sekaligus SBM yang meraih hadiah sastra Rancage tahun 2002. Membandingkan dengan sastra Sunda modern serta sastra Jawa modern, Raka Kusuma menyebut sejarah SBM masih malintihan (tinjauan sepintas), belum masorohan (kajian utuh). 192



Darma Putra tentu sangat mungkin mengisi harapan ini. Jika hal itu dilakukan, tidak saja ‘tonggak baru’ SBM yang dipancangkan Darma Putra tetapi sebuah ‘tonggak yang lebih kokoh’ mengenai SBM. Kita tunggu saja.


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Bali, Benteng Terbuka Yudistira Adnyana* Judul

: Bali Benteng Terbuka 1995 -2005

Penulis

: Henk Schulte Nordholt

Penerbit

: Pustaka Larasan dan KITLV jakarta

Tahun

: 2010

Tebal

: xxx + 120 hlm

B

uku ini mengisahkan dinamika sosial di Bali dalam satu dasawarsa (1995–2005). Pesan utamanya, Bali sedang menghadapi dilema. Di satu sisi, bagaimana meraih otonomi daerah yang lebih besar vis-a-vis Jakarta, mengingat desentralisasi telah menimbulkan perpecahan administratif yang membuat tindakan koordinasi di tingkat provinsi menjadi ilusi belaka. Pada sisi lain, bagaimana menangkal pengaruh luar yang berbahaya dan pendatang yang tidak diinginkan, tanpa mencederai perekonomian Bali yang membutuhkan pengunjung asing, investor dan tenaga kerja murah agar dapat bertahan. Ringkasnya, bagaimana menjadikan Bali sebagai benteng terbuka (hal. 4). Karya ini menyadarkan pembaca bahwa Bali telah menjadi medan terbuka bagi pertarungan relasi kekuasaan ekonomi-politik nasional maupun global. Dimana posisi buku ini? Pada bagian kata pengantar, Dwipayana mengungkap terdapat dua cara pandang berbeda terkait isu demokratisasi dan desentralisasi. ____________

* Yudistira Adnyana adalah alumni S2 Program Pascasarjana Universitas Indonesia Jakarta. Kini mengajar di FISIP Universitas Ngurah Rai Denpasar.

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Pertama, kubu optimisme-profesional, yang meyakini bahwa pelaksanaan desentralisasi akan berjalan secara normal, linear serta membawa dampak positif bagi daerah. Kedua, kubu pesimisme-realistis yang berpendapat bahwa desentralisasi bukanlah proses yang bersifat bebas nilai sehingga apa itu “yang baik” merupakan hasil pergumulan relasi kuasa antar kekuatan politik yang bermain dalam desentralisasi (xiii-xiv). Cara pandang buku ini termasuk kubu kedua. Politik di Bali dilukiskan secara “muram” seperti kata-katanya, “Di Bali, otonomi daerah dan demokrasi elektoral tidak otomatis membuahkan pemerintahan yang lebih baik. Sebagai gantinya, kedua proses itu memperkuat pembentengan politik identitas Bali. Ajeg Bali menghapus wacana tentang kewarganegaraan (inklusif) yang menjadi landasan utama demokrasi. Ironisnya, diluar segala upaya meraih penyucian dan pembaruan moral, korupsi merajalela di lingkaranlingkaran administratif”. Dalam memahami realitas sosial Bali, buku ini condong dengan pendekatan konflik dibanding pendekatan harmoni. Pendekatan harmoni, memandang realitas sosial di Bali sebagai citra yang harmonis, eksotis dan apolitis. Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Jane Belo (antropolog), Walter Spies, Colin McPhee, Katherine Mershon (seniman) dan ilustrator Miguel Covarrubias adalah sederet nama yang termasuk dalam kelompok ini. Sebaliknya pendekatan konflik, memandang realitas sosial di Bali cenderung penuh konflik dan kekerasan. Geoffrey Robinson (1995) jadi salah satu wakil kelompok ini. Pelaksanaan otonomi daerah ditengarai memicu kekerasan karena lemahnya koordinasi otoritas pemerintah pusat dan provinsi. Akibatnya, lembaga-lembaga administratif tidak mampu lagi mengelola banyak konflik. Dibawah tajuk “kasus adat” sengketa tanah dan perbatasan JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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serta konflik mengenai kasta dan klaim-klaim status di dalam desa mudah meledak jadi tindak kekerasan. Mengutip Majalah Sarad, antara 1997 dan 2003 nyaris setiap bulan terjadi “kasus adat” yang berujung pada kekerasan massal. Selain itu, gejala premanisme politik turut menambah panjang daftar kekerasan di Bali (hal. 54-57). Dalam konteks ini, perbandingan antara dua rezim politik amat bermanfaat. Ternyata gejala premanisme politik di tingkat lokal “kenyal” dalam rezim otoriter (Orde Baru) maupun rezim demokratis (Orde Reformasi). Dari sisi terlihat masih terjadi kesenjangan antara sistem demokrasi dengan budaya demokrasi. Tepatnya, budaya demokrasi tercecer di tengah pembaharuan sistem demokrasi. Buku ini mengkritisi wacana Ajeg Bali yang digagas cendikiawan kelas menengah urban. Di mata para penggagasnya, Ajeg Bali menjadi semboyan yang mengisyaratkan kebutuhan akan suatu pertahanan-diri sosial-budaya. Tujuannya, membentengi Bali dari ancaman luar. Bentuk-bentuk kekerasan baru yang menghasilkan lonjakan rasa tidak aman menyediakan landasan bagi gerakan Ajeg Bali. Wacana Ajeg Bali dinilai kurang kuat rujukan historisnya. Argumen diperkokoh dengan membeberkan bukti-bukti sejarah Bali yang penuh konflik dan kekerasan serta krisis yang hebat. Misalnya: 1880-an – 1890-an terjadi peperangan internal; 1906-1917 terjadi penaklukan kolonial dan bencana alam; 1930-an terjadi depresi ekonomi; 1940an pendudukan Jepang dan revolusi; 1950 dan awal 1960an terjadi ketegangan politik, gunung meletus dan gagal panen; 1965-1966 terjadi pembantaian massal; akhir 1980an keprihatinan mengenai efek globalisasi, kerusakan lingkungan dan investasi tak terkontrol; 1990-an krisis politik dan ekonomi, teroris, epidemi SARS dan perang 196


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Irak. Dalam rentang 120 tahun, hanya ada tiga dekade kemakmuran yang relatif mulus, periode antara 1919 dan 1929, serta 1970 sampai akhir 1980-an (hal. 15). Bagi Schulte Nordholt, adalah paradoks cendikiawan kelas-menengah Bali cenderung menekankan keotentikan regional mereka (dan mengingkari identitas Indonesia mereka). Menurutnya, konsep Ajeg Bali didasarkan pada model pascakolonial yang mengacu pada masyarakat tertutup dan homogen. Cendikiawan Bali sesungguhnya menghadapi tantangan luar-biasa besar, yakni bagaimana Bali dapat bertahan dalam konteks global yang lebih luas? Sampai di sini dilema Bali sebagai benteng terbuka tidak dapat dipecahkan. Pasalnya, perekonomian terbuka dan identitas kultural tertutup tidak cocok satu sama lain. Salah satu tantangan terbesar dihadapi para administrator dan cendikiawan Bali adalah mengembangkan suatu gagasan yang lebih dinamis tentang kebudayaan mereka, yang menawarkan ruang bagi hibriditas dan dimensidimensi transnasional. Penulisnya membayangkan sebuah Bali yang berfikir terbuka, percaya diri, teratur dan berwawasan ke luar, sebuah Bali sebagai rekanan metropolis bisnis seperti Singapura akan muncul di masa depan.


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”Komodifikasi” yang Dipaksakan: Fenomena Joged Porno Buleleng I Wayan Artika* Judul

: Komodifikasi Tubuh Perempuan, Joged

Penulis

: Nengah Bawa Atmaja

”Ngebor” Bali Penerbit : Program Kajian Budaya Universitas Udayana dan Pustaka Larasan Tebal

: xvi-296

Tahun

: 2010

B

uku ini merupakan hasil kajian yang mendalam dan komprehensif terhadap fenomena muculnya pergeseran kesenian hiburan (joged bumbung) dari yang pakem ke joged porno, mula-mula muncul di Buleleng pada tahun 1999, sejalan dengan ledakan ”goyang inul” dalam industri hiburan pop di Indonesia. Buku ini berangkat dari kecaman, kritik, atau cercaan para juru moral terhadap ”joged ngebor” (hal. xiii). Walaupun kecaman, kritik, dan cercaan itu amat keras tetapi tarian ini selalu ramai penonton, sejurus dengan berkembangnya trend seni pop. Nengah Bawa Atmaja memulai kajiannya dengan menguraikan sejarah joged bumbung dalam masyarakat Bali sebagai ruang untuk memahami pergeseran joged dari pakem ke porno (jaruh/porno). Penulis menetapkan tahun 1999 sebagai awal pergeseran tersebut karena ketika itu beberapa seka joged di Kabupaten Buleleng ”berkreasi guna ____________ * I Wayan Artika adalah karyasiswa Pendidikan Doktor Linguistik Konsentrasi Kajian Wacana Sastra, Universitas Udayana.

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menambah daya tarik” joged pakem (hal. 2). Pada bagian ini, seharusnya ada kajian mendalam mengenai jalur erotis yang menjadi pilihan menambah daya tarik joged pakem. Menyelipkan erotisme dalam seni untuk meningkatkan nilai jual bukanlah satu-satunya pilihan seniman. Wayang kulit Jawa misalnya, tanpa ”penyedap rasa erotisme” terbukti telah mampu menarik minat khalayak melalui pemanfaatan teknologi, tata lampu, dan berkolaborasi dengan seni pop. Buku ini memberi satu perspektif yang jelas kapan pergeseran joged pakem terjadi, yaitu dekade 1970an (Revolusi Hijau) (hal. 14-15), yang sesungguhnya ”potret” kecil perubahan yang terjadi dalam kehidupan masyarakat Bali secara umum. Karena itu, kajian semacam ini sebenarnya bisa digunakan untuk menggambarkan perubahan besar yang terjadi dalam kehidupan masyarakat. Nengah Bawa Atmaja mengakui bahwa di balik perubahan joged pakem menjadi joged porno ada ide atau ideologi dan itulah sebenarnya ide atau ideologi masyarakat Bali saat ini. Pada bagian ”Adegan di Ruang Pentas” (hal. 25-50) adalah ekspresi fenomena joged porno yang paling kontroversial karena menuai kritik, kecaman, dan cercaan. Di atas pentas joged porno, penonton menyaksikan tarian-tarian porno dan penari joged mengambil peran sosial-publik yang sangat mencurigakan: subjek atau objek, pelaku atau korban, pemenang atau pecundang. Mengapa erotisme atau pornografi menjadi sah dalam fenomena munculnya joged porno di Buleleng? Penulis buku ini menjelaskan karena adanya ideologi pasar (hal. 52). Pandangan ini agak sulit diterima mengingat kesenian dalam masyarakat Bali tidak merupakan industri. Pada Bab Tujuh dikemukakan bahwa penari joged porno dan sekanya sendiri tidak mengalami perbaikan status ekonomi (hal. 215). Artinya, keliru memahami bahwa fenomena joged porno dengan menggunakan ideologi pasar/uang. JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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Bisa dilihat pada kenyataanya: berapa kali pentas dalam satu bulan, apakah seka joged porno bisa memasuki industri hiburan nasional, apakah seka joged diuntungkan melalui penjualan dan pembajakan DVD joged porno? Buku ini salah satu kajian terbaru terhadap kesenian Bali. Penulisnya tidak menggunakan teori kesenian untuk memecahkan permasalahan yang dikonstruksi sehubungan dengan munculnya joged porno di beberapa desa di Buleleng. Selama ini kajian kesenian Bali menggunakan teori kesenian atau sedikit menggunakan teori-teori agama. Kajian Geertz (1996) terhadap teater barong-rangda, misalnya, menggunakan pendekatan semiotik, membangun makna barong-rangda dari perspektif luar (Barat). Artinya, kajian-kajian seni Bali masih terkungkung dalam ilmu atau teori seni itu sendiri dan belum dilakukan usaha akademik untuk melihat kesenian Bali dari wilayah-wilayah luar dan di sinilah peran penting penelitian Kajian Budaya ”rasa lawar”, khas Ngurah Bagus dari Universitas Udayana, Bali. Itulah arti penting buku ini dalam kajian kesenian dan kebudayaan Bali. Yang jauh lebih penting adalah penelitian-penelitian sejenis harus mampu menyusun satu teori tentang kebudayaan Bali sehingga tidak menggunakan teori Barat semata. Joged porno yang muncul di Buleleng semestinya tidak dilepaskan dengan munculnya fenomena goyang Inul (goyang ngebor) di kancah industri hiburan dan televisi di Indonesia. Digunakannya kata ngebor pada kesenian joged bumbung adalah satu analogi dengan goyang ala Inul. Bisa dikatakan sebagai epigon atau mengikuti suatu trend atau kecenderungan. Inul sendiri ada dalam posisi pro-kontra. Walaupun demikian, ketika itu di Indonesia, telah muncul berbagai jenis ”goyang” (goyang patah-patah, goyang gergaji). Mengapa Inul (yang ber-brand goyang ngebor) menguasai jagat industri hiburan? Hal ini disebabkan oleh keterbukaan dan ”kebebasan” sehubungan dengan 200



reformasi, yang disambut hingar-bingar pula oleh industri hiburan (para even organizer) dan industri televisi. Inul, menurut VCD/DVD amatir, telah goyang ngebor jauh sebelum era reformasi tetapi di kampung-kampung di pinggiran kota Surabaya dan sekitarnya, ketika ditanggap untuk hajatan perkawinan. Goyang ngebor Inul menjadi masalah ketika ia tampil di jagat industri hiburan: yang sengaja dikaburkan antara faktor ekonomi dan moralitas. Di sini ada pihak yang merasa disaingi (dari segi popularitas dan pendapatan). Lalu, pihak tersebut melemahkan posisi Inul dan goyang ngebor-nya itu melalui klaim penyimpangan moral dan agama. Lantas bagaimana hal ini dalam joged porno di Buleleng? Persoalan ini hanyalah sementara sejalan dengan perubahan trend. Pihak televisi dan pebisnis hiburan tidak berpikir mengenai moral dan ajaran agama pada kasus Inul. Yang ada hanya konsep bahwa pasar sedang terbuka terhadap goyang ngebor Inul. Jadi, harus dieksploitasi habis-habisan. Pada konteks ini tubuh dan goyang ngebor telah dilepaskan dengan relasinya terhadap konsep yang dikonstruksi bahwa agama dan moral adalah kekuatan yang menguasai tubuh atau yanng mengontrol tubuh. Tubuh Inul dan goyang ngebor adalah barang dagangan dan hal ini sah atau legal, terbukti dengan sambutan pasar yang hebat. Keuntungan pun diraup oleh pebisnis hiburan dan televisi. Joged porno di Buleleng adalah ekspresi lokal goyang Inul, yang mana membuktikan betapa besarnya kuasa media (televisi) dan industri hiburan dalam ”cakram”. Suku-suku di Indonesia mengenal kesenian erotis dan cukup hanya tumbuh dan berkembang di lingkungan suku atau subsuku tersebut. Kesenian erotis ini menghadirkan tokoh perempuan, yang bisa dipahami sebagai cerminan bahwa perempuan-perempuan suku tersebut adalah subordinat laki-laki. Kesenian ronggeng di Dukuh Paruk, JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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sebagaimana dikisahkan oleh Ahmad Tohari dalam trilogi novel Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk, tidak semata kesenian erotis, sebatas goyang atau ”Upacara Buka Kelambu” tetapi juga adalah ajang jual-beli keperawanan. Dalam tradisi ronggeng di Dukuh Paruk, keperawanan adalah komoditas atau barang dagangan. Tradisi kesenian ronggeng, yang dibungkus atau dicampurkan dengan mitos-mitos atau narasi-narasi mistik, sama sekali bukan kesenian tetapi satu bursa setingkat padukuhan, bursa lelang keperawanan penari ronggeng. Kesenian-kesenian sejenis ronggeng (gandrung, tayub, jaipongan) mirip dengan ronggeng tetapi dari segi sebagai ajang bursa lelang keperawanan, ronggeng adalah satu-satunya. Kesenian-kesenian ini hidup di wilayahnya, sebagai milik bersama dan tidak merembes ke luar wilayah suku itu karena terbentur oleh persoalanpersoalan teknik atau karena adanya konsep lokal dalam hal komodifikasi kesenian. Jika dibandingkan dengan ronggeng, yang mengandung segi-segi erotisme dan mistik maka joged porno sama sekali tidak menyimpan makna dari segi itu. Karena itulah Nengah Bawa Atmaja menganalisis kehadiran para perempuan (penari joged porno) dari segi ilmu hegemoni (hal. 179). Media atau industri hiburan nasional menjadi acuan di seluruh wilayah Indonesia. Itu semua menjadi model yang dilokalkan. Ujungnya adalah satu kondisi penyeragaman. Pola ini terjadi di beberapa desa di Buleleng, ketika beberapa seka joged bumbung tradisional mengadaptasi atau tengah beranalogi atau ingin menjadi bagian industri hiburan nasional, dalam bentuk dihadirkannya joged ngebor. Buku ini membangun satu pemahaman sistematis atas jogged ngebor, menggunakan satu pandangan kritis bahwa hal itu dilakukan secara sadar dalam kerangka menempatkan tubuh perempuan (penari joged) sebagai barang dagangan (komodifikasi) walaupun hal ini sangat 202



lemah dan dipaksakan. Dari segi komodifikasi yang diterapkan untuk memahami bagaimana tubuh perempuan dikemas dalam industri hiburan nasional, komodifikasi tubuh perempuan penari joged di beberapa seka di Buleleng adalah tidak sepenuhnya komodifikasi, secara praktis. Hal ini harus dikembalikan kepada tujuan orang Bali berkesenian dan mengapa perempuan Bali dari beberapa desa di Buleleng bersedia menari jogged porno di bawah kecaman, kritik pedas, dan cercaan para “juru moral”? Bali yang sangat maju keseniannya, sampai saat ini kesenian belum menjadi satu jenis pekerjaan/profesi. Kesenian adalah satu sambilan yang murni, kecuali beberapa cabang seni rupa. Jika dari kerja sambilan ini seseorang bisa mendapat tambahan penghasilan, adalah konsekuensi logis saja. Penjualan kaset-kaset atau DVD/CD rekaman kesenian Bali, yang dipelopori oleh perusahan rekaman Aneka Record di Tabanan mungkin satu perkecualian. Bisnis itu bukan bisnis kesenian tetapi hanya bisnis dengan memanfaatkan teknologi elektronika dalam aktivitas kesenian yang dimulai dengan dokumentasi secara amatiran. Perkecualian lain adalah dalang wayang kulit Cenk Blonk dari Belayu, Tabanan. Akan tetapi, sebagai industri kesenian atau komodifikasi kesenian, masih harus diuji. Mengapa hanya Dalang Cenk Blonk yang terbilang sukses; mengapa jejaknya tidak diikuti oleh dalang-dalang lain? Komodifikasi kesenian, yang tidak terbatas pada komodifikasi tubuh, seperti dikaji dalam buku ini, pada kasus Bali memang telah muncul sejak lama, khususnya di bidang seni rupa dan kerajinan. Sementara itu, komodifikasi seni pertunjukkan telah dicoba, dengan memasukkan beberapa seni pertunjukan atau teater Bali ke wilayah industri pariwisata, namun hal itu tidak berhasil karena seni pertunjukan tersebut hanya satu skrup paling kecil dalam industri pariwisata. Komodifikasi tubuh perempuan penari joged adalah JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 02, Oktober 2011

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bagian dari trend industri hiburan nasional. Hal ini muncul di tengah kesenian joged bumbung bukan tanpa alasan, karena kesenian ini memiliki potensi melakukan analogi goyang ngebor. Tampaknya memang ada komodifikasi tubuh perempuan, yang sebenarnya tidak demikian adanya karena seni joged menggunakan perempuan sebagai aktornya. Jadi tugas baru penari joged di atas panggung pun harus mau dilakukan, yaitu menari sambil goyang ngebor. Jadi, komodifikasi itu satu paham baru yang tidak sepenuhnya tepat diterapkan pada kasus joged ngebor. Sebagai perspektif ilmu, bisa saja diterapkan tetapi makna yang ditimbulkan tidak demikian adanya dengan makna para perempuan penari joged dan seka-nya. Mungkin saja, semua itu sebagai satu bentuk ”gerakan lokal” idealisme berkesenian, ingin mencapai satu eksisistensi lewat kesenian joged ngebor. Hal inilah yang tidak dikaji dalam buku ini. Buku ini memosisikan komodifikasi tubuh perempuan pada kesenian joged ngebor di Buleleng, sesuai dengan teori yang digunakan untuk memahami atau memaknai kasus joged ngebor, yaitu ideologi pasar. Ideologi pasar secara emik dalam kegiatan berkesenian orang Bali tidak dikenal. Memahami perubahan joged pakem ke joged porno dengan teori dan ideologi ini, agak dipaksakan. Pandangan komodifikasi (dalam buku ini khusus untuk perempuan penari joged) sebenarnya bisa diperluas ke wilayah kesenian lain di Bali sehingga ditemukan jawabanjawaban sehubungan dengan: bagaimanakah komodifikasi dalam kesenian Bali; apakah ia ada; mengapa demikian. Inilah arti penting buku ini: membuka jalan ke penelitian yang lebih luas sehingga memberikan satu sumbangan pemikiran ke arah pengembangan kesenian Bali di masa depan: apakah harus ada komodifikasi seni di Bali atau biarkan saja seni berkembang secara alamiah, menjadi bagian hidup orang Bali seperti sedia kala. 204


Jurnal Kajian Bali (Journal of Bali Studies) Tema Edisi Mendatang Edisi 3, April 2012 Tantangan Tata Ruang Bali Batas waktu pengiriman artikel 1 Desember 2011

Edisi 4, Oktober 2012 Bahasa Bali dalam Pelangi Ilmu Batas waktu pengiriman artikel 1 April 2012

Edisi 5, April 2013 Pariwisata Bali, Kini, dan Nanti Batas waktu pengiriman artikel 1 Desember 2012

Edisi 6, Oktober 2013 Penulisan Sejarah Bali Batas waktu pengiriman artikel 1 April 2013

Untuk informasi lebih lanjut hubungi: [email protected] [email protected]

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