Jurnal Kajian Bali_Oktober 2011_online

Transcription

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
ISSN 2088-4443
......................................................................................................................................................................
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
ISSN 2088-4443
.........................................................
DAFTAR ISI
Pengantar ~ iii
ARTIKEL
Global Kamasan
Siobhan Campbell ~ 1
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
ii
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.
iii
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
iv
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]
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Siobhan Campbell
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
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Global Kamasan
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
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Siobhan Campbell
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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Global Kamasan
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).
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Siobhan Campbell
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
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Global Kamasan
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.
7
Siobhan Campbell
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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Global Kamasan
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.
9
Siobhan Campbell
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
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Global Kamasan
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)
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Siobhan Campbell
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.
5
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Global Kamasan
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.
13
Siobhan Campbell
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.
8
Interview with Mangku Nengah Mujana, Kamasan, 28 September 2010.
14
Global Kamasan
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
9
Interview with Ni Wayan Wally, Kamasan, 30 January 2011.
15
Siobhan Campbell
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/
16
Global Kamasan
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
17
Siobhan Campbell
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
Global Kamasan
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.
19
Siobhan Campbell
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
Global Kamasan
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.
21
Siobhan Campbell
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
Global Kamasan
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
23
Siobhan Campbell
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.
24
Global Kamasan
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.
25
Siobhan Campbell
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).
26
Global Kamasan
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.
27
Siobhan Campbell
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
28
Global Kamasan
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.
29
Siobhan Campbell
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.
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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.
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Global Kamasan
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.
33
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]
34
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
35
Adrian Vickers
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
37
Adrian Vickers
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
39
Adrian Vickers
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
41
Adrian Vickers
(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
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Adrian Vickers
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.
44
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.
45
Adrian Vickers
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)
46
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).
47
Adrian Vickers
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).
48
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).
49
Adrian Vickers
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).
50
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
51
Adrian Vickers
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
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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,
55
Adrian Vickers
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
57
Adrian Vickers
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.
59
Adrian Vickers
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,
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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.
62
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
T
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
63
Mark Hobart
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.
64
The Relevance of Cultural and Media Studies to Theatre and Television in Bali
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.
3
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.
65
Mark Hobart
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.
66
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.
6
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
67
Mark Hobart
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.
68
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.
9
The argument has been developed by Nelson Goodman in Languages of Art.
10
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
69
Mark Hobart
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.
70
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.
71
Mark Hobart
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.
72
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.
14
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.
15
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.
73
Mark Hobart
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.
74
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.
75
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]
76
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
R
1
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.
77
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.
78
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
79
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
80
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:
81
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.
82
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
83
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
84
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
85
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
86
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.
87
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!
89
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
91
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
92
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
93
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.
94
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
95
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
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Currey
Howe, Leo. (2005). The Changing World of Bali: Religion, Society and
Tourism. New York: Routledge.
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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
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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
98
’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.
____________
* 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]
99
Nazrina Zuryani
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.
T
1
Upacara Betara Turun Kabeh (turunnya semua unsur ke-Tuhan-an)
100
’Sarad-Jatah’: Representasi Sosio-Religius pada Budaya Pangan di Bali
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
101
Nazrina Zuryani
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.
102
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:
103
Nazrina Zuryani
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
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Nazrina Zuryani
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).
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Nazrina Zuryani
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.
108
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
109
Nazrina Zuryani
*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
110
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
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Nazrina Zuryani
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
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Nazrina Zuryani
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).
114
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)
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Nazrina Zuryani
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
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Nazrina Zuryani
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.
118
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
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Nazrina Zuryani
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
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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”
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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
122
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]
123
I Gde Parimartha
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
125
I Gde Parimartha
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
127
I Gde Parimartha
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).
129
I Gde Parimartha
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
131
I Gde Parimartha
Korban meninggal di pihak Kerajaan Badung dan kehancuran Puri Pemecutan
pascapenyerangan (Foto KITLV, Repro Seabad Puputan Badung, 2006).
132
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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I Gde Parimartha
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).
135
I Gde Parimartha
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
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I Gde Parimartha
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.
139
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).
140
Globalisme dan Multi-Versalisme ...
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
141
I Ketut Ardhana
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
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I Ketut Ardhana
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
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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.
146
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),
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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.
2
148
“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.
3
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.
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I Ketut Ardhana
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
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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
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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
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I Ketut Ardhana
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Technological University, Singapore.
Berger, Arthur Asa. 2000. Tanda-tanda dalam Kebudayaan
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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.
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Perspektif Multikultural (Katurang ri Kalaning Purnabakti).
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Antar Suku Pada Masa PascaSoeharto di Indonesia”, dalam
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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.
159
I Nyoman Darma Putra
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
160
Mungkinkah Menganggap Akhir Abad ke-20 Sastra Bali...
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).
161
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
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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
163
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),
165
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.
167
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.
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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.
171
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,
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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
173
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
181
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
183
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.
185
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.
186
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
187
I Made Sujaya
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
189
I Made Sujaya
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
191
I Made Sujaya
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.
193
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.
194
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
195
Yudistira Adnyana
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
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.
197
”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.
198
”Komodifikasi” yang Dipaksakan: Fenomena Joged Porno Buleleng
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.
199
I Wayan Artika
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,
201
I Wayan Artika
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
203
I Wayan Artika
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]
Global Kamasan
Siobhan Campbell
Adrian Vickers
The Relevance of Cultural and Media Studies to Theatre and Television
in Bali
Mark Hobart
Workplace and Home: Understanding the Sai Baba Movement in Bali
as an Urban Phenomenon
'Sarad-Jatah': Representasi Sosio-Religius pada Budaya Pangan di Bali
Nazrina Zuryani
Aktualisasi Nilai-nilai 'Puputan' dalam Pembangunan Karakter Bangsa
I Gde Parimartha
Globalisme dan Multi-Versalisme: Beberapa Catatan tentang Dinamika
Sosial Budaya di Bali
I Ketut Ardhana
Mungkinkah Menganggap Akhir Abad ke-20 Sastra Bali Memasuki
Sebuah Era Keemasan?
I Made Sujaya
Yudistira Adnyana
"Komodifikasi" yang Dipaksakan: Fenomena Joged Porno Buleleng
I Wayan Artika

Jurnal Kajian Bali_Oktober 2011_online

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