10-04-2007, 03:25 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->To the Island of the Gods
October 1, 2007
Rediff columnist Francois Gautier, a French writer and journalist based in India for the last 33 years, visited Indonesia recently and made a special journey to the island of Bali.
He offers his unusual impressions of this island, one of the country's 33 provinces, and famous for its temples and performing arts. Bali is a majority Hindu island in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
For a lover of India's spirituality, Hinduism in Bali represents a refreshing and wonderful experience. Balinese Hinduism is a Puranic one that came peacefully from India in the fourth century AD.
Because there was no real connection with India after the eighth century, it remained pure and was not diluted by the ritualism of the later Vedantic Indian period.
Balinese Hindus worship one Supreme Divinity, although you do find many of the Hindu Gods -- Ganesh, Vishnu (called Wishnu), Shiva etc. There are women priests, something that is missing in modern Indian Hinduism. Homes are temples in themselves, which create strong family bonding.
When Balinese do go to temples, twice or three times a year, it is a marvellous informal, non-ritualistic ceremony, which has Buddhist (when Buddhism was not dissociated from Hinduism) and Tibetan similarities. Like the way women raise their hands over their heads, a flower in it, or how they stack food offerings (Tibet must have received some of the same influences as Bali from an ancient non self-centred Buddhism).
A dance to remember
October 1, 2007
True there are still some animal sacrifices in some parts of Bali -- but they happen too in remote villages of the Kumaon Himalayas -- and you find a lot of daemons and a few elements of tantrism. But so do you in modern Tibetan Buddhism, which is today so fashionable amongst western intellectuals and their media.
What Balinese practice in effect is a form of Vaishnava Tantra, whereas the guest is God, hence their openness to outsiders.
There are Brahmins in Bali, but no real castes, only caste names. The quality of the Hindu tradition transmitted orally in Bali from generation to generation, is amazing.
The Kecak Ramayana, sometimes known as the 'Monkey dance', for instance, is an extraordinary ballet, which reflects faithfully the ideals of the Ramayana, with a touch of Buddhism and Tantrism. It is a dance, which may be performed for the benefits of the tourists, but watching it, one feels that the Balinese still practice it for themselves and get caught up in the trance-like ethereal beauty of the women dancers who incarnate feminity at its best.
Yet, Balinese Hinduism is facing multiple threats.
From Islam, of course, firstly. Although Indonesia is a secular country and there is, and has been, genuine attempts at giving the country's multiple provinces some kind of federalism, two hundred thousand Hindus were massacred in terrible pogroms in 1965 by the Indonesian army. Bali's extremely deadly Islamic bombings in 2002, which targeted Westerners, as well as Hindus, have also given a serious jolt to Balinese Hindus.
Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world and the three million Hindus of Bali stand fragile and vulnerable in the face of this huge majority, which allowed Abu Bakar Bashir, the so called 'spiritual leader' of the 2002 bombers to receive a very light sentence and be released in 2006.
As the Chinese did in Tibet, the Indonesian government is also quietly encouraging immigration of Muslims to Bali, particularly from Java. Today, Hindus comprise only 60 per cent of the population of Denpasar, Bali's capital, whereas they were 91 per cent in 1990. Mosques, which were a rarity in Bali, are now springing up everywhere.
Tourism is also a threat to Bali.
With it has come paedophilia, crime, drinking, drugs, without mentioning the fact that most big hotels are owned by outsiders and not Balinese.
There has been a sudden drop in arrival of Western tourism after the bombings -- some say up to 70 per cent -- and the Indonesian government has been promoting 'domestic' tourism.
That sounds fine, except that Indonesians, mostly Muslims, do not have the same respect for Bali's cultural and ecological beauty that Westerners have, and may even be hostile to Hindus.
Tourism kills the soul of a country and Bali, such a small country, is already showing signs of the decay in its culture and ethos: in Sanur or Kutti, Denpasar's most famous beaches, every shop is devoted to cheap tourist artefacts and every other person hassles you for a massage, a souvenir, or a restaurant. Luckily, as soon as you move a little bit inland, Hindus there seem to have retained much of their culture and innocence. But time presses as Bali is so defenceless because of that very innocence.
The third threat, which Bali faces -- and that is really paradoxical -- is from Hindus.
Visiting Hindus scholars from India have thought that Balinese Hinduism is 'unorthodox' and needs to realign itself to a Vedantic mode.
This has created the beginning of a split amongst Balinese Hindus.
A small group, led by some of the teachers of the Bali Hindu University, which has more than a thousand students, are trying to bring into line Balinese Hinduism with its sister Indian concern, encouraging Balinese Hindus to go for tirtha yatras to India and visit Varanasi, Haridwar, Badrinath, Kurukshetra etc. They say that Balinese Hinduism missed the reforms introduced by Shankaracharya and that it should reconnect with Vedantic Hinduism -- rather than a Puranic one -- and they want to abolish castes, even though castes do not play an important role on the island.
There is another school of thought which wants to preserve Balinese culture; its individuality, its worship of one single divinity, its home temples and unique ways of worship. And thank god, at the moment, it is still in majority.
http://specials.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/01sld1.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
October 1, 2007
Rediff columnist Francois Gautier, a French writer and journalist based in India for the last 33 years, visited Indonesia recently and made a special journey to the island of Bali.
He offers his unusual impressions of this island, one of the country's 33 provinces, and famous for its temples and performing arts. Bali is a majority Hindu island in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
For a lover of India's spirituality, Hinduism in Bali represents a refreshing and wonderful experience. Balinese Hinduism is a Puranic one that came peacefully from India in the fourth century AD.
Because there was no real connection with India after the eighth century, it remained pure and was not diluted by the ritualism of the later Vedantic Indian period.
Balinese Hindus worship one Supreme Divinity, although you do find many of the Hindu Gods -- Ganesh, Vishnu (called Wishnu), Shiva etc. There are women priests, something that is missing in modern Indian Hinduism. Homes are temples in themselves, which create strong family bonding.
When Balinese do go to temples, twice or three times a year, it is a marvellous informal, non-ritualistic ceremony, which has Buddhist (when Buddhism was not dissociated from Hinduism) and Tibetan similarities. Like the way women raise their hands over their heads, a flower in it, or how they stack food offerings (Tibet must have received some of the same influences as Bali from an ancient non self-centred Buddhism).
A dance to remember
October 1, 2007
True there are still some animal sacrifices in some parts of Bali -- but they happen too in remote villages of the Kumaon Himalayas -- and you find a lot of daemons and a few elements of tantrism. But so do you in modern Tibetan Buddhism, which is today so fashionable amongst western intellectuals and their media.
What Balinese practice in effect is a form of Vaishnava Tantra, whereas the guest is God, hence their openness to outsiders.
There are Brahmins in Bali, but no real castes, only caste names. The quality of the Hindu tradition transmitted orally in Bali from generation to generation, is amazing.
The Kecak Ramayana, sometimes known as the 'Monkey dance', for instance, is an extraordinary ballet, which reflects faithfully the ideals of the Ramayana, with a touch of Buddhism and Tantrism. It is a dance, which may be performed for the benefits of the tourists, but watching it, one feels that the Balinese still practice it for themselves and get caught up in the trance-like ethereal beauty of the women dancers who incarnate feminity at its best.
Yet, Balinese Hinduism is facing multiple threats.
From Islam, of course, firstly. Although Indonesia is a secular country and there is, and has been, genuine attempts at giving the country's multiple provinces some kind of federalism, two hundred thousand Hindus were massacred in terrible pogroms in 1965 by the Indonesian army. Bali's extremely deadly Islamic bombings in 2002, which targeted Westerners, as well as Hindus, have also given a serious jolt to Balinese Hindus.
Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world and the three million Hindus of Bali stand fragile and vulnerable in the face of this huge majority, which allowed Abu Bakar Bashir, the so called 'spiritual leader' of the 2002 bombers to receive a very light sentence and be released in 2006.
As the Chinese did in Tibet, the Indonesian government is also quietly encouraging immigration of Muslims to Bali, particularly from Java. Today, Hindus comprise only 60 per cent of the population of Denpasar, Bali's capital, whereas they were 91 per cent in 1990. Mosques, which were a rarity in Bali, are now springing up everywhere.
Tourism is also a threat to Bali.
With it has come paedophilia, crime, drinking, drugs, without mentioning the fact that most big hotels are owned by outsiders and not Balinese.
There has been a sudden drop in arrival of Western tourism after the bombings -- some say up to 70 per cent -- and the Indonesian government has been promoting 'domestic' tourism.
That sounds fine, except that Indonesians, mostly Muslims, do not have the same respect for Bali's cultural and ecological beauty that Westerners have, and may even be hostile to Hindus.
Tourism kills the soul of a country and Bali, such a small country, is already showing signs of the decay in its culture and ethos: in Sanur or Kutti, Denpasar's most famous beaches, every shop is devoted to cheap tourist artefacts and every other person hassles you for a massage, a souvenir, or a restaurant. Luckily, as soon as you move a little bit inland, Hindus there seem to have retained much of their culture and innocence. But time presses as Bali is so defenceless because of that very innocence.
The third threat, which Bali faces -- and that is really paradoxical -- is from Hindus.
Visiting Hindus scholars from India have thought that Balinese Hinduism is 'unorthodox' and needs to realign itself to a Vedantic mode.
This has created the beginning of a split amongst Balinese Hindus.
A small group, led by some of the teachers of the Bali Hindu University, which has more than a thousand students, are trying to bring into line Balinese Hinduism with its sister Indian concern, encouraging Balinese Hindus to go for tirtha yatras to India and visit Varanasi, Haridwar, Badrinath, Kurukshetra etc. They say that Balinese Hinduism missed the reforms introduced by Shankaracharya and that it should reconnect with Vedantic Hinduism -- rather than a Puranic one -- and they want to abolish castes, even though castes do not play an important role on the island.
There is another school of thought which wants to preserve Balinese culture; its individuality, its worship of one single divinity, its home temples and unique ways of worship. And thank god, at the moment, it is still in majority.
http://specials.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/01sld1.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->