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Localizing Modernity in Colonial Bali During the 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Henk Schulte Nordholt
Henk Schulte Nordholt
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
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Abstract

Through an examination of an essay written by a Balinese intellectual in the 1930s, this article explores how notions of modernity and nationalism can take root in particular localities. The essay makes a case for modernization and nationalism in Bali, and points to the existing caste system, which it identifies as largely a colonial creation, as an obstacle to progress that should be eliminated.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 2000 , pp. 101 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2000

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References

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the EUROSEAS conference in Hamburg in September 1998, and at the Association for Asian Studies conference in Boston in March 1999. I would like to thank Webb Keane, Nyoman Darma Putra and the anonymous referee of this journal for their helpful and stimulating comments.

1 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991)Google Scholar.

2 Shiraishi, Takashi, An Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java, 1912–26 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

3 Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments. Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 5.Google Scholar

4 Milner, Compare Anthony, The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya: Contesting Nationalism and the Expansion of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar. Abdullah, Taufik has written in this respect an exemplary study on the Minangkabau. See his “Modernization in the Minangkabau world: West Sumatra in the Early Decades of the Twentieth Century”, in Holt, C. et al. (eds.), Culture and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp. 179–245.Google Scholar

5 Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India”, in idem, and Spivak, G. (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 39Google Scholar.

6 Vickers, Adrian (ed.), Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies 43, 1996)Google Scholar.

7 Nordholt, Henk Schulte, “The Making of Traditional Bali: Colonial Ethnography and Bureaucratic Reproduction”, in History and Anthropology 8 (1994): 89–127CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, Geoffrey, The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

8 I G.Ng. Bagus, “The play ‘Woman's Fidelity’: Literature and caste conflict in Bali”, in Being Modern in Bali, pp. 92–114.

9 Bagus, I G.Ng., “Pertentangan kasta dalam bentuk baru pada masyarakat Bali”, in Liber amicorum E.M.A.A.J. Allard (Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit, 1970), pp. 33–47Google Scholar, idem., “The Play ‘Woman's Fidelity’”, Vickers, Adrian, Bali, a Paradise Created (Ringwood, Vic: Penguin, 1989)Google Scholar; Connor, Linda, “Contesting and Transforming the Work for the Dead in Bali: The Case of Ngaben Ngirit”, in Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change, ed. Vickers, A. (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies 43, 1996), pp. 179–211Google Scholar; Picard, Michel, “Making Sense of Modernity in Colonial Bali: The Polemic between Bali Adnjana and Surya Kanta”,paper presented at the Second EUROSEAS Conference at Hamburg,3–6 Sep. 1998.Google Scholar

10 Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise, p. 49.

11 Schulte Nordholt, “The Making of Traditional Bali”; see also Picard, Michel, Bali. Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture (Singapore: Archipelago Press, 1996)Google Scholar, ch. 1.

12 Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise, ch. 3; Nordholt, Henk Schulte, The Spell of Power. A History of Balinese Politics, 1650–1940 (Leiden: KTTLV Press, 1996)Google Scholar, ch. 9.

13 Pendit, Nyoman, Bali Berjuang, 2nd ed. (Jakarta: Gunung Agung, 1979)Google Scholar; Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise; Sukarniti, Ni Luh Kt., “Perkembangan Parindra di Bali 1938–1942” (Thesis Universitas Udayana, Denpasar, 1985)Google Scholar; Djuana, I Ny., “Peranan organisasi Taman Siswa dalam pergerakan nasional di Bali 1933–1943” (Thesis, Universitas Udayana, Denpasar, 1987)Google Scholar.

14 Takashi Shiraishi, “Policing the Phantom Underground”, Indonesia 63 (Apr. 1997): 1–46.

15 Sutherland, Heather, “Pudjangga Baru: Aspects of Indonesian Intellectual Life in the 1930s”, Indonesia 6 (1968): 106–127CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 There seems to have been a kind of exchange between Poedjangga Baroe and Djatajoe; personal communication Nyoman Darma Putra.

17 Kersten, J., Bali (Eindhoven: Poitersfonds, 1940)Google Scholar, Pendit, Bali Berjuang, Ni Luh Kt. Sukarniti, “Perkembangan Parindra di Bali, I Ny. Djuana, ‘Organisasi Taman Siswa dalam Pergerakan Nasional di Bali”, Vickers, Bali, a Paradise Created, Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise, Bakker, Freek, “The Struggle of the Hindu Balinese Intellectuals: Developments in Modern Hindu Thinking in Independent Indonesia” (Ph.D. thesis, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 1993)Google Scholar, Djelantik, A.A.M., The Birthmark: Memoirs of a Balinese Prince (Singapore: Periplus Editions, 1997)Google Scholar.

18 Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, p. 6.

19 Korn, Victor, Het Adatrecht van Bali, 2nd ed. (ʼs-Gravenhage: G.Naeff, 1932), pp. 509, 664.Google Scholar

20 I am grateful to David Stuart-Fox who gave me a copy of the text. The meaning of wangsa is vague, since it also refers to (ethnic) group or race, but Wirjasutha himself translates it as caste. G.N.M. Wirjasutha, Tjatoer Wangse di Bali (n.p., 1939).

21 This quote is attributed to a book by René Fulop Miller entitled Lenin and Gandhi. I have not yet been able to trace this volume.

22 This is the Arja Samaj, an Indian reform movement founded by Dayananda Saraswati (1824–83), which still exists. During the 1950s and 1960s contacts between religious leaders in Bali and elsewhere, amongst others the Arja Samaj, were intensified. Bakker, “The Struggle of the Hindu Balinese Intellectuals”, pp. 57, 141, 299.

23 Schulte Nordholt, “The Making of Traditional Bali”.

24 He added that in Java and England an aristocracy survived without a caste system and without strict marriage laws.

25 Listed as De Hindoes by W.F. Stutterheim; Het leven van Ramakrishna by R. Rolland; Lenin en Gandhi by Rene Fulep Miller; Agama and Darmasoesila [ed.] by A.A. Bagoes Djelantik; Adatrechtbundels 15 and 28. Since it is very difficult to measure how and to what extent Wirjasutha actually made use of these books, I have not included them in my research.

26 Algemeen Rijksarchief Den Haag, Ministerie van Koloniën, “Memorie van Overgave Assistent Resident Zuid Bali, B. Cox 1940”; Schulte Nordholt, The Spell of Power, p. 311. When I asked former Assistant Resident Cox during an interview in 1981 about this matter, he said he did not remember anything about it. Instead, he emphasized his active role in Amnesty International.

27 I am grateful to Prof. I G.N. Yudana and I G.Ng.A. Wiryasutha (Wirjasutha's son), in Singaraja, who gave me valuable biographical information during interviews in December 1997. See for an analytical focus on these concerns, see Barth, Fredrik, Balinese Worlds (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

28 Soerja Kanta 2, 4, April 1926. I owe this reference to Nyoman Darma Putra.

29 Nyoman Darma Putra told me in this respect that the typography of Wirjasutha's pamphlet resembles that used by Djatajoe.

30 Cf. Schulte Nordholt, The Spell of Power, ch. 9.

31 In 1926, when he was active in Soerja Kanta, he was called Mas Wirjasutha, whereas in 1939 he had added the title Gusti.

32 See Wirjasutha, G.N.M., “Verslag dari lezing tentang ‘Penjakitnja perkoempoelan di Bali’”, Djatajoe 3, 6 (1939): 175–78Google Scholar. I should like to thank Michel Picard for sending me a copy of this article. Because of heavy rain, only 20 people attended the meeting.

33 Wirjasutha, “Verslag dari lezing”, p. 175.

34 See for a similar experience shortly after the Second World War, the transfer of docter A.A.M. Djelantik from Bali to the island of Bum because he did not take side with the Dutch during the revolution. Djelantik, The Birthmark, ch. 30.

35 Whether this play was ever performed is not clear. The writing of theatre plays in order to communicate ideas of modernity and nationalism was quite common in the interwar period. Cf. I G.Ng. Bagus, “The play ‘Woman's Fidelity’”, and Bodden, M., “Utopia and the shadow of nationalism. The plays of Sanusi Pane, 1928–1940”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 153 (1997): 322–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note the irony in connection with the ban on his essay that ‘terbit’ also means ‘to publish’.

36 J. Kersten, Bali, p. 87.

37 With regard to Batak literature, see Rodgers, Susan, “Imagining Tradition, Imagining Modernity: A Southern Batak Novel from the 1920s”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 147 (1991): 273–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Guha, “Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India”.

39 Milner, The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya, pp. 51–53, 270–71.

40 Ibid., pp. 288–89.