Discordant temporalities in Bali's new village jurisdictions

Abstract

In Bali's new village jurisdiction that came about as a by-product of Indonesia's recent decentralisation process, a magical worldview has been juridified that is intrinsically linked to traditional Balinese ritualism. The juridification of the magical worldview and the ritualism that comes with it not only attest to increasing legal pluralism in contemporary Indonesia but also bear evidence to rising interlegal tensions by showing how important norms of the national legal system, such as gender equality, religious freedom, and equal rights for all Indonesian citizens, are effectively challenged by lower level legislations. Preoccupied with the continuous actualisation of eschatological reference points in Bali's past, Balinese ritualism – together with local customary law in which it is firmly embedded – has become a major source of law in the island's new village jurisdictions. Casting modernist Hindu cosmologies and notions of time as potentially threatening to the ritual purity of the realm, the juridified traditionalist norms have exacerbated the existing discord between traditionalist and modernist Hindu Balinese, seriously disadvantaging the latter. This article explores the emic logic, the political circumstances, and some of the socio-cultural ramifications of this development by paying particular attention to divergent social notions of time implied in the conflict.

Keywords:

• temporalities of law
• juridification
• interlegality
• Bali

Acknowledgements

I thank the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology for having funded the major part of the research on which this article is based.

Notes

1. Bali Province Regulation (BPR) No. 3/2001 on the Customary Village Communities; BPR No. 3/2003 on the Customary Village Communities that contains a minor revision of BPR No. 3/2001; BPR No. 16/2009 on the Planning of the Spatial Arrangement of the Territory of Bali Province for the Period 2009–2029 that confirms BPR No. 3/2001+2003.

2. As to non-Christian soteriologies, please refer, e.g., to Pieris (1988, 74).

3. During a longer stint of fieldwork in 2008, I had the opportunity to attend about 10 weekly classes on Balinese customary law at the Hindu Theological Institute (Institut Hindu Dharma Negeri, IHDN) in Denpasar. These classes had been designed for the judicial needs of government officials from various Balinese districts. During these classes, different cases were discussed in detail, many of which concerned local inheritance law.

4. See also, Hare Krishna: Hindu atau Bukan? http://sundaranandadasa.blogspot.de/2010/12/hare-krishna-hindu-atau-bukan.html, accessed 3 November, 2013.

5. See e.g. Danandjaja (1980, 1, 5, 444), Barth (1993, 11, 15–17, 20, 77, 81–82, 228–232), Français-Simburger (1998, 20–22, 27–29, 52–64), and Reuter (2002, 4–14, 101–103, 202, 330–334).

6. See Howe (2001, 163–174, 184–192), Howe (2004, 267–271), Somvir (2004, 258–260), and Ramstedt (2008, 1229, 1232–1233, 1242).

7. Between 1997 and 2008, I visited Hare Krishna communities in downtown Denpasar, Sanur, and Klungkung, and was able to conduct interviews with some of their leaders as well as common members.

8. See also Howe (2001, 163–183) and Howe (2004, 267–277).

9. In 2009, I undertook research at the National Archive in Jakarta for a fortnight. I was able to read through a whole bundle of documents pertaining to this dispute.

10. I have been collecting modern Indonesian Hindu literature since 1988. Apart from buying textbooks and other compendiums as well as Hindu magazines and journals at various bookstores and stalls, I was furthermore able to make photocopies of older texts that had been published since the beginnings of the Indonesian Republic in a host of Indonesian institutions.

11. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1194, accessed 15 November, 2013.

12. See Hauser-Schäublin (1993, 288), Français-Simburger (1998, 49–52), Ramstedt (1998, 456–460), Putra (2009), and Wesnawa (2010, 299–300).

13. The year-count of the Saka calendar begins with the 78th year of the Gregorian calendar.

14. The term Kejawen is used interchangeably with Javanism and denotes those communities in Central and East Java that have rejected orthodox Islam until today. Their culture is marked by local variants of a syncretism between Sufi Islam and remnants of pre-Islamic Tantrism and ancestor worship (see e.g. Daniels 2009, 27, 39, 45, 56).

15. Javanese tradition traces Ranggawarsita's descent and that of Yasadipura I back to King Brawijaya, the last King of the East-Javanese Hindu–Buddhist Empire of Majapahit (Simuh 1988, 36).

16. See Simuh (1988, 17), Florida (1997, 194–203), Ricklefs (2007, 45–46, 147–151), and Carey (2008, 516–517).

17. I was invited to attend the gathering because of my long-standing connection with two of the lineage leaders.

18. In the early 1990s, I studied the genealogy of the Maha Gotra Pasek Sanak Pitu with one of their traditional priests who professed to be a follower of Sai Baba. The priest's own Balinese following constantly impressed upon me that the priest was exceptionally sakti.

19. Formerly, the customary village communities were called desa adat (i.e., customary villages).

20. See, for instance, International Crisis Group Asia Report No. 67 (Jakarta/Brussels, 7 November 2003) on “The Perils of Private Security in Indonesia: Guards and Militias on Bali and Lombok”.