![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
The focus of the present article is marriage between local Balinese Hindus and non-Hindu Indonesians in Jembrana, West Bali. Since the 1950s, Balinese Hindus have fought for the right to claim Hinduism as their officially recognised religious practice (agama) within the parameters of Indonesian citizenship. Now, 50 years later, in the post-bomb(s) Bali world, ethnicity (suku) and Hinduism are increasingly conflated to ‘authenticate’ Balinese identity. This conflation has been aided by the popular ethnic Balinese discourse known as ‘Ajeg Bali’ (‘Bali standing strong’). The present paper discusses tensions between national citizenship and local identities, particularly as challenged by mixed marriages. Increasingly, throughout Indonesia religion has become a substitute for ethnicity that, in Hindu Bali, is also complicated by heredity caste. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Bali over the past 10 years, the present paper examines marriages that cross social boundaries and highlights responses to mixed marriages between Hindus and Muslims in the Jembrana regency. Jembrana is significant to the discussion of mixed marriages because of its proximity to East Java across the Bali Strait and the histories shared by these regions.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers whose comments drew my attention to many areas where this paper could be strengthened. Also thank you to Professor Linda Connor for her comments and support.
Notes
1. Pilgrimage (tirtha yatra) has become a major social activity for Balinese Hindus and a travel industry for others, with new sacred sites recognised regularly on Bali and other islands in the archipelago. West Bali and East Java seem to have the most new temples (pura) for reasons I have discussed elsewhere (see Ida Bagus Citation2006a).
2. The present paper underscores heterogeneity in West Bali and East Java because these areas were the focus of my research. Heterogeneity is the social reality in many parts of Indonesia. See Barth (Citation1993) on North Bali.
3. The Bugis diaspora at this stage had fought its way through Sumbawa, Lombok and Bali, with a major outpost in Blambangan East Java (Hägerdal Citation2001).
4. The ‘locals’ at this time in West Bali were also settlers from other parts of Bali who had either followed various ruling houses or were social misfits exiled to this isolated region. There are only archaeological traces of the ‘original’ residents of that area.
5. One marriage was recorded between an exiled aristocratic female and a Dutchman on Java but, in keeping with the patrilineal focus of the chronicle (babad), there are no further details of this union (Parintosa & Suryawan Citation1984, p. 28).
6. The proposed national antipornography legislation of 2005 is one example of Islamic mores informing national legislature (Suardika Citation2007).
7. This commoner family has the title ‘Guru’, which, in indigenous Balinese terms, is high but was not recognised as such in Dutch-decreed caste terms.
8. According to Brahmin relatives, Niang Radio, who talked incessantly like a radio, was her father's favourite child. There are similarities drawn between her and current Brahmin ‘descendants’ who talk quickly and excitedly. The high-caste word for grandmother, Niang, is used rather than a low-caste name.
9. The children of these marriages automatically had half-siblings from their previously widowed mothers. These relationships are still recalled.
10. Balinese revolutionaries during the Independence Movement were influenced and trained by Javanese (Nirba Citation1998).
11. One defining difference between Balinese Hindus and Muslims is circumcision, or the lack thereof in Balinese Hindu practices.
12. ‘Loloan’, in this case, is a generic term for Islam.
13. One case in the 1920s concerned an unusual royal female Agung Meri who first married a Hindu cousin, then a Chinese from Loloan, then a Muslim and then a Hindu commoner. After her final divorce, she returned to her natal Puri Negara, where she remained until her death (Parintosa & Suryawan Citation1984, p. 33).
14. Another variation in Hindu marriage practice is the incidence of polygamy. Polyandry is unviable because women are assimilated into patrilines and not vice versa. Therefore, only widows could be married off into protective care.
15. The extended family all moved to Jembrana from Tabanan. These ‘migrants’ inserted themselves into a Hindu village. Their move may have been an attempt to re-establish after Gestok, but I have no evidence of this except that it follows a pattern I observed in Jembrana.
16. He had never practised Islam since he had been ‘adopted’ by a Hindu family at a young age.
17. Ibu Dodi's ex-neighbours in the village told me that she had moved to Loloan.
18. This conflict also spread into West Bali with the 2001 murder of a healer (dukun santet) in one of the Muslim settlements (Ida Bagus Citation2006a, pp. 122–3).