SERANGAN, BALI-
Ni Made Ariani was born as Edah in this impoverished island of fishermen on Bali’s south-eastern coast. In order to marry her Hindu husband she converted from Islam to Hinduism and adopted a Balinese Hindu name, much as her mother before her converted from Hinduism to Islam in order to marry Ni Made’s father. And if Ni Made’s daughter, now a ten year old honors student at one of the island’s primary schools, should later marry a Muslim, she too will convert to Islam from her native Hinduism.
In an Indonesia and world increasingly concerned with sectarian divisions, Serangan stands as a model of a multi-faith community living in harmony; one of many thousands of similar communities throughout this vast archipelagic nation. Ni Made’s story is not unique. Young people from both the Hindu and Muslim villages of Serangan frequently intermarry, and births, weddings, and funerals are well attended by Hindus and Muslims alike.
To reach Serangan from Denpasar, Bali’s provincial capital, the visitor passes the ancient and important temple of Pura Dalem Sakenan, where Hindus from all over Bali gather for the important religious festival of Kuningan. Beyond the temple lay Serangan’s six Hindu villages and temples, and their neighboring Bugis Muslim village and mosque. The populations of both communities interact, intermingle, observe each other’s festive occaisons, and get along very nicely.
“For a very long time the Hindus and Bugis of Serangan have been very close, just like this,” explains I Nyoman Nener, the husband of Ni Made Ariani, as he holds his two index fingers extended and pressing together. “The Bugis were given their land by Badung centuries ago, and the descendants of Badung still come to the Bugis village to talk and pay their respects.”
A protracted war in the seventeenth century between the Balinese Hindu Kingdoms of Badung and Mengwi saw the Kingdom of Badung request military assistance from seafaring Bugis fishing communities originally from southern Sulawesi. After several decisive battles the Kingdom of Badung triumphed, and the Bugis were given a parcel of land on present day Serangan Island in a token of the Kingdom’s gratitude for their martial assistance.
Those Bugis seafarers who settled on Serangan had until then roamed the archipelagic seas, settling helter-skelter along the coasts of several islands along the routes of their fishing grounds. They built a village and mosque on their given lands, and both continue to stand inhabitted and populated to this day.
The colonial period came and went, and Indonesia achieved independence. With it Bali became a province of the modern Indonesian Republic. Throughout those centuries the population of Serangan enjoyed peace and prosperity on what was an almost idyllic tropical island; they fished in small colorfully painted and hand-carved traditional vessels, known as jukung, and farmed and cultivated small family garden plots.
In the early 1970s tourism became a leading industry in Bali. During the later years of that decade, and throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, jukung would daily ferry up to several hundred foreigners across the thin straight seperating Serangan and the neighboring coastal town of Sanur. With these foreign visitors Serangan prospered; the island was an excellent day-trip, offering sun and golden sand beaches with fine snorkeling.
In 1990 the Province issued a permit intended to promote tourism development on the island. A suitable purchase price per hectare was determined in which to buy land from the islanders. Yet many of the islanders refused to sell their land, describing it as the inheritance of future generations, even as the price was raised incrementally. In response to this local authorities set up a command post on the island and began a campaign, according to local conservationist and activist I Wayan Patut, “of intimidation and extortion in order to encourage the islanders to sell.”
By 1995 several dozens of hectares had been sold, and a consortium of developers was formed. Its stated aims were conservation and tourism development on the island. In order to realize this a plan was formed to enlarge the island by reclaiming land from the sea up to 300 meters from the existing coastline."
Dredging began in July of 1996 and a 2.5 kilometer long breakwater was built circling the area to be reclaimed. The breakwater was then slowly filled with sand and dredged coral. In all, the reclamation enlarged the island from its original 112 to 365 hectares, and the island’s topography and ecology changed profoundly and rapidly.
For the fishermen and women of this island, where schooling is not considered a priority, the many changes wrought by the project catalyzed a vastly different economic living situation. “I’ve never been to school, all I know is the sea,” states local woman Ni Made Lungsur. “Now it is much harder to make a living. Our island has changed.”
In many ways, both of the island’s religious communities felt they had been cheated and manipulated by the project. A proposal to build atop both the Hindu and Muslim cemeteries by the consortium, for example, met with furious local resistance and both communities were united in their outrage. Both communities also experienced a prolonged campaign of intimidation from the command post during the land grab, and, states Mr. Patut: “Occaisonally a community member would be defamed and denounced as a member of the banned Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) when he refused to sell.” Several prominent members of both the Muslim and Hindu communities were even arrested when confronted and pressured to sell their land.
“Yes, it is true that the reclamation project changed our way of life here. But it also diversified the people of Serangan,” explains Bapak Abdul Rahman, a prominent member of Serangan’s Bugis Muslim community. “Everyone is a fishermen here. But because of the project the younger people are now more in touch with the modern world. They go to school and study in order to get jobs. We can not depend on the sea anymore as our principal source of income.”
The Buginese village and its 350 year-old mosque stand nestled between Hindu banjars near the island’s north-eastern coast. As the day’s heat dissipates and the sun begins it evening fall to the western horizon, Serangan’s Muslim community emerges from its dwellings and the young and old mingle in the small alleys of the village. They sit on doorsteps and in the shaded raised pavilions known locally as bale. Hindu and Muslim fishermen return from the sea carrying their catch, their wives navigating the island’s small alleys while balancing on their heads large baskets full of harvested sea weed, or bulung. Children of both faiths play together, cruising up and down the narrow streets on old bicycles, kicking small soccer balls, and carrying around their infant siblings.
“Serangan is a very unique place,” continues Bapak Abdul Rahman. “For centuries now the Hindu banjars and the Bugis village have existed peacefully. This is because we have structures in place, between the elders of both communities, to talk and avoid conflict. If there is a problem between the youth, we quickly settle it. Emotions are not permitted to rise. We take immediate action to ensure that problems are resolved quickly and collaboratively. I learned this as a child while watching my father, and the young will learn it now from us.”
"Indigenous institutions and customary laws are very much alive in Indonesia, and these are very effective outlets of peaceful conflict resolution,” explains A. Ruwindrijarto, the President of Perkumpulan Telapak, a nation-wide network of social and environment activists with its main office in Bogor, West Java. “These people may not be interested in the political debates. The problems of daily living are often more clear and present to them. Yet the politics of these ideas are very connected with indigenous communities and their institutions in a holistic view.”
The sun finally sets over western shores of Serangan. Traditional Balinese Hindu gamelan music begins to drift through the darkening breeze, mixing with the local mosque’s maghrib call to prayer. Ni Made begins to prepare the evening meal in her home. Later she and her youngest child, an energetic boy of two, navigate slowly the many small alleys that make up Serangan en route to her parents’ home in the Bugis village, calling out to friends and waving and smiling at passersby. It is, after all, just another evening in Serangan, where for centuries Hindus and Muslims have lived together peacefully.
(originally published in The Jakarta Post)
Ni Made Ariani was born as Edah in this impoverished island of fishermen on Bali’s south-eastern coast. In order to marry her Hindu husband she converted from Islam to Hinduism and adopted a Balinese Hindu name, much as her mother before her converted from Hinduism to Islam in order to marry Ni Made’s father. And if Ni Made’s daughter, now a ten year old honors student at one of the island’s primary schools, should later marry a Muslim, she too will convert to Islam from her native Hinduism.
In an Indonesia and world increasingly concerned with sectarian divisions, Serangan stands as a model of a multi-faith community living in harmony; one of many thousands of similar communities throughout this vast archipelagic nation. Ni Made’s story is not unique. Young people from both the Hindu and Muslim villages of Serangan frequently intermarry, and births, weddings, and funerals are well attended by Hindus and Muslims alike.
To reach Serangan from Denpasar, Bali’s provincial capital, the visitor passes the ancient and important temple of Pura Dalem Sakenan, where Hindus from all over Bali gather for the important religious festival of Kuningan. Beyond the temple lay Serangan’s six Hindu villages and temples, and their neighboring Bugis Muslim village and mosque. The populations of both communities interact, intermingle, observe each other’s festive occaisons, and get along very nicely.
“For a very long time the Hindus and Bugis of Serangan have been very close, just like this,” explains I Nyoman Nener, the husband of Ni Made Ariani, as he holds his two index fingers extended and pressing together. “The Bugis were given their land by Badung centuries ago, and the descendants of Badung still come to the Bugis village to talk and pay their respects.”
A protracted war in the seventeenth century between the Balinese Hindu Kingdoms of Badung and Mengwi saw the Kingdom of Badung request military assistance from seafaring Bugis fishing communities originally from southern Sulawesi. After several decisive battles the Kingdom of Badung triumphed, and the Bugis were given a parcel of land on present day Serangan Island in a token of the Kingdom’s gratitude for their martial assistance.
Those Bugis seafarers who settled on Serangan had until then roamed the archipelagic seas, settling helter-skelter along the coasts of several islands along the routes of their fishing grounds. They built a village and mosque on their given lands, and both continue to stand inhabitted and populated to this day.
The colonial period came and went, and Indonesia achieved independence. With it Bali became a province of the modern Indonesian Republic. Throughout those centuries the population of Serangan enjoyed peace and prosperity on what was an almost idyllic tropical island; they fished in small colorfully painted and hand-carved traditional vessels, known as jukung, and farmed and cultivated small family garden plots.
In the early 1970s tourism became a leading industry in Bali. During the later years of that decade, and throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, jukung would daily ferry up to several hundred foreigners across the thin straight seperating Serangan and the neighboring coastal town of Sanur. With these foreign visitors Serangan prospered; the island was an excellent day-trip, offering sun and golden sand beaches with fine snorkeling.
In 1990 the Province issued a permit intended to promote tourism development on the island. A suitable purchase price per hectare was determined in which to buy land from the islanders. Yet many of the islanders refused to sell their land, describing it as the inheritance of future generations, even as the price was raised incrementally. In response to this local authorities set up a command post on the island and began a campaign, according to local conservationist and activist I Wayan Patut, “of intimidation and extortion in order to encourage the islanders to sell.”
By 1995 several dozens of hectares had been sold, and a consortium of developers was formed. Its stated aims were conservation and tourism development on the island. In order to realize this a plan was formed to enlarge the island by reclaiming land from the sea up to 300 meters from the existing coastline."
Dredging began in July of 1996 and a 2.5 kilometer long breakwater was built circling the area to be reclaimed. The breakwater was then slowly filled with sand and dredged coral. In all, the reclamation enlarged the island from its original 112 to 365 hectares, and the island’s topography and ecology changed profoundly and rapidly.
For the fishermen and women of this island, where schooling is not considered a priority, the many changes wrought by the project catalyzed a vastly different economic living situation. “I’ve never been to school, all I know is the sea,” states local woman Ni Made Lungsur. “Now it is much harder to make a living. Our island has changed.”
In many ways, both of the island’s religious communities felt they had been cheated and manipulated by the project. A proposal to build atop both the Hindu and Muslim cemeteries by the consortium, for example, met with furious local resistance and both communities were united in their outrage. Both communities also experienced a prolonged campaign of intimidation from the command post during the land grab, and, states Mr. Patut: “Occaisonally a community member would be defamed and denounced as a member of the banned Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) when he refused to sell.” Several prominent members of both the Muslim and Hindu communities were even arrested when confronted and pressured to sell their land.
“Yes, it is true that the reclamation project changed our way of life here. But it also diversified the people of Serangan,” explains Bapak Abdul Rahman, a prominent member of Serangan’s Bugis Muslim community. “Everyone is a fishermen here. But because of the project the younger people are now more in touch with the modern world. They go to school and study in order to get jobs. We can not depend on the sea anymore as our principal source of income.”
The Buginese village and its 350 year-old mosque stand nestled between Hindu banjars near the island’s north-eastern coast. As the day’s heat dissipates and the sun begins it evening fall to the western horizon, Serangan’s Muslim community emerges from its dwellings and the young and old mingle in the small alleys of the village. They sit on doorsteps and in the shaded raised pavilions known locally as bale. Hindu and Muslim fishermen return from the sea carrying their catch, their wives navigating the island’s small alleys while balancing on their heads large baskets full of harvested sea weed, or bulung. Children of both faiths play together, cruising up and down the narrow streets on old bicycles, kicking small soccer balls, and carrying around their infant siblings.
“Serangan is a very unique place,” continues Bapak Abdul Rahman. “For centuries now the Hindu banjars and the Bugis village have existed peacefully. This is because we have structures in place, between the elders of both communities, to talk and avoid conflict. If there is a problem between the youth, we quickly settle it. Emotions are not permitted to rise. We take immediate action to ensure that problems are resolved quickly and collaboratively. I learned this as a child while watching my father, and the young will learn it now from us.”
"Indigenous institutions and customary laws are very much alive in Indonesia, and these are very effective outlets of peaceful conflict resolution,” explains A. Ruwindrijarto, the President of Perkumpulan Telapak, a nation-wide network of social and environment activists with its main office in Bogor, West Java. “These people may not be interested in the political debates. The problems of daily living are often more clear and present to them. Yet the politics of these ideas are very connected with indigenous communities and their institutions in a holistic view.”
The sun finally sets over western shores of Serangan. Traditional Balinese Hindu gamelan music begins to drift through the darkening breeze, mixing with the local mosque’s maghrib call to prayer. Ni Made begins to prepare the evening meal in her home. Later she and her youngest child, an energetic boy of two, navigate slowly the many small alleys that make up Serangan en route to her parents’ home in the Bugis village, calling out to friends and waving and smiling at passersby. It is, after all, just another evening in Serangan, where for centuries Hindus and Muslims have lived together peacefully.
(originally published in The Jakarta Post)
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