IDENTITY

The dominant stereotypes of Balinese identity are based upon the notion that there exists a certain Balinese essence, and that that essence is racially pure, unscathed by hybridity and inter-ethnic connections. The formulated uniqueness of Balinese identity is rooted in a belief in the ascendancy of racial purity. Ironically, whilst this formulated uniqueness was indeed in part a Balinese response to incorporation into the Dutch East Indies and, in turn, into the Indonesian nation, it is a concept that has been refined and honed by colonialism and, later, the Indonesian state, to serve their respective power interests.

The ‘paradisiacal’ image of Bali and the myth that every Balinese is a natural artist, innocent, happy and pure was largely created and disseminated during the colonial era, when it became the central tenet of tourism industry literature. Tourism all but died until the establishment of Suharto’s New Order regime, when colonial perceptions of Bali were later picked up by the central Indonesian government and reconstituted in the form of tourism propaganda. This included stressing the uniqueness of Balinese ethnicity, and formulating images of Balinese culture as a ‘living museum of ancient Java’ which must be preserved at all costs.

It is interesting to note that in the early years of the New Order era, tourism was officially characterised as something of a necessary evil. Whilst it generated much needed foreign exchange, tourism, it was believed, threatened to contaminate the pure, unique essence of Balinese culture. Fear of such contamination prompted the establishment of Nusa Dua, which allowed for the ghettoisation of tourists away from the island’s densely populated areas in the arid Bukit peninsula. Such ghettoisation afforded the central government in Jakarta greater control to manipulate the cultural and economic processes precipitated by tourism.

At the end of the seventies, in response to studies predicting that Indonesia’s oil reserves would dwindle by the end of the millennium, the New Order government oversaw the exponential growth of the tourism industry, which was to replace oil as the country’s main foreign income earner. Consequently, as officially characterised, tourism suddenly ceased to be a cultural threat and became instead a cultural patron. By the 1980s the New Order regime touted the industry as the primary vehicle of cultural preservation.