GWK the New Besakih of Bali

The Island Bali has changed much during the last century and most of it during the last 50 years, since tourism has grown continuously. In the period 1945-1949 Resident Jan van Baal has to cooperate with the raja, the eleven traditional rulers. Their political and economic power has been abolished. All realms had their own temple, but for the Island as a whole the 'mother' temple of Besakih probably was the major sanctuary. It is located quite high in the mountains,backed in the north by Gunung Agung and looking to the south.
In mid-2018 a new major religious-cultural sanctuary has been opened, the 60 hectare vast GWK, Garuda Wishnu Kencana. It is a sculpture/image of the mythic bird of Garuda carryingthe God Wishnu. It is located on a hill in Nusa Dua, in the very dry Southern and peninsula, close to the airport of Bali. All (or at least most of the) expensive hotels are located in Nusa Dua.
During our last trip to Indonesia,7-29 October 2018, we first made a stop of 5 days in Bali and thefirst visit was to GWK as it is commonly called. GWK is in our perception a sanctuary suited to the new Bali, hotels of Nusa Dua, tourists. Many of the female visitors were wearing the Muslim veil. It has the character of entertainment that is since centuries also connected toplaces ofpilgrimage.
After the entrance (ticket office, shops, restaurants), there is a road uphill along a theatre (with performances of Barong, Kecak, other dances) and people then may enter the most sacred space of the large compound, with a place for prayer and grand statues of Garuda and Wishnu.

Above: one of the first pictures to be seen on the entrance road is of Rama and Sinta, while Rama is hunting a dear at the request of Sinta. Below is the formal entrance where the small GWK is places in the midst of a fountain. Behing, on the pillars are shown figures from the Ramayana like Wibisana and Kumbakarna, brothers of Ravana, the great opponent of Rama. Not much could be seen of the other incarnationof Vishnu, Krishna.

Transport here is mostly by walking or by small buses. Butone mayalso hire a Segway atthe price of IDR 60.000 (or some €4.00) per 15 minutes.

In ons closed section of the great compound one must the special religious attire, the yellow shawl. There is a small chaple where a priest (in white clothes) is available for leading a ceremony, as we saw from a distance. Inthis section also a quite big statue is Vishnu is places, along with a very big one for Garuda (and two eggs: I still have to search for the meaning of the two eggs). Another visitor took the picture of Paule and I in fron of the Vishnu statue.

 The Garuda is carrying Lord Vushnua, who supports and care for the whole world. On top of the Garuda a human person can beseen, apparently for some repair. Visitors can enter the basement of the statue and take an escalator to the middle platforms. There is still much construction under way and we saw no people entering for the platforms inside the statue.

Walking back from the majorand central statue we came along the theatre where at that time no performance was going on (usually not much longer than 30 minutes). We could take some pictures of  people dancing with the Barong.

Sunday morning in Banjarmasin

Banjarmasin is not really a hotspot for tourists. Coal, diamonds and wood is the major commodity sold from this place. But the town itself is a collection of houses along rivers and canals, connected by roads for cars and motorbikes: not to be used by bicycles let alone by people walking. But there are besides the great mosques (especially the Sabilul Muhtadin, after the Istiqlal mosque of Jakarta the second largest of Indonesia) two major events on Sundaymorning: the floating market, at 6am and the visit to the boulevard along the Martapura river,built some ten years ago by a mayor who really wanted to make his town nicer.
We left in the dark, 5am, for the floating market which is a selling place for vegetables and fruit, besides some more daily needs, at a distance of some 7 km outside the town. Houses here are built all along the river, which was for centuries used as the main means of transportation. Now on both sides motobikes can be used and one side has also a small road for cars.

We saw from the window of our boat (driven by a diesel engine) also a canoo with youngsters, rowing very fast as if they were in training for a match. In the middle our boat is shown, with two canoos of women selling their things. It was an early morning after more than 12hours of rain and therefore  it was no clear wheather, only fog and even somewhat cold on the water.
After this trip we had a nice breakfast of fish from the river. Then we coninued withthe second special event: a walk along the boulevard, created as a space for walking, 1 km on both sides of the Martapura river. In the future it will become some kind of a central park, because much of the land surrounding the giant mosque Sabilul Muhtadin will be turned into a park.

Of course,most people come to this boulevard on motorbike and they have to be put in their proper places. But then, it is a nice way af calm walking here, with many youngsters collection money for the eartquake and tsunami disaster in Central Sulewasi some individuals promoting dayak culture by dancing, and the long row of food stalls. It was truyle a festive event.

Traditional Islam in Banjarmasin

From between 7-29 October we were in Indonesia again.After a few days in Bali we came to Banjarmasin. Mujiburrahman al-Banjari, who obtained his PhD in Utrecht (Feeling threatened: Muslim-Christian Relation in Suharto-Indonesia) is now the rector of UIN. He organised an 'international lecture' at his institution. For the accreditation process such international connections are needed. The usual proof of actual levctures is a picture ofa banner aboutthe lecture with the lecturer and some people. Below a picture of the lecture at the UIN, the State IslamicUniversity as well as a similare lecture at the School of Theology of the GKE. Evangelical Church of Kalimantan.

Mujiburrahman organised also several trips in the area. Of course, there were quite a few mosques and holy graves. Beautiful and impressive mosques, but due to the beginning of the rainy season it was difficult to make nice pictures. Many mosques used still giant drums besides the loudspeakers for the call to prayer. We visited among other places the grave of the first Muslim Sultan of Banjarmasin who obtained the throne in 1526 thanks to the cooperation of Javanese Muslim from Demak on the north coast of Java. It was a Saturday afternoon, but quite a few people came here for prayer, by themselves or with the help of professional juru kunci. There were offerings of flowers and people took water for bathing.

The picture below is taken from the great mosque of Martapura (a former capital, a huge mosque, but here also at the mimbar or place for the preacher at the Firday prayers, offerings of flowers. People could askfor blessed water at the small office of the muazzin.
Banjarmasin is not a centre for salafi Muslim but it has also not yet created a strong group of liberal Muslims.People here are quite traditional, middle of the road. Martapura is called a 'town of santri' with quite many and great places for Islamic learning.  The fifth generation after the great scholar Arsyad al Banjari died about 2006 and has received an even much more grandiose grave than hisfamous ancestor: the tradition in continuing.

Ibarruri, life as an ET (Ex-Tapol)

Last October,  Paule and I made a trip to Indonesia: Bali first, then Banjarmasin, Kupang, Waingapu and the Marapu of Sumba, to end in Maumere, where the Indonesian translation of my 3d volume on Catholics in Indonesia was presented in a festive ceremony in the seminary of Ledalero, with some 600 students, starting with the national anthem, speeches by leaders, the question-answer procedure of 1.5 hour after my own impression.
I emphasized that conflict are often useful in the development of something, here the Indonesian Catholic community.
Below some pictures of the seminary, some 10 km south of Maumere, in the hilly landscape of central Flores, Sikka. Thepictures are taken from higher mountains, on the way to the great statue of Mary, Mother of all Nations in Nila.

At the entrance of Ledalero there are two statues of modern saints: Arnold Jansen, founder of the SVD, Societas Verbi Divini and Cina missionary Freinademetz. Also at other SVD institutions, like the Catholic University of Kupang, these two statues are landmarks of the great institutions of this modern order (where now the Indonesians are the largest section of their members).
One special event in Maumere was the Mass on Sunday morning by my closest friend here, Father Dr. John Prior, anthropologist, critical reader of Scripture and on Sunday morning pastor in the local prison of Maumere. We had also a walk along the ca. 150 permanent inhabitants of the prison, many of them with strange life stories, very often also with sad result of the corrupt and strange verdicts by Indonesian judges. One of the prisoners was a young man of 19 years, who had a few years ago a love affair with a girl of 16 and was sentenced to ten years of prison. He is a gifted painter ad had made the modern impression of the last supper.
At the end of Mass John Prior  asked me to sing something and I sang the Salve Regina with reference to the month of October, devoted toMary.

I received also some more books from Ledalero Press. At the suggestion of John Prior I first read the reprint of the biography of Ibarruri Putri Alam, the oldest daughter of Communist leader D.N. Aidit (born 1949). At the time of the 'Communist Coup' in 1965 she was at high school in Moskow and so she survived the terrible killing of more than 500.000 people, suspected of Communism in Indonesia. The book was first published in 2006 at Hasta Mitra, the leftist Publisher who also has printed the books by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. In 2015 this reprint was published by Ledalero Press.

With her younger sister, Iba was educated since 1958 in a special school for international friends of Russian Communism. After 1965 most Indonesian Communist criticized Russian 'Reformism' as a deviation. After much struggle she could move to China where she studied medicine, with a good interest in traditional healing, also acupuncture. While reading the book of 538 pages I had the impression that she used personal diaries.In this way we find much internal debate about the Communist Messianic dreams about 1965: between Russian revisionism and the slow discovery of the deadlock of Stalinism (and later Maoism) and a more realistic political future. She has nice depictions of the combination of pious Islamic practice of her grandparents and the Communist derams (page 73: the young children want to join the prayer of their grandparents, bowing, prostrations; 468-475 on some kind of solidarity between Communism and social programmes of religions; 286-7  on Buddhism and Communism).
From China she moved for some time to Burma, fighting in a guerilla-position in the frontier region; then toMacao until she landed in Paris, 1981, where she had tostart again from zero, learning a new language (after Russianand Mandarin Chinese), working in a supermarket. She also noticed the shrinking presence of Christianity in Europe (425: Di Eropaini gereja semakin kurang dikunjungi orang). Until the publication of her book she lived as an ET: Ex-Tapol, someone known as once connected to Indonesian Communism.
In quite many places she shows her interest in wayang stories, characters (151, 218, 375, 427, 444: also major figures in the wayang plays have there mistakes, they are not perfect begins). Although never educated in a strict Muslim tradition she shows disgust at the idea to eat pork (158).
Writtenin a simple, open and convincing style, it is a marvellous story of someone who had to live with the disaster of the 1965 killings and the end of Communism in her country (where she lived in fact less than 10 years!). Thank you, John Prior andLedalero Press, for this book!

7 November 2017: Constitutional Court on local religions

From 7-29 October I was in Indonesia again, with Paule. We visited for the first time in our life the Island Sumba. It was an exceptional happening. Everywhere in East Indonesia the old traditions, adat are still sacred and important, but in Sumba they have continued to survive as the major religious and spiritual tradition in quite many 'traditional' villages. The followers, about 30% of the population, consider themselves as Marapu, followers of the traditions of the ancestors.
An Association of village chiefs from Sumba, of similar Dayak group (= Kaharingan) and two Batak spiritual societies, Parmalim and Ugamo Bangsa Batak, have taken their case to the Mahkamah Agung or institutional court (in 2016?).  On 7 November 2018  this court published its decision that article 29of the Constitution of 1945 gives freedom of religion and belief  (agama dan kepercayaan) for all Indonesian citizens. It was specified as to the request for identity cards and passports: no longer applicants have to chose out of six official recognised religions, but they can also write that they are followers of a kepercayaan: penghayat kepercayaan. Within the ministry of culture and education they are listed as cultural and spiritual societies.

Already at our  arrival at the airport of Waingapu we shook hands with the village chief of  Prailiu, who was also the vice-president of the Marapu Society of Sumba. We were introduced by Rev. Herlina Kenya, a minister of the Protestant Sumbanese Church, who has good contacts with Marapu people. That same afternoon we visited the village of Prailiu, where we had to share a sirih-pinang with the village chief (above, left). He was very happy with the new legal overtures which gave more status and security to their old traditions. His house is, like the 15-20 great houses in this village all built with traditional materials. There is an old tree where in former times the heads of their enemies were hang, but where now still a ritual centre is found (in a quite informal way: for outsiders, the motor cycle does not disturb the sacredness of the place).

 Above the three ingredients for the ritual sirih pinang: the pinang nut, the sirih fruit and a bottle with calcium.  If you chew it for  quite long time (30 minutes up to a few hours) some calmness seems to come over you, but we had not the true habit of chewing it patiently without somehow eating it.
The other day we went to the greatest traditional village of Sumba, Rende (some 10 km east of Melolo). Here the president of theMarapu Society resides. They were very busy with the preparation of a major funeral, including a village chief and former bupati, who had died ten years ago, together with two other men and one lady. The corpses that had been kept until one month ago in foetus position, were now brought in one house, where they were accompanied by mourning people. The specialists for a night long singing traditional hymns in the complicated ritual language were called upon.There is fear that these texts  will be lost, because there are less and less specialists who know them by heart and there are no written copies.
Bali has the most spectacular funerals in Indonesia, followed by the Toraja people. But also the Sumbanese now celebrate a revival of their pride! And funerals are a major part of this.
I heard that  part of the Kaharingan want to continue as member of Hindu-Kaharingan,but other people want to be member of the Kepercayaan Kaharingan.