At dawn in the seaside village of Seseh on Bali’s west coast, Putu and her husband Made spend an hour reciting prayers and distributing small palm leaf baskets containing offerings to ensure the health of the coming harvest, while their 11-year-old daughter attends a sacred trance dance class and her brothers practice traditional music for an upcoming Hindu temple ceremony. In the weeks to come, they will help their neighbors create giant “ogoh-ogoh” dolls to be paraded through the streets and set alight the night before Nyepi, the Balinese Hindu new year.
Balinese people place small palm leaf baskets containing offerings around their homes, fields, temples and buildings every day [Ian Neubauer/Al Jazeera]
Despite the influx of tourists, the hybrid Hindu-Buddhist religion and traditional culture of Bali have remained resilient. While other tourist hot spots have seen their local customs and values adapt to cater to tourists, Bali has maintained its strong cultural components without disrupting its ancestors’ values, a study published in the Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Sports found.
This resilience is attributed to colonial government policies, including school curriculums and investments in religious buildings, as well as construction codes that have maintained the island’s sense of place. However, some warn that the influx of information and misinformation, as well as the prioritization of consumerism and fashion, could be promoting only the skin of the culture, rather than its core.
As multi-storey hotels and condominiums continue to pop up across the island’s traditional rice fields, and tourist hotspots like Ubud transform into bustling hubs for visitors, the disparity between the traditional events and the show put on for tourists becomes evident. The fear is that the Balinese culture and its core values could be at risk with the passage of time.