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C H A P T E R E I G H T The Age of Freedom (1950–1967) For nearly twenty years after 1954 little or no new carving was done in Pura Désa Batuan. Minor repairs were made and all ceremonies carried out, but it appears that no larger projects were undertaken, mainly, as far as I can tell, because of a major crisis within the temple community , one that was so serious it nearly came to violence . This conflict had its roots in the new social forces at work: increased education, growing belief in egalitarianism and against royalty, and increasing expansion of social horizons out of the local community. In political terms the period I call the age of freedom , jaman merdeka, began in 1950 with Indonesian independence and ended in 1967 with the replacement of Sukarno by Suharto as head of the Indonesian state. But temple building followed a slightly different periodization . The momentum of the work started soon after the Japanese retreated and continued on until 1954. Then, for unclear reasons, temple carving did not start up again until the early 1970s, after Suharto and his Orde Baru (New Order) had transformed the social circumstances of the village. The neglect of new temple building and carving for so long could have been due to the widespread poverty in Bali in the 1950s and 1960s. At the beginning of the period, the economy was just beginning to recover from the strains put on it by the Japanese occupation. A sequence of severe inflations and the withdrawal of the Dutch and delays in establishing new governmental offices staffed by Indonesians weakened the market system. The tourist trade, which started up everyone’s hopes between 1946 and 1950 when Dutch firms encouraged it, slumped especially during Sukarno’s fierce antiforeign campaigns of the late 1950s and early 1960s. A volcanic eruption in 1963 strewed ashes over many rice fields, ruining them for several years running, and severe droughts for several years in a row got the rest. However, an argument could be made that poverty —aside from acute shortages of the sort experienced in the Japanese period—is no real inhibition in Balinese temple work. All of the raw materials are at hand for the taking—stone from the ravines, bamboo and palm trunks from the gardens. All of the labor can be found within the village congregation. And all of the food, which is the main compensation of the laborers (who are of course the villagers themselves), can also be found in the village. In Batuan, for instance, immediately after the devastating Japanese occupation, the extensive work described above on the East Gate and associated structures was carried out. I am convinced that the reasons for building or not building Balinese temples in different historical periods have been not economic but social. The major barrier to new carving in the 1960s was, in my understanding, the growing dispute in regard to the duties of noble members of the temple, a painful fight that did not reach its climax until 1966, when the commoners ejected the nobles and the nobles built their own pura désa adjacent to Pura Désa Batuan. A study of this village-level conflict and its aftermath tells a good deal about conceptions of temples and the relationship between worshipers and gods in Bali. I will discuss the theological implications of the debate at the end of this chapter. But the first part of the story concerns how it was that political parties became entangled in the ritual work of Pura Désa Batuan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Right after the transfer of sovereignty to the Republic of Indonesia, the new leaders began work on establishing a system of parliaments at both national and local levels, and an array of political parties sprang up to promote their leaders. The important ones, in Bali, were the Nationalist Party of Sukarno (PNI), the Communist Party (PKI), and the Socialist Party (PSI).1 In every village there were mass meetings aimed at recruitment into each of the new parties. It was the beginning of the age of political speeches (Ind., pidato), of loudspeakers, posters, and parades. Regional elections were the first held, in 1950; then in 1955 there was a general election, and again in 1960. Throughout the next years, until the terrifying events of 1965, it was a heady period of hope. Increasingly, as the era developed, this political party mobilization was...

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