Portrati of Bali

Bali is a province of Indonesia and the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands. Located east of Java and west of Lombok, the province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller neighbouring islands, notably Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and Nusa Ceningan. The provincial capital, Denpasar, is the most populous city in the Lesser Sunda Islands and the second largest, after Makassar, in Eastern Indonesia. Bali is the only Hindu-majority province in Indonesia, with 83.5% of the population adhering to Balinese Hinduism. (Wikipedia 2020) © GHs 2020

The natives of Indonesian Archipelago practiced indigenous animism and dynamism, beliefs common to the Austronesian people. Native Indonesians venerated and revered ancestral spirits; they also believed that some spirits may inhabit certain places such as large trees, stones, forests, mountains, or any sacred place. This unseen spiritual entity that has supernatural power is identified by ancient Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese as “hyang” that can mean either divine or ancestral. In modern Indonesian, “hyang” tends to be associated with God. (Wikipedia 2020) © GHs 2020

Bali is Indonesia’s main tourist destination, with a significant rise in tourism since the 1980s. Tourism-related business makes up 80% of its economy. It is renowned for its highly developed arts, including traditional and modern dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking, and music. The Indonesian International Film Festival is held every year in Bali. (Wikipedia 2020) © GHs 2020

Bali is part of the Coral Triangle, the area with the highest biodiversity of marine species especially fish and turtles. In this area alone, over 500 reef-building coral species can be found. For comparison, this is about seven times as many as in the entire Caribbean. (Wikipedia 2020) © GHs 2020

The 1963 eruption of Mount Agung killed thousands, created economic havoc and forced many displaced Balinese to be transmigrated to different parts of Indonesia. Mirroring the widening of social divisions across Indonesia in the 1950s and early 1960s, Bali saw conflict between supporters of the traditional caste system, and those rejecting these traditional values. Politically, this was represented by opposing supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), with tensions and ill-feeling further increased by the PKI’s land reform programs. (Wikipedia 2020) © GHs 2020

Bali is the home of the Subak irrigation system, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is also home to a unified confederation of kingdoms composed of 10 traditional royal Balinese houses, each house ruling a specific geographic area. The confederation is the successor of the Bali Kingdom. The royal houses are not recognised by the government of Indonesia; however, they originated before Dutch colonisation. (Wikipedia 2020) © GHs 2020

Hinduism in Indonesia, as of the 2010 census, is practised by about 1.7% of the total population, and by more than 83% of the population in Bali. Hinduism is one of the six official religions of Indonesia. Hinduism came to Indonesia in the 1st-century through traders, sailors, scholars and priests. A syncretic fusion of pre-existing Javanese culture and Hindu ideas, that from the 6th-century synthesized Buddhist ideas as well, evolved as the Indonesian version of Hinduism. These ideas continued to develop during the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires. About 1400 CE, these kingdoms were introduced to Islamfrom coast-based Muslim traders, and thereafter Hinduism mostly vanished from many of the islands of Indonesia. (Wikipedia 2020) © GHs 2020

© GHs 2020