By Ali Syarief
Yet Today, They Are Treated as Tourist Objects—Even Considered movable to Another Island
Modern development, luxury resorts, or tourism campaigns did not craft the beauty of the Island of the Gods. It is the creation of the Balinese people and their Hindu faith, born from rituals, philosophy, and a way of life that sustains harmony between humans, nature, and the divine.
Every terraced rice field, every temple perched on a hill, every canang sari placed at dawn is part of a sacred architecture shaped through centuries. Bali did not become beautiful because of tourism; tourism arrived because Bali was already attractive.
Yet today, the very people who shaped this beauty are facing a painful reality:
They are treated as tourist objects—and worse, as if they could be “relocated” to another island.
Bali, Hinduism, and a Sacred Space That Cannot Be Moved
There is nothing more absurd than the notion of relocating Balinese Hindu communities to a new area, merely to clear land for development, investment, or expanded tourism infrastructure.
For the Balinese, land is not an empty surface.
It is a sacred space—a realm inhabited by ancestors, interwoven with rituals, and structured through a unique form of Hinduism that exists nowhere else.
A temple is not a building; it is a cosmic axis.
Rice fields are not agricultural plots; they are part of subak, a spiritual irrigation system sustained by prayer.
To relocate the Balinese is to sever the soul from Bali’s body.
Land can be reclaimed, hotels can be built—but the spiritual force that animates Bali cannot be transplanted.
When Beauty Becomes a Commodity
The problem goes beyond physical relocation.
It lies in a worldview that treats the Balinese—and their Hinduism—as components of a tourism package that can be shifted around at will.
This is a new form of colonialism.
A colonialism that targets culture, spirituality, and identity.
The sacred harmony that once defined Bali has been reduced to a “tourist attraction”:
rituals scheduled for visitors, dances staged for cameras, temples turned into photogenic backdrops.
The creators of the beauty have become spectators of the stage built from their own lives.
From Creators to Ornaments
Even more tragic, the Balinese—once the architects of harmony—are increasingly turned into living ornaments:
- Dancers become performers rather than inheritors of tradition.
- Hindu worship becomes an “exotic sight.”
- Temples become aesthetic objects rather than sacred sanctuaries.
When people and their religion are reduced to decoration, their role as subjects disappears. What remains is a commodity.
**There Is No Bali Without Its People.
And No Balinese Without Their Hindu Faith.**
This truth must be remembered:
Bali is beautiful not merely because of its landscape, but because the Balinese—through their Hindu faith—care for that landscape.
If the Balinese are displaced, the island will become hollow:
no gamelan reverberating through the dusk,
no rituals binding the cosmos and the earth,
no subak sustaining the rhythm of life,
no whispers of devotion to the divine.
Bali cannot be replicated.
Bali is a spirit—and it lives only through its people.
