The commercialization of marriage in Bali

By Garret Kam

DENPASAR, Bali (JP): Special wedding-holiday packages are being openly and shamelessly promoted by several travel agents, with foreign tourists as the potential buyers.

For the visiting couple, it is a chance to dress up in fancy outfits, as if for a costume party, have a whole orchestra and even dancers, colorful offerings degraded to decorations, a Hindu priest to mumble prayers over them, which they don't understand, and a reception with nontypical Balinese dishes or Western food.

For most Balinese, however, this means total commercialization of a sacred universal rite. Dare one liken it to prostitution? It indicates that money is more important than matrimony. If any non-Balinese Hindu tourist can come and tie the knot on the island during a holiday vacation, the meaning of marriage is lost.

What safeguards are there against tourists having their teeth filed or foreigners being cremated in Bali as long as there is a price? In fact, some places do offer tooth-filing ceremonies but cremations seem to be off limits, so far at least. But when will this last ritual barrier fall to the almighty dollar, yen, franc, mark, pound or guilder?

A few years ago, a foreigner gave a substantial amount of money to a Balinese to perform his cremation when the time came. The village refused to even consider the request. Cremations are impossible in Bali without compulsory and voluntary help from family, villagers and friends.

Other, more important questions come up: Who will pray for the foreigner's soul? Who will carry out the secondary death rites? Where will this unknown soul live? It invited a lot of unwanted ritual danger for the entire community, which wisely refused to allow the outrageous request.

Marriage in Bali, as in most other places around the world, is a holy rite that unites families and insures the continuance of genealogical lines. It is sanctioned by the community and carried out with proper prayers in a ceremony led by a consecrated religious official.

Special offerings are presented to the bride and groom and to the ancestors who will be reborn as the children of the couple. Villagers contribute to the event by constructing special pavilions; decorating the family's compound and temple; helping prepare offerings; participating in the ritual when necessary; and by giving gifts of food and other household items.

While village regulations require them to assist one another, villagers also are repaying debts of kindness to their friends and neighbors who helped them in similar events in the past.

All of these things are now being sold, or rather exploited, for mere profit. No other religion in the world offers anyone a religious rite unless those individuals are members of that faith.

A Catholic priest would not allow Buddhists to get married in his church and neither would a rabbi sanction a wedding of Protestants in a synagogue. So, why should Balinese marriage ceremonies be any different from other practices around the world?

Think of the uproar that would result if a Hindu Balinese bride and groom donned bridal gown and tuxedo just to get married and have their pictures taken in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in France.

A few years ago, an internationally famous rock singer- musician and his fiancee had a Balinese-style wedding ceremony on the island. It was arranged not by Hindu Balinese but by a Moslem Madurese. The most expensive offerings were ordered. Music for a temple ceremony rather than a wedding was played.

Although the high priest who performed the ceremony was told that the couple had officially converted to Hinduism, they had not. When local religious officials learned of what had happened, they refused to recognize the union. Appropriately, within a year, the unofficial marriage ended in divorce.

The Balinese saw this as living proof of karma-pala, getting the fruits of ones actions, usually believed as taking place after death and manifesting itself in the next reincarnation.

Recently, a tourist couple paid an undisclosed amount of money to an art museum in Bali. The couple would have had to spend at least 10 times as much back home in order to have the wedding of their dreams. The controversy that resulted led to a nightmare instead.

It was a complete misuse of the museum. They even had a priest to conduct the so-called ceremony. The offerings experts made what has been dubbed as banten bohong-bohongan, false offerings, which were incomplete and demoted them to the status of mere decorations.

Of course, this is not the first time that offerings have been misused; decorated bamboo offering poles called penjor have long been used for decorating conference centers and canang offering trays are used as restaurant table centerpieces. But then, the West has long commercialized the use of the Christian cross and many products and shops in Asia bear the names of Hindu and Buddhist deities. Is Bali adapting some of the worst features of religious commercialism?

If tourists want to come to Bali for a honeymoon, then that is perfectly fine in this earthly paradise. If they want to get dressed up in colorful wedding outfits, then let them do so at a photo studio or setting of their choice, but certainly not at a temple because Balinese weddings occur at home and not at public places.

If they want to hire a gamelan ensemble with dancers, then let them help support the performing arts. If they want a banquet, then let them and their guests have a feast to remember. However, the line has to be drawn at absolutely no wedding ceremony, no procession, no priest, and no offerings.

Non-Hindu tourist couples can dress in complete outfits for the exchange of personal vows composed in their own language near a secluded waterfall. Back at their hotel, they can have a buffet of Balinese food and entertainment with a full gamelan with dancers.

Tourist couples must not be allowed to get married in the family temple of their homestay lodging, complete with offerings and a ceremony led by a priest in the appearance of a ritual. And all of this just for the sake of having photos of themselves all dressed up in exotic clothes and feeling that they've gone through something very special. Just think of what family and friends would say back home.

The positive outcome of all of this recent uproar? Non-Hindu tourists are now forbidden from getting married Balinese style. The problem that remains is that can this really be enforced if there is money to be made?