Erik de Maaker
“When I was a child, we could drink the water from the canals,” an elderly man explained to me while he looked despondent at the cloudy grayish water that pushed itself through a concrete trench on its way to a rice field. In its course, the turbid, fast-flowing water incidentally dragged an empty plastic carrier bag or the wrapper of a candy bar along. Earlier, the water also had fish, he told us, such as eel, but these were long gone. The carefully crafted canals, equipped with forks and thresholds to ensure equitable distribution across the many rice fields thirsty for water, here and there even had an empty soda can bobbing up and down. I was part of a group of some 20 academics from both Indonesia and the Netherlands who had been taken on a short tour to experience what Subak Sembung Peguyangan, located on the outskirts of Den Pasar town (Bali), looked like. Our guides were mostly elected members of the board governing this subak. A subak is a contiguous area of individually owned rice fields, which are all dependent on a gravity-fed flow of water from springs, lakes and streams. This water is directed through a comprehensive network of irrigation channels, and according to Balinese Hinduism its flow is meticulously controlled by strategically placed temples and shrines. This religio-political water infrastructure is governed by elected functionaries who provide detailed instructions as to where and when what can be planted, and what offerings need to be made to the deities, all in alignment with the local (lunar) calendar.
At one time, perhaps some 30-40 years ago, Subak Sembung Peguyangan had on all sides been surrounded by fields, and the water that it was being fed had been crystal clear. Over time, Den Pasar town, earlier confined to the south of the subak, expanded northwards. As more and more people built houses on what used to be agricultural land, the subak became encompassed, on all sides, by urban neighborhoods. In the process, large chunks of land that had earlier belonged to the subak, were by their owners converted into housing plots. Currently, the irrigation water for the subak, on its way from the mountains to the rice fields passes through urban neighborhoods, where going by its sewer-like smell and grayish milky look it may have been part of an open drain.
Our hosts were clear about their desires for the future and explicitly stated that “their subak was to remain”. I wasn’t so sure, certainly not about its viability as farmland. I could see houses on either side of the vast expanse of rice fields as evidence of the advancing city. The subak, currently 103 hectares, had previously been much larger. While it had lost in recent years just 14 hectares (Agripina et al. 2023), according to what our hosts told us, it had at one time been nearly three times its current size. No doubt, this conversion had been furthered by the low returns on farming in Bali. Confronted with an ever increasing demand for housing in Den Pasar, and the many incoming earning opportunities provided by tourism, it was (and is) attractive to abandon farming to instead build houses on the land. According to the mostly middle aged men who were our guides, only few among the younger generation of subak farming families are up for an agricultural future, creating serious challenges to the subak in time to come.
In an attempt to stop the conversion of farmland to housing plots, Subak Sembung Peguyangan has in 2011 been categorized under national law as a Green Zone (Dewi et al. 2017: 337). This means that it is currently prohibited to build on its land. The management of the Subak Sembung Peguyangan makes an effort to cater to the desires of the many tourists visiting Bali, offering it as a “hidden gem”, an “ecotourism destination” that “provides visitors with a unique opportunity to refresh their body and mind through exercise while enjoying the beauty of nature” (Ekowisata Subak Sembung 2023). The current management seems well organized and committed, but will new uses and qualifications such as these truly help to sustain the subak? Or will its farmers sooner or later stop cultivating the land and find a way to make it available for housing, thus contributing to the further expansion of Den Pasar town?
I first became acquainted with the Balinese subak as an undergraduate student in Anthropology. The subak had already been identified as ‘heritage’ in the colonial era, alluding as it did to romantic ideas about harmony between man, nature and the divine. Anthropologists have explored this interplay, albeit noting that it may not necessarily be devoid of conflicts of interest (Geertz 1972; Lansing 1987). The flow of water depends on the generosity of the deities, as well as on people’s ability to share and distribute it among one another, and all these relationships need to be maintained and negotiated. Hence, the mandatory offerings are to be made weekly, monthly or yearly at the main subak temples, as well as at each of the fields that receive water.
Many years later, I reconnected to the subak through the PhD research done by Diana Rahman at UCL (London), for whom I had the privilege of acting as an external assessor. Rahman (2021) researched the impact on the local population of the classification, in 2012, of a large section of subak as UNESCO World Heritage (UNESCO 2012). Conducting her research in and around Ubud, one of the main tourist hotspots, Diana looked at the impact which designating rice fields as World Heritage had on the people cultivating and owning these. Her research showed that the UNESCO status obtained implied that the rice fields could not be put to any other use. Rice fields have to remain rice fields. Yet many people, she found, wanted in addition to rice farming, or instead of it, build homestays or even guesthouses, to tap into the increased interest in the subak among tourists which the world heritage status yielded. Diana’s partner Agung took me on a one-day spin of the World Heritage site, which he had toured extensively some years before. To his surprise, many new hotels and homestays had come up in the middle of the rice fields. According to the regulations which come with the qualification of a World Heritage site, this is not allowed. Yet the owners of these newly built houses did not face any problems from the side of the local government, or so they told us. Rather, they shared with us that they had built on land they themselves owned, which allowed them to live among the rice fields in the subak. Building in the subak was according to them a practice that had always existed, and the local government apparently was in no position to restrict these local farmers.
The subak, and even more so the ‘water temples’ that going by Balinese Hinduism control the sources that provide the water that irrigates the rice fields, thus qualify as ‘authorized heritage’ (Gentry & Smith 2019). Although Subak Sembung Peguyangan near Den Pasar is not part of the World Heritage site, it is also explicitly presented as a place to “learn about the traditional practices of the Balinese people” (Ekowisata Subak Sembung 2023), and as such aligns with this broader authorized heritage mold as well. Authorized heritage has received the acknowledgement of governmental organizations, which has the powers to create rules and regulations to (attempt to) enshrine and protect places, objects and practices designated as such.
Gunung Kawi of Tampaksiring is strictly speaking not a water temple, but a funerary monument dedicated to ancient kings of Bali. Similar to the water temples, it has sources that generate crystal clear water, originating from the volcanic highlands above. This water can not only be drunk, it is also spiritually and physically cleansing. An ability, which the many tourists that flock to these temples eagerly use. When Agung and I entered the temple, the cashier at the gate immediately assumed that I was a tourist, and he was my tour guide. Based on that assumption, they waived his entrance fee. I was one, among dozens of tourists. Near that same gate, I heard three young men talk in Dutch, my mother tongue. I asked them about their travels, and they told me that “after days of partying at the beach, it was now time for some culture”. Gunung Kawi, similar to the other water temples, fitted clearly their expectation of what constitutes real heritage.
“The oldest temples here date back to the year 900”, an architect from Jakarta told me, sitting cross-legged behind the makeshift desk at the temple site that had his laptop. His workplace was unusual, as the table stood in a roofed but otherwise open space right in front of some of the majestic 7-meter high rock-cut candi (shrines) of Gunung Kawi. Using advanced equipment, he and his colleagues made 3D scans of the shrines, which they were now transforming into digital models of the complex. They were architects and programmers based at a central Indonesian government agency, and their job was the digitization of this prized cultural heritage, making it available to the world at large. The temple was clearly to be preserved, physically as well as digitally.
The water temples, however, were not just the domain of tourists. Gunang Kawi had a part exclusively used for religious ceremonies, and this division was even more explicit at some of the other water temples we visited. At Pura Tirta Empul, for example, I was struck by the large number of tourists engaging in the ritual purificatory bath, which seamlessly combined, or so it appeared, with Balinese making offerings at the same temple. Likewise, at the much smaller Tirta Mengening, Balinese were collecting water from the temple sources, for ritual use in the home-shrine ceremonies later on. The water temples thus combine their status as authorized heritage, with being mediums that allow Balinese to access the divine entities worshiped there. Obviously, the ticket-paying tourists are a main source of income, which helps the management to sustain the temples. The tourists who visit the temple are required to don a sarong, to at least symbolically subject themselves to the authority of the divinities present.
The water that flows down the mountains connects the water temples that control the springs with the urban neighborhoods downstream in which it is put to domestic use, and the rice fields that follow after. On the way, the water absorbs various sorts of pollution, starting with the sins which people wash off at the source itself. Eventually, it becomes undrinkable, and toxic for fish, yet continues to have the capacity to make the rice grow. While the farmers in Subak Sembung Peguyangan do not consider it desirable that the irrigation water is not clean, this currently does not seem to pose an existential threat to the sustenance of the subak. Rather, they value the subak for what it continues to deliver: rice, even if the returns are meager. And, because of the rice being grown, there are opportunities to make some money from tourists that want to visit the subak for a walk, or to enjoy a cold drink among the greenery.
In the longer run, does Subak Sembung Peguyangan have a future? Defining the subak and the water temples that feed it formally as heritage, embeds these in an authorizing discourse. Rules and regulations, imposed by governmental bodies, and asserted by in this case UNESCO, restrict the extent to which farmers, priests, and pilgrims (to name a few) are able to use the land and water these apply to. On the one hand, those who represent this authority lay claim to what they consider heritage places, or at least attempt to do so. Such claims coincide, but can also compete with those of local people. This includes priests and worshippers maintaining relationships with the divinities resident in the temples, and farmers who work the rice fields. On the other hand, the heritage label significantly increases interest among tourists, which can be monetized, for example adding value to what are otherwise rather monotonous rice fields. Making temples, water, irrigation channels and rice fields into heritage does not imply that people surrender their agency, as evinced by the new guesthouses and hotels being constructed in the rice fields that have been categorized as UNESCO World Heritage, and the activities employed by the management of Subak Sembung Peguyangan to increase its value in the tourist circuit. While no doubt creating challenges as to the sustenance of these sites for the future, it does ensure that the water temples and the subak remain alive and can continue to play a central role in people’s everyday lives, whether as authorized heritage or not.
The visit to Subak Sembung Peguyangan was part of an official side event organized by the LDE Centre PortCityFutures, at the 10th World Water Forum held on Bali May 20-24, 2024 and supported by Delft Global and Leiden Global. I gratefully acknowledge funding from Leiden-Global for enabling me to participate in this conference, and I thank Diana Rahman, Carola Hein, Foteini Tsigoni and Yi Kwan Chan for their comments on earlier versions of this blog.
References
Agripina, I. G. A. W., Siswoyo, H., & Sumiyati, S. (2023). Performance assessment of agrotourism-oriented irrigation systems in Subak Sembung, Denpasar City. Berkala Sainstek, 11(2), 86–95.
Dewi, L., Darmawan, D. P., & Suamba, I. K. (2017). Analisis sistem agribisnis padi sawah di kawasan ekowisata (Studi kasus Subak Sembung, Desa Peguyangan, Kecamatan Denpasar Utara). E-Jurnal Agribisnis dan Agrowisata, 6(3), 336–345. https://doi.org/10.24843/JAA.2017.v06.i03.p02
Ekowisata Subak Sembung. (2023, April 4). Retrieved June 28, 2024, from https://ebooks.denpasartourism.com/en/ekowisata-subak-sembung/
Geertz, C. (1972). The wet and the dry: Traditional irrigation in Bali and Morocco. Human Ecology, 1(1), 23–39.
Gentry, K., & Smith, L. (2019). Critical heritage studies and the legacies of the late-twentieth-century heritage canon. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 25(11), 1148–1168.
Lansing, J. S. (1987). Balinese “water temples” and the management of irrigation. American Anthropologist, 89(2), 326–341.
Rahman, D. F. (2021). Re-evaluating socio-cultural change in world heritage sites: A case study of the cultural landscape of Bali Province [Doctoral dissertation, University College London].
UNESCO. (2012). Cultural landscape of Bali province: The Subak system as a manifestation of the Tri Hita Karana philosophy. Retrieved June 28, 2024, from https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1194/