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Pura Besakih: A world heritage site contested

Introduction The Indonesian island of Bali has hosted a number of international conferences on sustainable tourism and the conservation of heritage, but does not yet have a World Heritage Site of its own. In the 1990s there was stiff local resistance to a proposal by central government that the island’s most celebrated temple complex, Pura Besakih, should be nominated as a World Heritage Site. There were fears that this would compromise the religious standing of the temple and that the islanders would lose control over key aspects of its management. The situation was further complicated because as the mother temple in Bali, Besakih was also the site of a great deal of local rivalry. Bali’s clans have rights and obligations relating to the site and there are competing claims of precedence among the most ritually revered tier of Balinese society, the so-called priestly caste who bear the title Ida Bagus. A further complicating factor was the ongoing reform of Indonesia’s political system, which had an impact on the dispute over Besakih’s World Heritage nomination. Since the fall of Suharto in 1998 successive Indonesian premiers have tried to reverse the centralist tendencies of the New Order era and to devolve power to the regions. A Law on Regional Autonomy (UU Otonomi Daerah), for example, was promulgated in May 1999, but only implemented in January 2001. However it was not the provinces to which power was devolved but to the districts (kabupaten) and municipal authorities (kota) (Picard 2003: 115). In Bali the boundaries of today’s districts were established during colonial times and are based on the island’s old kingdoms, and thus the term ‘regencies’ is also used to refer to districts. After independence the Dutch East Indies became Indonesia and the law setting up Bali as a province was enacted in 1958 (Stuart-Fox 2002: 316). At the time Bali was unique in that the provincial boundaries were equated with the island’s boundaries, a distinction not granted to any other island in Indonesia. Reform, however, has created a new set of worries in that devolution to the districts will dissolve the island’s unity, re-awaking fears that the enmities that divided the small kingdoms of pre-colonial Bali will return. If the island is not united, then how should one view any attempt to restart the World Heritage debate since the honour of inscription would not apply to the whole island but only to a portion of it? These are especially pressing concerns in the light of the decision to press ahead with nominations for three other sites in Bali: Taman Ayun Temple, the Jatiluwih rice terrace and the Petanu valley archaeological remains. Despite their worldwide significance little research has been conducted on the processes by which World Heritage Sites are nominated and accepted. This is not to say that research on World Heritage Sites has never been undertaken because there are a number of works (e.g. Shackley 1998) that have set out to do this, but only a small number of academic papers (e.g. Hitchcock 2002; Smith 2002) have analysed the manner in which World Heritage Sites are inscribed. Accounts of failed nominations are even harder to find, but