The mantle of royalty sits lightly on the shoulders of Tjokorda Raka Kerthyasa. Born into Ubud’s royal family, the blood of ancient kings runs through his veins in a line dating back to the Majapahit Empire: a line broken last century when Dutch colonization reduced kingdoms to regencies.

Now just a regular man like any other, Pak Cok as he is familiarly known, is witty, insightful and deeply spiritual, but can be blunt when required – the very qualities that characterize great leaders whatever the political system. Cok has no desire for a return to monarchy any return to the past, except to learn from history, is a “dangerous fantasy”: “The system we have now is right for this time it’s a system for the people.” Rather, he believes, the legacy of Bali’s ancient monarchy endures through the social and cultural obligations placed on members of royal families.

He fulfills his own obligations in a cultural and social context, through his involvement in politics, his religious and cultural activism, and his roles as president of The Bali Heritage Trust, patron of the Ubud Writer’s and Reader’s Festival, and Rotarian. “I’m descended from that ancient way of life. To be born into the palace is to follow social structures; one of these is to preserve, maintain and innovate the physical and nonphysical – or the material and spiritual – culture of our society,” Cok says. “Keep to those obligations and they earn the respect from the community – a title alone is not enough to earn that respect; respect comes rather from what you do.” Thus speaks the writer, philosopher, artist, and defender of culture and religion.

Cok stepped outside the confines of his Balinese upbringing early, shocking his family by marrying an Australian girl, Asri, in 1978. His family quickly grew to love his bride, who is now mother to his three children and grandmother to their six-year-old grandson. The young couple moved to Sydney, where they lived for 12 years. Cok studied art and helped with the Australian Museum’s Pacific and Asian collection as a volunteer,bridges of culture between Bali and Australia”.

“We had [Balinese] dance and music the instruments are now with the University of Sydney and still being used by the Balinese community there and students of Indonesian.” His work with the Australian Museum sat well with his lifelong dedication to conserving traditional Balinese culture, a dedication now manifest in his role with The Bali Heritage Trust, an organization established in 2003 by former Bali governor Dewa Beratha.

Cok says that while it may appear that little is happening to achieve heritage goals, a mass movement taking place at the grassroots, the very place where Balinese culture lives and breathes. “Understanding the protection of our heritage needs to be spread,” Cok says. “[That] protection can only come with awareness and consciousness; that comes from knowledge and experience.”

Trips to the United States and Britain under the Trust reinforced Cok’s belief that laws on cultural preservation need to be strong and supported by direct action – laws in Indonesia being hampered by lack of people to implement and enforce them. “Those countries have very strong laws to protect historic buildings, their sites and views. But here the difficulty is that we have many ancient buildings. However, they are not monuments, but functioning buildings.”

Equally important is Bali’s literary history, says Cok, which is being supported by the writing of village and family histories. “A lot of our literature has been lost due to volcanic eruptions and colonization, so many villages are rewriting those histories from sources that are still here. These are combined with legends and facts from archaeologists to give the stories of the past.” Another vital source of Bali’s history lies in personal diaries. “A lot of family books are still kept. These can be important references too – they are sacred and personal.”

Cok agrees that as Bali develops – tourism is flourishing, building is feverish, farmland is swallowed it can become difficult to see tradition as a living, breathing expression of the island’s society, particularly in the southern regions. “The original people and their culture can’t be seen today [in places like Kuta] as readily as in Ubud, but it is still there. Culture is maintained in those areas and if you look for it you will find he says. “The difficulty is in how to maintain a cultural system with the outside influence of many different cultures and religions.”

Heavily tourist-oriented regions therefore need help maintaining that culture. “That’s something you have to actively do. Make a political commitment to that, especially when Bali is promoted as a tourist area because of that culture.” When that culture is threatened – such as by the nation’s pornography law – Cok’s rare bluntness comes into play, as he flatly and emphatically rejects the law. “Not in the aspect of protecting children and women – all need to be protected, including men – but in terms of culture. On moral ethics, we have so much diversity in Indonesia: In one place that code will be different to another.

“Our father nation already addressed this so we could be unified in our diversity. What are you going to unite without diversity? I think that is the pride of our father nation to be able to unite so many cultures and traditions that can live harmoniously. “Culture can only survive when there is a demand – where it can give spiritual and physical protection and security in people’s daily life.”

Article written by Trisha Sertori
Published on The Jakarta Post