Could Bali have survived as a sovereign Hindu kingdom, like Nepal was until 2008? The island became part of the expanding Dutch empire in the East Indies only in the first decades of the 20th century. Previously, it had maintained its Hindu sovereignty, even as Hindu rule in neighbouring Java had collapsed in the 1520s as a result of dissension caused in the ruling family after many of its members had converted to Islam. Java, prior to its political capitulation to Islam, was the seat of the powerful Hindu maritime empire, viz, Majapahit, in existence since the late 13th century. The Hindu king, informs RC Majumdar (1944), left Java and took shelter in Bali, then a dependency of Majapahit, about 1522 (Hindu Colonies in the Far East, P69).

A large number of Javanese, says RC Majumdar, found “migration to Bali as the only means to save their religion and culture". Bali thus became the last stronghold of Indo-Javanese culture. The subsequent history of Bali was merely a continuation of Majapahit. It preserved from oblivion “much of it which Java herself lost as a result of conversion to the Muhammedan faith" (Ibid, P71).

The eclipse of the Hindu sovereignty, though not its religion and culture, happened in the early 20th century in the age of Dutch colonialism. The end was not only pathetic but also dramatic. Whereas the Balinese had acknowledged nominal Dutch suzerainty in 1839, it took many naval expeditions to subdue the island, divided into several autonomous states. In 1908, as historian RC Majumdar informs, the last heir of the Emperors of Majapahit, having found himself hopelessly besieged in his palace by the Dutch, refused with scorn the offer to save his life and family by unconditional surrender. Remembering the “proud examples of his Kshatriya forefathers, he seized his sacred sword, and bodily rushed out with his nobles, wives and children to meet an end worthy of his race" (Ibid P72).

Indonesia: A Country Study (2011), of the series produced by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, carries further sensational details. It says that in Badung, Tabnan, Klungkung, and others, the rajas and their families and followers sacrificed themselves in dramatic frontal assaults on KNIL (Royal Dutch East Indies Army) guns. These puputan, or ritual suicides, killed hundreds of men, women and children, decimating aristocracy, and obliterating all meaningful further resistance to the expansion of colonial rule in Bali (P34). Dutch rule soon reached its final extent in the East Indies, encompassing far-flung islands like Kai (in south eastern Maluku) and Papua (on the island of New........

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