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Academic vows to bring Bali, India closer
By M.R. Narayan Swamy, Indo-Asian News Service

New Delhi, Sep 1 (IANS) An Indian professor living in Bali is spearheading efforts to bring the overwhelmingly Hindu Indonesian island and India closer with a string of events
covering everything from religion to Bollywood.

Somvir, 35, has brought together a team of eminent Indonesians and Indians to form the Bali-India Foundation, which will promote academic and student exchanges besides
spiritual tourism, teach yoga, Hindi, Sanskrit and Balinese languages, and help the people of Bali to know India better.

It also plans to satisfy the growing appetite in Bali for Bollywood's pulsating dance numbers. In the process, the Foundation hopes to supplement the work of the Indian Cultural Centre in Bali.    

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"What the centre does is to essentially promote Bali-India ties at government-to-government level," Somvir told IANS here during a brief visit.

"What we wish to do is to promote people-to-people ties. It is necessary to promote and sustain the indigenous culture and art in Bali and India."

"Our mission is to introduce the richness of the two ancient cultures and bring the people of Bali and India closer," he said.

Somvir, who is originally from Haryana, teaches at the departments of cultural studies and tourism at Bali's Udayana University. He has lived in Bali since 1993. Three years ago, he helped the family of then Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to explore Bali.

Somvir, who was earlier associated with the Indian Cultural Centre, said the Bali-India Foundation came up two months ago with Hindu religious rituals as is customary in Bali. It would see a formal inaugural soon.

The Foundation has plans to go for 15-day exchange programmes for Balinese and Indian students involving field study, a similar but self-financed exchange programme of one month to two months duration, encourage Balinese to visit India as religious tourists, and publish a dictionary of Indian companies in Indonesia and vice-versa that would also pack handy information about Bali.

It will teach Hindi and Sanskrit to Balinese who think knowledge of the two languages will help in a better understanding of India as well as Hinduism, the religion of over 90 percent of Bali's 3.5 million people.

Bali, which has had deep and historic ties with India, is one of 27 provinces of Indonesia. At the ancient core of Balinese Hinduism is animism, bound with threads of tantrik Buddhism and ancestor veneration.

Temples are a way of life in Bali, a picturesque region whose reputation as a major tourist hub has not been shaken by recent horrific terror attacks. People of Bali have tremendous yearning for India.

But Somvir thinks that much more needs to be and can be done.

"Many Balinese priests recite Sanskrit prayers without knowing the language," he explained. "We need to rectify the gap by teaching Sanskrit. I taught Sanskrit on Bali TV for two months free, and the response was terrific.

"The demand for yoga is rising all over Bali, and virtually every second (Western) tourist to Bali wants to learn yoga. It is taught in almost all hotels but the teachers have no formal training. We will offer yoga courses.

"Spiritual tourism is a major attraction, and Bali is the place to promote India. Balinese think of the river Ganga with reverence. We can promote tourism to India with the sacred river in mind.

"As for Bollywood, it is the latest fashion statement in Bali. Bollywood is one reason why so many people are interested in Hindi. We will teach a mixture of Bollywood and ancient Indian dancing. There is a lot we can do, and we hope to do a lot!"

Somvir, who did his BA and MA in Sanskrit from New Delhi before making his way to Indonesia, called India and Bali "separated families". "We were one once upon a time. We want to help restore our old ties."