The banjar

The text Social System of Bali says that “the 'banjar' is a community of equals; before the 'banjar' all castes are equal.” As a community in class, this can be beneficial to us because no one here is better than the others. No one is smarter, no one is richer, and no one is more valuable. Everyone is the same. Here, we do not compete with each other but work and think with each other. There are no stairs to climb up in order to beat the others but there is a rope that you can grab and help the others to accomplish something as one single unit.

When we talked about the banjar in class, I realized that we all really did not understand what this was. In our lives outside of the classroom, there is no such thing like a single unit but the theory of the ‘survival of the fittest.’ Everyone is trying to be better than others, not only in studies but also in many other things. Competition and success that is all our lives are about. But the banjar is more like a big family where we help each other, listen to each other, laugh with each other, and the most important things is we walk step by step next to each other.

Monday’s class was a little confusing because everyone walked into the class expecting to talk about the Ramayana but instead we had long moments of silence. No one knew what to say because no one really knew what we were doing. That’s where our lack of understanding got us. That is the banjar where the members of the banjar meet up and share their thoughts, expectations, ideas, and problems. Eventually, even we got the habit of it and dared to talk.