About Banjar
A banjar community is the basic of Balinese society, which organizes all daily life aspects of its members, including marriage, inheritance transactions, cremation, festivals and community events. Every family’s head in Banjar community is an active member to participate in all community affairs. Each banjar may have individual orchestra, dance, and weaving clubs.
The banjar itself is usually a group of something between fifty and two hundred individual compounds. The word banjar originally referred to a row of houses, thus to the physical clustering of compounds into a neighborhood, with a temple and a community. Nowadays, most of these banjars have split, and the banjar community is no more strictly territorial. Two banjars can occupy the same territory, and banjar members sometimes live kilometers away from the core of community,
The banjar makes up an association called the “banjar suka duka” or ” the association for the sharing of joy and pain”. This refers to the function played by the group in the performing of specific social services or work - the ayahan within the larger structure of the village. These bonds are arguably the most important of all found in the network of village associations.
The ayahan, collective work such as performed at the banjar level can take several shapes: it may consist in calling up the people to carry a cremation tower to the cemetery; it may be to help one’ fellow banjar member when they have a ceremony (wedding etc), or it may be convened at the request of the local government; it may be for the maintenance of a temple or the preparation of its festival.
All these various collective works and services (ayahan) performed inside or outside the banjar at its request are precisely defined in the banjar customary laws (awig- awig), itself installed by the collective decision of the community.
The basic social unit of the banjar is the couple of husband and wife (pekurenan). Only married couples are considered members and subjected to the banjar rights and obligations. The decisions are taken by the assembly (sangkep) of the banjar’s male members, the krama banjar, which usually takes place every 35 days.
The decisions are taken on the basis of unanimity, The banjar is now, since 1979, the lowest administrative structure of the national administration, directly under the authority of the perbekel / lurah (supra village head) and beyond the traditional village headman (bendesa adat). There are also two types of klian banjar, the kelian dinas, who is in charge of the administrative aspects of the banjar life, and the kelian adat, who looks after the customary aspects in collaboration with the bendesa adat. They usually work hand in hand, unless the two roles are assumed by the same person.