The battle, in which Ngurah Rai and 95 elite members of his Ciung Wenara regiment perished, would be later known as Puputan Margarana. Born into a ksatriya (warrior) family, Ngurah Rai followed in the footsteps of the island’s traditional warriors, who consciously opt for puputan instead of surrendering to the enemy.
Led by Bali Governor Made Mangku Pastika, the participants at the ceremony — officials, soldiers, students and relatives of the fallen heroes — bowed their heads in a silent prayer of remembrance and gratitude toward those brave men and women who gave their lives so their descendants could stand tall as citizens of a free nation.
Surat Saksi, the famed letter Ngurah Rai sent to a senior ranking Dutch army officer, was read out in the ceremony. It was in this letter that Ngurah Rai, born of a Balinese royal family, who learned the art of warfare at the Dutch colonial infantry school, rejected Dutch advances for a negotiation, famously stating that: “Negotiation is a matter that we have entrusted to our [political] leaders in
Java … On behalf of the people, I only wish the disappearance of the Dutch from Bali and we promise that we are willing to fight forever until that wish is fulfilled.”
In Indonesia from now, Ngurah Rai was officially acknowledged as a national hero and awarded a posthumous rank promotion to brigadier general. His name was enshrined as the name of the island’s international airport, a university and a highway.
Toward the end of the ceremony, the villagers of Kelaci carried colorful fruit offerings in a religious procession to the heroes’ final resting place. Most of the graves are symbolic in nature because they contain no corpse, since the bodies of Ngurah Rai and his men were cremated in a Balinese Hindu ceremony.
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