Nations doing a dance

Indonesians have been unhappy with the Malaysians for the past few weeks.

It started off with several Balinese artists staging a protest at the Denpasar Cultural Park on Saturday, August 22, 2009. In later days, Indonesians had burned the Malaysian flag and had threatened to harm the Malaysian students studying in Indonesia.

Reason- they have been telling that Malaysia, in a TV advertisement program, had used one of their cultural dances to promote Malaysia to the tourism world. Malaysia denied it saying that it was a Discovery Channel program and it was the Discovery channel that had wrongly used the dance in the promotion program for Malaysia.

The dance in question was the ancient Balinese Pendet Dance of a Hindu community of Bali in the Indonesian state of Java. Indonesia and Malaysia are predominantly considered Muslim countries. Here they are, arguing over a Hindu dance. For once, what a beautiful world that we are living in!