iieiiei1eWrkers - Leicester Research Archive - University of Leicester

CHAPTER 3
DOMINANT IDEOLOGIES IN THE THAI SOCIETY
3.1 Ideological Continuity in a Buddhist Polity
Historically, the Thai notions concerning kingship and rule which took shape in
the Sukothai and Ayudhya el-a produced a Buddhist polity that almost uniquely
among the countries of Southeast Asia managed to avoid colonial domination
during the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although
the institution of parliamentary democracy in 1932 took political power away from
the absolute monarchy, it did not "attempt any serious or permanent
undermining of its cultural centrality and 'nationalist' prestige" (Anderson,
1977:21). As a result, despite ruptures from social and political transformations
in recent decades, the socio-political order of the Thai Buddhist polity, in which
kingship is the articulating principle, persists as a strong link between the past
and the present. In this macro-conception of Buddhist cosmology the past is
used both as a sanction and a destiny for the present.
"Thailand today (as in the past) displays its brand of aggressive
nationalism, shows evide,zce of religious reformism, scriptualism, a/id
revitalization; its conservative shell is subject to tile irritant of
democratic politics,- and it wants to hitch its destiny to the engine of
progress. In these aspirations and orientations both uses of tue past
converge, and continuities a/Id transformations are to each other as
Siamese twins.
(Tanibiah, 1976:530)
Nevertheless, in the present social and political context the coupling of Buddhism
and the traditional polity is ridden with tensions, paradoxes and ambiguities.
Traditional Theravada Buddhism (Ways of the Elders) from the Sinhalese
tradition (which the Thai ruling class patronised, as well as the Mon, Burmese
and Laotian in Southeast Asia) is founded on the Asokan formula that the king
is the patron and protectoi of the religion and that he must be a Buddhist
himself. The king, as such, is an embodiment of Dhamma. The doctrinal
resolution between the business of ruling and the practice of morality, and
between indulgence in politics and the religious pursuit, is achieved by
presenting the king as both a wheel-rolling Cakkravartin (universal emperor) and
a Bodhisattva (Buddha-to-be) (Tambiah, 1973:58-61). Whereas this scheme
justified the contradictory roles of an absolute monarch, who is a righteous and
benevolent 'Dhammaraja' 1 on the one hand, but uses violence in political action