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http://web.mit.edu/research/ MIT Research
http://library.stanford.edu/ Stanford University Library
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/ Knowledge Wharton
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/index.html UC Berkley Library
http://www.international.ucla.edu/eas/journal/general.htm UCLA East Asia Center
http://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/research/centres/ Oxford International Relations and Politics Research
http://www.bcg.com/ Boston Consulting Group
http://www.mckinsey.com/ McKinsey Consulting
- Thai Culture and Democracy 3/2009
The battle lines are drawn, in the ongoing fight over Thailand’s grotesque lèse majesté laws. It’s “Western” democracy versus “Thai” culture. In contemporary political discourse, after all, ”culture” is just about the only word whose international currency rivals democracy’s. To be sure, culture commands more respect than the “dictatorship” and “oppression” it is frequently invoked to mask. As a justification for torture, murder, and the arbitrary imprisonment of political opponents, pseudo-cultural arguments are not only effective at home —where they can be tailored to fit just about any narrative about the imperative to protect traditional values from corrupting alien impositions. They also appeal to a sizable constituency of self-loathing Westerners whom third world dictators have somehow turned into their apologists — useful idiots persuaded not only that basic human rights are, indeed, “alienable” but also that championing the right of non-Western peoples to speak their minds or otherwise control their own destiny amounts to doing violence to their cultural heritage.
Whatever the outcome of this fight will be — the ultimate outcome is not in doubt, but it could go either way in the short run — framing the debate in these terms is counterproductive for everyone, on both sides of this fight, who loves the country, its people, and its institutions. Advocates of democracy are much too quick to defer to the brown-nosed apologists of the current regime on the true content of Thai culture. And the defenders of Thailand’s cultural heritage — those for whom cultural discourse is more than just a rhetorical strategy to legitimize an elite’s privileged access to political power — often betray a rather cartoonish view of both the “culture” they seek to defend as well as the alien cultures whose encroachments they so stalwartly oppose.
The key misunderstanding that plagues well-intentioned people on both sides of this pointless debate is that no “culture” is really specific enough to mandate a single regime type, a single form of government, or a single configuration of institutions. This, incidentally, is true of “Thai culture” as much as it is true of the miscellany of cultures crassly lumped together under the all-encompassing “Western” label. And, in the specific case, it is a gross oversimplification — in plain language, a lie — to say that restrictions on anyone’s ability to discuss basic political issues are any more ideally suited to Thailand’s cultural values than they would be to those of any country in the West.
Lest we forget, most places in Western Europe were ruled by more or less absolute monarchs for much longer than Thailand has been — not to mention much longer than they themselves have been “democratic.” Democratization not only constitutes a very recent development in countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. As recently as four or five decades ago, it was rather common to suspect that democracy was destined to fail in countries distinguished by the “parochial” and “subject” political cultures prevalent in southern Europe. Participatory, pluralist institutions, it was thought, are unlikely to work properly in contexts where citizens are generally passive, uninvolved, and deferential to elites. Interestingly, these are more or less the same arguments made about Thailand’s supposed incompatibility with “Western” democracy.
Lest we forget, moreover, it’s in the country with arguably the proudest republican tradition in Europe — France — that the model of royal absolutism originates. Indeed, it is from French-style absolutism that King Chulalongkorn the Great borrowed heavily in his attempt to build the kind of modern state that Thailand still lacked as of the mid-nineteenth century. Is “republicanism” any more compatible with French culture than “royalism?” To be sure, few people would have argued as much in 1788. Yet, that’s exactly what France got in 1792. The fact is that “French culture” prescribes neither. French culture has given rise to, and has in turn been re-shaped by, both royalist and republican ideas.
Just as there is nothing especially “democratic” about Western culture, it could be argued that Thai culture is not quite as unfriendly to so-called “Western” democracy as it is often made out to be. In fact, there are at least three inconvenient facts that undermine the argument that the lèse majesté legislation is merely the legal expression of foundational, long-held values more integral to Thai culture than is the unfettered expression of political ideas.
First, it’s not really true that Thai culture is historically any more “undemocratic” than most “Western” cultures. It could be argued, as famous social critic Sulak Sivaraksa did twenty years ago, that Thai society came to embody the ideals of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” five hundred years before the French ever came up with that slogan. Way back in the thirteenth century, the people who lived in the kingdom of Sukhothai experienced levels of equality and freedom vastly superior to those most Europeans enjoyed at the time [UPDATE: Exactly how "free" they were is in dispute; see the exchanges in the comments below]. Consider this passage from the venerable Ramkhamhaeng inscription (dated 1292 CE). At a time when most Westerners lived as serfs — essentially the property of feudal overlords — King Ramkhamhaeng had these words inscribed on his throne:
In the time of King Ramkhamhaeng this land of Sukhothai is thriving. There is fish in the water and rice in the fields. The lord of this realm does not levy toll on his subjects for traveling the roads; they lead their cattle to trade or ride their horses to sell; whoever wants to trade in elephants, does so; whoever wants to trade in horses, does so; whoever wants to trade in silver or gold, does so. [...] When commoners or men of rank differ and disagree, [the King] examines the case to get at the truth and settles it justly for them. He does not connive with thieves or favor concealers [of stolen goods]. When he sees someone’s rice he does not covet it; when he sees someone’s wealth he does not get angry. [...] When he captures enemy warriors, he does not kill them or beat them. He has hung a bell in the opening of the gate over there: if any commoner in the land has a grievance which sickens his belly and gripes his heart, and which he wants to make known to his ruler and lord, it is easy: he goes and strikes the bell which the King has hung there; King Ramkhamhaeng, the ruler of the kingdom, hears the call; he goes and questions the man, examines the case, and decides it justly for him. So the people of this muang of Sukhothai praise him. [Translation in David K. Wyatt, Studies in Thai History, p. 54-55.]
The Ramkhamhaeng inscription contrasts sharply with contemporary accounts of life in medieval Europe as well as with the model of political and social organization that became dominant in Siam with the rise of Ayutthaya. It describes a strikingly egalitarian society where the king’s subjects were remarkably equal under the law and free to pursue economic activities of their own choosing. It describes a society ruled by an accessible king, one who is confident enough in his own position to routinely lower himself to the level of his subjects to adjudicate their disputes. The king is accorded praise and respect not simply qua inherently superior being, but because of what he does for his people. Historian David K. Wyatt suggests that King Ramkhamhaeng self-consciously defined the administration of the Tai kingdom of Sukhothai in contrast to the more hierarchical, more unequal, more obsessively ritualistic Khmer kingdoms ruled by self-styled “gods.” With the rise of Ayutthaya, however, it was the very Khmer practices Ramkhamhaeng looked upon as bastardizations of Tai culture —slavery, Brahmanism, sakdina, and devaraja rule — that ultimately won out. Incidentally, that’s in part the reason why fanatical nationalists in Thailand are obsessed with Khmer ruins like Phra Viharn (and even Angkor). After all, it is only by claiming ownership of Khmer traditions that they can avoid acknowledging the fact that some of the key organizing principles of modern Thai society are no less foreign than the Western “impositions” they so valiantly resist.
The second inconvenient truth is that no such thing as Thailand existed (whether as a political entity or even merely as an idea) as of two centuries ago. Not only is present-day Thailand essentially a negative construct — it includes contiguous territories in mainland Southeast Asia left over from French and British colonization. The rulers in Ayutthaya and then Bangkok never really controlled much beyond the Chaophraya basin and the country’s eastern seaboard prior to the nineteenth century. When they did come to control what is now Thailand’s north, south and vast sections of the outer northeast, it was not by plebiscite or popular insurrection that these territories gave their allegiance to the King of Siam. It was rather by conquest and skillful political maneuvering. Parts of northern Thailand, for instance, were essentially brought under Siamese control in exchange for bailing the Lanna rulers out of the debts they had incurred with European trading companies. As such, how much sense does it really make to speak of a single Thai culture? How can whatever Thai national identity the people of Udon Thani, Chiang Mai, and Nakhorn Si Thammarat share be understood without reference to the homogeneity enforced by the authorities in Bangkok through sustained propaganda and a good deal of violence — not to mention the most careless disregard for traditional local customs? And how really “natural,” “sacred,” or otherwise worthy of insulation from domestic debate (not to mention “foreign” ideas) should we presume that single, national identity to be?
Third, it has escaped many on both sides of this debate that lèse majesté legislation as it is currently interpreted and enforced is not something that has existed in Thailand from time immemorial. In fact, at least with respect to the monarchy, the Thai press was immeasurably more free a century ago than it is today. For much of their rule, King Vajiravudh (Rama VI) and King Prajadhipok (Rama VII) — whose job description, it should be noted, was “absolute” (not “constitutional”) monarch — were subjected to vicious criticism and sometimes pointed derision by the local press. And though repression was intermittently applied, the Thai journalists of the time could afford to be much more than the neutered bunch of sycophants they have now become. By contemporary standards — in an obscurantist time when restrained, somewhat apologetic articles in the Economist pass for mortal affronts — the cartoons and editorials routinely printed in the pages of early twentieth century Thai newspapers are genuinely shocking. Scott Barmé’s book Man, Woman, Bangkok provides an especially compelling illustration.
Once again, these considerations point to the conclusion that there is nothing especially “Thai” about lèse majesté. The legislation itself has little to do with Thai culture. In fact, Thai society had shown itself mature enough to tolerate, for decades prior to the more recent restrictions, open discussion of the monarchy. Lèse majesté is rather but a quintessentially modern instrument of repression that leaders like Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat instituted to stifle political debate about the very content of Thai cultural values and identity. It exists not to defend Thai culture, but to enforce the vulgar, comic-book version of Thainess the military and bureaucratic elites have produced and propagated to advance no cause greater than their own aggrandizement. In this sense, those in Thailand and abroad who defend lèse majesté legislation on cultural grounds would do well to read some Thai history before they accuse foreign observers of ignorance and Thai dissidents of apostasy.
Also lost in this idiotic juxtaposition of “Thai culture” and “Western democracy” is that, far from being incompatible, cultures (Thai or otherwise) need dissidents to survive. The practices, traditions, values, beliefs, and institutions typically associated with culture can only hope to endure through the kind of constant renewal which requires of a society the courage to come to terms with its history and the willingness to engage in discussions however unpleasant or divisive. John Stuart Mill famously argued that it is in the interest of any society (or culture) to protect the expression of ideas that a majority of the population might find revolting:
“If the opinion [of the minority] is right, they [the majority] are deprived of the opportunity to exchange error for truth; if [the opinion of the minority is] wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit — the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error” (Mill, On Liberty).
As Mill’s reasoning suggests, it’s only under the most stultifying of censorship regimes that slobbering retards like Thanong Khantong are paid to write opinion columns in major national publications.
