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Religion, monarchy and politics in Thailand
– Whatrole does religion have in politicalThailand and how about the monarchy?
Index
Introduction/Background .................................................................................................................................. 2
Theories ............................................................................................................................................................. 2
Religion, Politics and Modernization compared to Monarchy .......................................................................... 3
Religion and Monarchy.................................................................................................................................. 3
Politic, modernization and Monarchy ........................................................................................................... 5
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................... 7
Appendix:........................................................................................................................................................... 7
Mandala ......................................................................................................................................................... 7
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................................... 7
Why do humans need religion? They need religion because it explains. It provides us with answers to
existential questions: why we die, why something like earthquake happens and so on. Religions are
controlling forces that help sustaining moral and order, they validates our existence and gives meaning
to life. And religions helps human in the fragile moments of their lives and make them overcome failure,
illness, catastrophes and death (Keesing 1985:330-331).
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Introduction/Background
In this paper I want to analyze, supported by ethnographic examples, the significance of religion in the
monarchy of Thailand history. I want to discuss why religion is so important for the monarchy in Thailand,
and what influence it has on political, and economic decisions.
The main religion in Thailand is Theravada Buddhism, and this form of Buddhism “teaches the
accumulation of merit through one’s own good deeds as a way to ensure good fortune” (Tapp 1993:287-
288). Nirvana is the final destination, outside the endless circle of death and rebirth, so technically
Buddhism is a way of living, without spirits or supernatural beings. Those things is being blended into the
rituals anyway (it origins back from Hinduism) and is ensuring health, prosperity and fertility.Theravada
Buddhism is attractive as a socio-political system because it provides “people with (1) a perspective within
which each human existence could be seen as the working out of moral gain and loss in previous existence;
(2) a scale of moral values in which equanimity, peaceableness and generosity rated high; and anger,
conflict, violence and desire for gain rated low. It also (3) embodied an organization of voluntary teachers
and moral preceptors (the sangha) whose main concerns were strictly non-political; and who would be
economically supported by the people, but were also prepared to cooperate with the ruler and advise him
on religious and social matters in return for his guaranteeing them a virtual monopoly as the spiritual and
religious professionals of the kingdom” (Suksamkran 1984:28-29).
Today, about 95 percent of the population is Buddhist and the king is declared to be Buddhist. But it is
nowhere said that Buddhism is to be the state religion, in the Constitution it says that: “The king is a
Buddhist and an upholder of religions” (Sharma 2003:17).
The situation in Thailand is significantbecause it is the one country in Southeast Asia that has not been
colonized, and it was therefore able to continue its traditions and improve them to suit modern time. The
country has a king as the head of the government.
Theories
According to George Herbert Mead (Furseth 2007:76) humans only become humans in social
interaction. According to him many institutions in human life, e.g. religion, imply taking on a role and at the
same time it represent an expansion of the process. The religious role is based on helpfulness in e.g. family
relations;thus you can see the King as the father of the people, whom he rules and therefore he is taking
the helpful role in order to help his ‘family’ – the people. An example of this is, when general Taksin in the
1760’s, after the Burmese plunder of Ayutthaya, took upon himself the helpful role of a father for the
people and led them to their new home further south of the river, near todays Bangkok. Another example
is King Bhumibol Adulyadej (xxxx-), who has traveled around his country, helping minorities to identify
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themselves with him, the country and the religion. This has led to the great respect that is shown to him
and his decisions, when he chooses to interact in politics.
Max Weber (Furseth 2007:67) connects religion with social hierarchy and status groups. He says that
groups who are economically and politically well off, use religion to legitimize their way of living and their
place in the social structure, while the underprivileged groups tends to accept religions that reward the
good deeds and punish the bad deeds. This we can see in the history of the Thai monarchy, at first the king
were focused on the religious aspect of being king – dharmaraja – and made changes and laws to
bringdiscipline to the sangha, later on they used religion in more political ways. Latest we can see how, that
e.g. King Bhumibol Adulyadejhave used that, that he is protector of all religions, to unite the minorities
living in the outer rime areas, and given them an identity with the monarch and the nation, while having
their own religion.
Pierre Bourdieu(Furseth 2007:105) claims that individuals or social groups that experience low social
mobility, might take over a more traditional religion with focus on the past, because it will legitimize a
return to the old social order and restore their social being, as we see in Thailand, where many of the
rituals connected with royalty are Brahmanic, because they are more glorifying and legitimize the king as a
god-king – dharmaraja.
Bourdieu (ibid:105-6) have three central terms: habitus, capital and field. Habitus refer to principles that
produce and reproduce a social class practice. Capital describes the ability to exercise control over own and
others future, e.g. when a dictator legitimize his reign by calling upon his religious capital, this can also be
seen as religious violence. In Thailand the king has been given huge religious capital through the Brahmanic
rites, that makes him almost like a god on earth, the head of all religions, thushe can make any religious
decision or lawhe wants to. Field is kind of the arena where different agents use habitus and capital to get
influence on the crowd. E.g. an imam and a monk compete over the same crowd, but the crowd has
different subgroups with different religious interests. Therefore the imam and the monk have to modify
their message in order to be heard and to convince people. In that way the field is affecting the message, it
is the interaction between the agent and the patient.
Religion, Politics and Modernization compared to Monarchy
Religion and Monarchy
In Buddhism kingship is a holy thing with roots in the history of evolution of mankind, the king is chosen
to control man because of its imperfection. He was to be the upholder of Dharma. Because of this there
was, and still is, a tight bound between the king and the prosperity of his kingdom. It is said that:
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“When the kings are not righteous, so are princes, Brahmins, and householders, townsfolk and
villagers. This being so, the moon and the sun deviate from their courses, so constellations and stars,
days and nights……months, seasons and years; the wind blow wrong……; the god (of rain) does not pour
down showers of rain, the crops ripen in the wrong season, thus men who live on such crops have short
lives and look weak and sickly. Conversely, when the kings, the rulers, are righteous, the reverse
consequences follow” (Suksamkran 1984:27).
Therefore it is necessary to keep the sangha alive, so it can help the king keep the country on the right
track. The king is regarded the father of his people and they pay him great respect and have great faith in
him. Today’s monarchy in Thailand “though not actively engaged in politics, enjoys wide popularity among
the Thai public” (Sharma 2003:1).
Now I will in short describe the three main periods of Thai kingship: the Sukhothai, the Ayutthaya and
the Bangkok era.
The Sukhothai kingdom (1238-1438) was the first to arise in present Thailand and was centered in the
Lopburi region near what is now Chiang Mai. It was administrated like a super –muang1.
The well-known Thai scholar, Prince Dhani Nivat, once wrote about kingship during the Sukhothai
period, in his article “The Old Siamese Conception of the Monarchy”. According to Dhani Nivet, the monarch
of that time “was the people’s leader in battle, and in peacetime, a father whose advice was sought and
whose judgment was accepted by all” (ibid:3). In the region there has been found an inscription that says
this in relation to the reign of King Rama Kamhaeng:
“During the lifetime of king Rama Kamhaeng, the city of Sukhodaya has prospered. There are fish in
the waters and rice in its rice-fields. The Lord of the country does not tax his subjects who throng the
roads leading cattle to market and ride horses on their way to sell them…; if anyone in the kingdom has
some grievance or some matter that is ulcerating his entrails and troubling his mind, and wish to lay it
before the king, the way is easy: he has only to strike the bell hung there. Every time King Rama
Kamhaeng hears this appeal, he interrogates the plaintiff about the matter and gives an entirely
impartial decision” (ibid:4).
As the Tai rule gradually got consolidated in what is now northern Thailand, so did the Buddhization.
Theravada Buddhism was consolidated as the ‘backbone’ of the society, while Hinduism still was important
part of the kingship rituals and some elements of Hinduism survived among the population.
1
See Appendix about Mandala
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The Ayutthaya period (1340-1767) followed the Sukhothai and was centered further south. It was
founded by U Tong after he had led the people to this new location in order to escape from an epidemic.
In the Ayutthaya period, there was a massive influence from the neighboring Khmer empire, Angkor.
This influence was mainly cultural and religious, and it is shown in the fact that the state rituals became
more Hindu-Brahmanic, the monarch was given the regalia of Shiva and Vishnu; even today the monarch
has these symbols (ibid:8). In the same period the realm was transformed from the mandala organization
into a kingdom with its own division of labor and hierarchy. This also meant that the king became more
distant from the common people. The king now represented a microcosm of the universe. The palace was
built around the king and the city was built around the palace and the Capitol was the center of the realm.
King Taksin (1767-1782) was the one who moved the capital further south of the Chao Phraya River
from Ayutthaya till todays Bangkok, after the plunder of Ayutthaya by the Burmese, and with him started
the Bangkok era. Later Taksin got more and more religious, and began to think of himself as a bodhisattva,
and he began to disrobe monks who questioned his ideas. It ended with a rebellion and his execution in
1784 (Sharma 2003:10).
Rama I (1782-1809) was one of the generals opposing king Taksin, and he was crowned king in 1782.
Rama I became a Buddhist king – a dharmaraja. He issued a series of laws to restore discipline in the
Buddhist monkhood (Sharma 2003:11).
In 1851, Prince Mongkut became king Rama IV (1851-1868) after 27 years in monastery, where he had
traveled the country and studied original Buddhist manuscripts. King Rama IV saw himself as defender of
Buddhism, and he did so by reforming Buddhism so it could stand against the western missionary religions
e.g. Christianity, and he extended freedom of religion to the people and missionaries.
Politic, modernization and Monarchy
King Rama V (1868-1910) also known as Chulalongkorn, helped transforming the kingdom into a modern
state. Chulalongkorn focused on acquiring European science and institutions and at the same time protect
the country’s independence. When the rule of Chulalongkorn ended in 1910, the Siamese state had a
power never seen before in its history. It became a “’patrimonialbureaucracy’ headed by an ‘absolute
(enlightened) monarch’” (Sharma 2003:14).
In the reign of king Rama VI (1910-1925) the idea of the Thai nation, was conceived as a triumvirate of
“nation-religion-monarch” (chat-satsana-phramahakasat). If disrespect was shown towards one of these, it
was disrespect shown to them all (ibid:14). When king Rama VI died in 1925, the crown went to Prince
Prajadhipok, his younger brother.
In June 1932, 123 middle level officials – civil as well as military –made a swift coup and forced king
Rama VII to relinquish his power and thereby end absolute monarchy in Siam. King Rama VII agreed on the
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conditions set by the coup-makers, “promoters”, and continued as constitutional head of the new
government and the name is changed from Siam to Thailand in 1939.
For the next 25 years royalty was absent from Siam, because the reigning monarch was living outside
the country most of the time, and the country was dominated by the “promoters”. In June 9 1946, King
Rama VIII was found dead, and his younger brother Bhumibol Adulyadej was declared to be king Rama IX,
and from 1951 he stayed permanently in Thailand.
Politically King Bhumibol Adulyadej was only engaged in absolute crisis e.g. in 1976, where “political
tensions between leftist and rightist forces reached a bloody climax in October 1976”
(www.onwar.com/aced/data/tango/thailand1976a.htm) and hundreds of students were killed, and in 1992,
where protest against the government ended in a bloody military crackdown
(www.monsmade.com/english/056_bloody_may.php). So only when absolutely needed, did he use his
power to restore normality. This among other things has given him great respect among the people, and
huge political weight. The other things that have made King Bhumibol Adulyadej popular is that he has
sought not only to embody ethnic Thai and Buddhist, but also minority ethnic and religious groups as well.
He has been visiting remote parts of the country, and by doing so he helped turning the tides against the
insurgency of communism, which was on its way from Cambodia and Laos.
In some Southeast Asian countries e.g. Thailand, some Western ideas are been taking in and mixed with
the local ideas i.e. it is a mix of both worlds, some Western values are ignored and so are some Asian values
in order to create a whole.
Buddhism did “not become an agency of modernization in the way, for instance, that some determine
Christianity has in the West, it has provided support for that evolving sense of national purpose that is
intimately linked to modernization. In this, it performs the valuable function of legitimizing the changes
that transpire by accepting them into the traditional world-view” (Matthews 1986:56).
For some, especially rural people, in order to learn the new science and technology, their whole world-
view and system explanation, which origins from their “old” religion, has to be changed. So success of
technical learning is determined by an attendant cultural learning (Buss 1986:16). Technology has to be
incorporated in the culture and become a natural part of it2in order for the culture to become whole again.
This was well done in Thailand; here the kings let Western technology and science enter, while still
protecting the Thai identity and independence. This way of doing it, match with Weber’s (ibid:17) idea, that
modernization has to come one step at a time in order to constitute ‘right livelihood’ so the system does
not collapse.
2
E.g. animism in Japan has made it easier to accept robots in their lives. (Oral: Robertson, Jennifer. Copenhagen. 11.
Nov. 2010)
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Conclusion
By leaving the religion of the kingdom undefined, and only specify the religion of the king, and make him
protector of all religions, it is easier for minorities to identify themselves with the king and country.
In general can be said that monarchy has been ushering modernization in Thailand, with the end of
absolute monarchy in 1932, and the way the monarchy re-invented itself and its role in political and
religious matters.
The monarchs of Thailand have been able to create a vision of national purpose including both
Buddhism and modernization. Therefore Thailand got a head start in post-colonial time, to mobilize a
national identity.
In the case of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his interventions in politics, these have been aimed at
diffusing crisis, consolidating democracy and restoring stability, and when things where back in order, he
withdrew from the scene. And his traveling around to the minorities has made them come to identify
themselves with the Thai nation and to take part in its development.
Appendix:
Mandala
A mandala is a spiritually powerful circle, around a central figure. It is an important geometric figure in
Buddhism and Hinduism. “The configuration of the mandala may … be represented as a geopolitical
alliance; such an ideal kingdom would exclude threats and undesirable influences. In the centre would be
the ruler, surrounded by his officials, who themselves were at the centre of subordinate mandala
formations” (Heidhues 2000:22).
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