Singapore; Bangkok: Editions Didier Millet, 2011. 383 pp. (B&W and coloured photos.) THB1080.00, cloth. ISBN 978-981-4260-56-5.
In this volume King Bhumibol Adulyadej is presented as practical and passionate, a moral leader of the modernizing nation. The king’s aura is also invoked as a symbol of legitimacy and Dhammicsanction, skilfully woven into the cultural fabric and psyche of the nation by an elite military and palace regime (“amaat”/Amatayatippatai) and popularized as mythology. The Chairperson of the Editorial Advisory Board and pro-royalist spokesperson Anand Panyarachun notes in the foreword that the intent of the book is to gain a “better understanding of Thailand and its monarchy” minus any “sugar coating” and to appreciate the contributions of the king to his people (11). The book’s narrative function, in fact not dissimilar to that of mythology, has less to do with what constitutes the reality of the past (which is always historically contested) as with its discursive functions. It is a continuing story, which some would argue was foretold centuries earlier by sages, fortune tellers and court Brahmins, reiterating a here-and-now reassurance which the devoted would like to see institutionally reaffirmed. The account depicts the king as both a gifted pragmatist while also a supra-human, deified individual. This binary function is important to maintain the charisma of regal authority and as a cultural reference point for the nation-state.
The book, minus an individual (Foucauldian) author function, is also a bit of a mystery as to who actually wrote its various parts, other than a list of fifteen like-minded contributors and an elite editorial team. Many of the listed “notable experts” can hardly be assumed to have historical and political objectivity in their contributions at a time of incensed division over issues of monarchism and new political democracy. Indeed, without naming names, the contributors’ standing was well known post 19 September 2006 coup, against emerging grassroots democratic sentiments (including calls for judicial reforms). At the same time, these “notables,” and their continuing patronages, were oft-cited in a hegemonic national media in an attempt to restore the status quo ante as the protests in 2009-2011 gathered momentum. In only a few years after the 2006 coup the Thai world and its imagining for majority peoples started to shake at the foundations. Benjamin’s “angel of history” awoke and glanced back to the recent past, caught in a storm of progress. But will the angel now turn to confront the inevitability of progress among the debris of a recent divisive past? The book alludes not to an uncertain future for a monarchy in Thailand; such a task would be speculative at best, but to reiterate a particular social construction.
Indeed, throughout the book, despite the appearance of impartiality, a political viewpoint emerges, as for instance the discussion on ex-Prime Minister Thaksin’s decentralized educational reforms. These are ridiculed under the comment of the King’s criticism of Thaksin’s student-centred learning (which was in any case never able to be implemented post-2006). This is a problem more generally of Thaksin’s decentralization policy and programs, which posed a direct threat to the Tambiah’n “radial” centre and its sacrosanct complex and pervasive elite network. The book shows the monarch as sincere, learned and always passionate about the wellbeing of his subjects, and knowledgeable on all matters, such as water management, climate, agriculture/self-sufficiency and education.
However, as we have seen in recent years, it may be that some of the king’s close advisors were themselves not so well informed and even biased in protecting their own interests in the palace-centred power network. The book also never shows how such advice from a close group/network of royalist elites (especially from the Privy Council) may have led to the king formulating certain opinions claimed to be his alone. All we are told is that the king, acting independently, is the moral refuge and protector of Thais; a “modern-day dhammaraja” (43). The positioning of the king as having unlimited charisma, moral power and virtue creates an underlying sense that everything else must, ipso facto, be inadequate—including of course elected governments and other knowledge/s. It is the continuing and hidden tension between the ruling monarch and government (the latter exercising its own, if imperfect, rational-legal sanction), regardless of the constitution, which threatens the king’s authority and persisting majestic power and interests.
The book is organized thematically according to conventional modern Chakri history, replete with numerous photographs. Most of the chapters tend to emphatically reaffirm, and with an inkling of academic authority, what has in fact been well documented elsewhere in the national media. It is the timing of the book which is interesting. It was produced during a period of (continuing) intense division in Thai society and not long after the statesanctioned military massacre of pro-democracy (Red Shirt) protestors in April/May 2010. Perhaps that was the purpose in the timing of publication, or as a refutation to Paul Handley’s book The King Never Smiles. The book’s editors show either a lack of understanding or a blatant bias in regard to a few comments on the Red Shirt movement, disregarding the issues of concern among the masses and why they could not even get the political party they voted for three times without disqualification, citizens beaten, incarcerated and occasionally killed in the process. These matters of course are never discussed and perhaps have no place in a volume on the life of the monarch, which makes one wonder why a scattering of one-sided political statements interspersed throughout the text were ever included.
To Thais who still believe in the munificence and selfless beneficence of the royal family, its continuing aura and unifying symbolic function, the book will reinforce what they already know or feel. For these believers, it is grist for the mill and a confirmation of historical knowledge learned since childhood, as certain truth statements. For those disenchanted masses and intellectuals questioning the overall post-World-War-II historical plot of continuing elite dominance (especially after 1958), the book as a general history through the person of the monarch says little more than what we are told in existing sanctioned narratives.
As an attempt to add a critical and objective perspective, a chapter on lèse majesté is included, but even this is put in its proper perspective in a caption at the beginning of the chapter which reads: “…Due to the reverence Thais have traditionally accorded their monarch, some legal scholars argue that the lèse majesté law, which protects the king from insult, is justified as a reflection of societal consensus” (302). Maybe, but this does tend to ignore the increasingly loud, if necessarily subdued, calls for legal reform on this question and the work of reformist legal scholars such as the Nitirat Law Reform Group. The critics of lèse majesté say the law must be changed and is used simply as a political weapon by the pro-royalist regime to suppress calls from the periphery for democratic changes, increased human rights, opportunity and freedom. It has little to do with the king as such, who says that he “is a human being and as such should be subject to criticism” and that “charges against those accused of lèse majesté should be dropped, and those held in jail for lèse majesté should be released” (172, 313). So, we may ask ironically, why has this not happened given the unbridled respect shown to the king?
In “The Life: Seventh Cycle 2000-2011” only a couple of pages are devoted to the 2006 coup and its aftermath, which permanently divided the country and tore open a post-1932 festering sore, an irretrievable rift among people in relation to their devotion to the monarch. Stories need to be substantiated in reality. The question of the editorial committee should not be to labour on the fact that, to devotees, the king is a great man. Rather, in what way can the Thai monarchy today, or in the future, reposition itself to respond to wider societal changes? The same question confronted other monarchies around the world in the past century. The continued use of forms of structural and symbolic violence, elite cultural hegemony and coercion by the dominant elite regime (amaat) and ultra-nationalists, can only work against the interests of a persisting Thai monarchy.
Jim Taylor
University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
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