Source: Bangkok Post (Published on 13/02/2009)
Modern monarchy and inviolability
By GRANT EVANS
It is not uncommon for some Thai intellectuals and politicians to claim that foreigners simply do not understand Thai attitudes towards their king. It is true that many foreigners do not comprehend the feelings of awe and respect of the overwhelming majority of the Thai people. But it is also true that many foreigners have experienced similar feelings towards their own monarchs - whether they are British, Australian, Swedish or Japanese, among others.
A sea of humanity fills up the Royal Plaza to get a glimpse of His Majesty the King during celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of his accession to the throne on June 10, 2006.
For me as a child in Australia during the 1950s, monarchy seemed natural. When I went to school we sang God Save the Queen to start the week, and we sang it at all important occasions. Indeed, I still know it better than the official national anthem today.
I waved a small Australian flag for Queen Elizabeth in 1954 when she visited the rural city of Mildura, where I grew up. We stood for the national anthem at the cinema, and the Queen's portrait hung in most schoolrooms, and in every important place, as well as many homes. Newspapers and the radio reported royal movements (there was no TV in the countryside until 1967), and women's magazines in particular reported royal news and gossip. Commemorative issues of the Queen's overseas travels or of this or that prince or princess were snapped up enthusiastically. This was true in Canada, New Zealand and the other dominions of the Commonwealth, let alone in Great Britain itself.
Today this pervasive presence of the monarchy has all but disappeared from Australian society. People of my generation are among the last to remember this "naturalness of monarchy." So, it is sobering to reflect on how rapidly the "naturalness" or "sacredness" of monarchy dissipated. Partly it is related to the rapid decline of organised Christianity in both England and Australia since World War Two. But there are other reasons too.
It is also worth noting that while attitudes have changed dramatically, the British monarchy today seems remarkably secure and Queen Elizabeth II is at her zenith.
Constitutional monarchies are a peculiar historical compromise of political principles, a kind of half-way house that republicans find intolerable. It is a system that often works well, especially compared to systems where a singular principle is ruthlessly pursued such as under hardline communism or fascism. But monarchies in the modern world are politically disposable, unlike the ideology of nationalism or institutions like the modern army. The political caution of all constitutional monarchs underlines this. Monarchies cannot compete with the pre-eminent ideologies of nationalism and democracy and have to be seen to harmonise with them.
Modern monarchs thus become guardians of "national tradition." That modern monarchs are sometimes paternalistic and moralistic, and sometimes entertain dreams of a pastoral organic society, such as the "sufficiency economy," is hardly surprising. As an anti-dote to aggressive modernism it is even welcome - and indeed is welcomed by many people.
Monarchies have fascinated anthropologists from the very beginning of the discipline as this form of rule has straddled many different cultures and societies. As they have observed, the very essence of royalty and nobility is that they are set apart - by rituals, by forms of dress, by speech, and so on. All of these activities in a sense demarcate purity and impurity. Royals inhabit, in the words of the late Clifford Geertz, "exemplary centres" and monarchies can be social forms that are able to transcend political divisions and help underwrite stability and harmony. One difficulty for modern monarchies is gauging just how far apart from their subjects they can afford to be - especially in societies undergoing rapid change. If they lose sight of this they can be subject to ridicule or worse.
It is out of these practices of setting royalty apart that laws of lese majeste arise. They are designed to protect the dignity or purity of royalty. In Thailand, however, ever since these laws were yoked to the security of the state by Field Marshal Sarit Thanarath in the late 1950s, they have been used unscrupulously by politicians of all stripes. Ironically, these laws are not in the hands of the King where they should be. Consequently, the unscrupulous use of the lese majeste law has the opposite effect to what it is designed for. Instead of purifying the monarchy it pollutes it with everyday politics. With each charge of lese majeste people are being asked to choose between monarchy and democracy and ultimately this will work against the former's stature.
As I said above, monarchy cannot be seen to oppose democracy. Only by removing lese majeste from the everyday political realm can this invidious choice be avoided. Therefore, from the point of view of anthropology, current suggestions by sections of the Democrat party to make this law more draconian will only exaggerate the problem. They seem to be pursuing this ill-fated course for two reasons.
The first is the same old political opportunism that has sullied this law in the past, namely to claim that there is a conspiracy against the monarchy, which they imply is being hatched by their foe, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. There is no evidence for this, and I for one believe that Thaksin is loyal to the King. However, the underhand removal of the popularly elected government of Thaksin and his lieutenants in the name of the monarchy has created a constituency for anti-monarchist feeling.
All monarchies contain some anti-monarchists. There are no societies where people believe 100% in their leaders - not even in North Korea! The normal dynamic when people in the modern world are asked to choose between monarchy and democracy is that they will choose the latter. Therefore, we must conclude that those people who have wielded anti-democratic power in the name of the king are responsible for any rise in anti-monarchist sentiment.
The second reason seems to be that many conservative elements in Thai society are duped by their own tourist propaganda about "traditional Thai Buddhist society." However, Thai society has changed dramatically in the past 30 years and it would be ridiculous to imagine that people's attitudes have not changed accordingly. One only needs to compare popular Buddhism in neighbouring Laos or Burma to Thailand to see how much Buddhism is on the wane, and the Thai Sangha seems as scandal-prone as the Catholic Church.
Conservatives seem to think that social and cultural changes can be contained by enacting draconian laws, rather than trying to understand these changes and creatively adapting to them.
A recent ominous example of the conservative approach is former King Gayanendra of Nepal, whose response to popular demands for change was to revert to absolutism. Had he tried instead to extend the reach of democracy, the Nepalese monarchy might still be with us today.
Some Thais occasionally compare the British monarchy unfavourably with the Thai monarchy. However, the iconoclastic British journalist Jeremy Paxman concludes his book On Royalty (2006) by claiming that the House of Windsor will be here for the foreseeable future. Foreseeing the future in crisis-ridden Thailand, however, is a perilous art, made especially complicated by the fact that vigilante monarchists seem to be the main threat to the monarchy's longevity.
• Anthropologist Grant Evans' most recent book is The Last Century of Lao Royalty: A Documentary History (Silkworm Books, 2009).
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