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Thailand Ethnic and Regional Relations
In the past, the government took the position that all Tai
people should be accorded all the rights, privileges, and
opportunities that went with being a citizen. In the 1980s,
members of non-Tai minority groups were being afforded similar
rights, and efforts were being made to incorporate them into the
Ekkalak Thai. The higher a person's aspirations, however, the
more thoroughly he or she needed to assimilate into Central Thai
culture. Thus, most of the representatives of the government were
either from Central Thailand or had absorbed the perspective of
that region.
By law the Central Thai dialect was taught in all government
schools, and all who aspired to government positions, from
village headman on up, were expected to master Central Thai.
Nonetheless, because local dialects remained the medium of
communication in schools, markets, and provincial government
offices, differences between the Central Thai and other dialects
survived. The Central Thai tended to see other Thai as both
different and inferior. In turn, the latter saw the Central Thai
as exploiters. Inevitably, many non-Central Thai sometimes felt
inferior to the Central Thai, who represented progress, prestige,
wealth, and national power.
In the past, the government had often ignored the needs of
the outlying regions. Neglect, corrupt administration, and heavy
taxation perhaps affected the Thai-Lao more than others. Until
King Mongkut established central control through administrators
in the nineteenth century, the Thai-Lao region was governed by
local Lao princes who were really vassals of the Thai monarch.
Corvee (forced) labor and oppressive taxation supported a rapidly
expanding Thai court, bureaucracy, and military. Peasant revolts
erupted and were suppressed. Real social and economic changes did
not began until the reign of King Bhumibol, who in the early
1960s was assisted in these efforts by Prime Minister Sarit
Thanarat, a northeasterner. In the 1960s, programs of community
and agricultural development were coupled with counterinsurgency
measures; these efforts continued into the 1980s with mixed
results
(see Insurgency
, ch. 5).
The problems had accumulated over time, and solutions were
difficult. Whether the tensions and the potential for conflict
between the central government and the Thai-Lao could be
understood solely or even largely in ethnic terms was
questionable. Besides ethnicity and regionalism, a number of
other factors required consideration, including the inadequacy of
most economic reform measures and the insensitivity or
repressiveness of administrators. The Central Thai lack of
understanding of social forms and practices different from their
own contributed to the mishandling of local situations and the
imposition of so-called reforms without full consideration of the
effects of these changes on the local people. The Thai-Lao had a
close cultural and linguistic relationship with the people of
Laos that was further strengthened by trade and kinship. Laos was
viewed by many northeasterners as their home country.
In the South the language, religion, and culture of the Malay
or Thai Muslims were markedly different from those of other Thai.
Although Islamic religious and cultural practices accentuated the
differences, more divisive and destabilizing were economic and
political factors. In the past, Central Thai administrators from
the national government assigned to the South often spent their
time amassing personal fortunes rather than attending to the
welfare of the people of the region. Government provision of
health, education, and welfare services was inadequate or
nonexistent; schools were established only in the cities, for the
benefit of children of Central Thai officials. In the 1980s, King
Bhumibol and government leaders, especially those from the South,
were deeply involved in rectifying those inequalities, but
resentment and suspicion hampered development.
Substantial numbers of Malay were loyalists who saw no point
in making impossible demands. They were prepared to work within
the system toward amelioration of their economic, educational,
and administrative situation. Those Malay were not prepared to
become Thai culturally, but they saw government programs,
including secular education in Thai- language schools, as a means
to social mobility and to an expansion of their administrative
and economic roles.
Because of severe restrictions on Chinese immigration that
were put into effect in the early 1950s, the great majority of
Thailand's Chinese in the late 1980s had been born in Thailand.
Not only did most Chinese speak Thai, many also acquired Thai
names (in addition to their Chinese ones) and were Mahayana
Buddhists (one of the major schools of Buddhism, active in China,
Japan, Korea, and Nepal). Although many Thai resented the
significant role the Chinese played in commerce and envied their
wealth, the Thai also admired Chinese industriousness and
business acumen, a pattern common elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
Data as of September 1987
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