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Thailand Buddhism, Politics, and Values
The organizational links between the sangha and the
government are an indication of their interdependence, although
the fine points of that relationship may have changed over time.
The traditional interdependence was between religion and the
monarchy. The king was, in theory, a righteous ruler, a
bodhisattva (an enlightened being who, out of compassion,
foregoes nirvana in order to aid others), and the protector of
the religion. Because succession to the throne was problematic
and the position of any king in many respects unstable, each
ruler sought legitimation from the sangha. In return, he
offered the religion his support.
After the king became a constitutional monarch in 1932,
actual power lay in the hands of the elites, primarily the
military but also the higher levels of the bureaucracy.
Regardless of the political complexion of the specific persons in
power (who, more often than not, had rightist views), the
significance of Buddhism to the nation was never attacked. In the
late 1980s, the king remained an important symbol, and public
ideology insisted that religion, king, and nation were
inextricably intertwined
(see The Central Government
, ch. 4).
Opposition groups have rarely attacked this set of related
symbols. Some observers have argued that the acceptance of
religion, king, and nation as ultimate symbols of Thai political
values was misleading in that the great bulk of the
population--the Thai villagers--although attached to Buddhism and
respectful of the king, often resented the particular
manifestations of government in local communities and situations.
It seemed, however, that whatever discontent there was with the
political, social, and economic orders, most Thai remained at
least passively committed to a national identity symbolized by
the king and Buddhism.
Puey Ungphakorn, a former rector of Thammasat University and
human rights advocate, viewed the ethical precepts of Buddhism as
insurance against oppressive national development. Although the
fundamental role of development was to improve the welfare of the
villagers, in a number of nations without the protection of
religion the rights of the villager were often abused. In
Thailand, according to Puey, the peasant, like the urban dweller,
has an individual identity protected by the shared belief in
Buddhism.
The support given the king (and whatever political regime was
in power) by the sangha was coupled with a prohibition on
the direct intervention of monks in politics, particularly in
party, political, and ideological conflicts. It was taken for
granted that members of the sangha would oppose a
communist regime, and available evidence suggested that virtually
all Thai monks found Marxist thought alien, although monks
elsewhere in Southeast Asia have been influenced by socialist, if
not explicitly communist, ideas. Historically, monks occasionally
have been involved in politics, but this involvement was not the
norm. In the second half of the twentieth century, however, monks
became aware of the political and ideological ferment in
Southeast Asia and in a few cases engaged in political
propaganda, if not in direct action. A few were accused of doing
so from a position on the left, but the most explicit instance of
political propaganda in the 1970s was that of a highly
influential monk, Kittivuddha Bikkhu, who preached that it was
meritorious to kill communists. Although not supported by the
religious and political establishments, he provided right-wing
militants with a Buddhist ideological justification for their
extremist activities.
Data as of September 1987
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