By Sumet Jumsai
The editorial “New approach needed in the deep South” in The Nation of April 29, is well argued except for the blurb, which refers to “the century-old `occupation` of the Malay historical homeland, known as Patani, by illegitimate Siamese masters”. The blurb can easily be misunderstood and taken as the writer`s own masochistic inclination.
Four years ago, the Financial Times unjustly slandered Siam over her dealings with the South in an article entitled “Thai and Mighty”. Then, as now, I feel compelled to present a broader perspective of the issue, hence this article which is reprinted from The Nation of November 21, 2005.
It is fashionable nowadays for foreign press and scholars to depict Thais as villains in the deep South, and in this respect quote history as they know it. I do not deny that we are villains some of the time, but perhaps we are not the only ones and perhaps a few points in this article might contribute to a fuller understanding of the issue at hand.
It should be realised that for Thais, the Malay Peninsular was inherited from the 13th century Sukhothai via Ayudhya. There are, today, some scattered Buddhist monasteries in the South dating from the Sukhothai period.
Before Siam became a homogeneous kingdom, it was like the old Germany, a patchwork of independent or autonomous principalities and city-states. Moreover, relations between states in the East Asian region as a whole were generally based on a hierarchical or seniority system after the Confucianist model and not on colonialism as understood by the West. For example, we used to send tributes to Cambodia in the 13th century. Later this was reversed because of the power shift. In this system, symbolic tributes as a mark of respect were all important.
“Punishment” could be meted out to a client state if it ignored the system. Otherwise, interference in the internal affairs of the said state or exploitation of its resources was not the norm as it would have been under European colonialism.
The system applied to the South, and Siam in turn paid tributes to the Middle Kingdom, that is, until the latter lost the Opium War. (Now we are reviving the Confucianist system, discreetly, because of China`s rapid ascendancy in the world.) When the Portuguese captured Malacca in 1511, the first thing that Albuquerque did was to send an embassy to Ayudhya to sound out whether Siam still claimed it. The Siamese king simply congratulated the Portuguese and told them they could keep it on one condition: that they would punish Malacca on Siam`s behalf. This was in reference to previous Siamese military expeditions to “punish” Malacca for having ignored the tributes, which expeditions failed miserably.
With the onslaught of Western colonialism in the 19th century, Siam was forced to transform herself into a nation with a centralised government. An example of this was at the turn of the 19th century, when Bangkok, in response to the French and British overtures to the ruling prince, had to despatch a governor to the Principality of Chiang Mai in haste.
A great-uncle of mine, Phraya Sihasaksnitwongse, was one of the last governors of Kelantan, succeeding his uncle, Prince Sai Snitwongse, in 1892. In the following decade, Siam was forced to cede the province together with Trengganu, Perlis and Kedah to Great Britain.
My great-uncle went there with only seven or eight officers from Bangkok, a token corps administrative, supported by some local police personnel. During his governorship, there was no conflict that could not be resolved peacefully, and certainly there was no bloodshed. This was how it was done. Meetings with the raja (the sultan), the tunku and community leaders were convened in case of conflicts or enacting new laws, the governor being there only to preside and steer the proceeding to a consensus. His presence there, in reality, was to ward off the British colonial encroachment. My great-uncle`s diary, which contains these episodes, has become a recommended book for reading by the Education Ministry. Unfortunately, few people really read or learn from it.
As in former times, the sultans and their families are treated as they should be. Today, whenever their family members come to Bangkok they are received as members of the royal family. We, on the other hand, take a certain pride in our Muslim roots, being descendants of Sultan Sulaiman, who ruled Songkhla at the beginning of the 17th century.
At this point it should be noted that we, Siamese, are proud of Tunku Abdul Rahman, the founder of modern Malaysia. Born in the Grand Palace as the Siamese Prince of Sai Buri (Kedah), he went to a Buddhist temple school in Bangkok when many of us, Buddhists, preferred to go to Catholic schools.
I think that really sums up the concept of Siam, that within this geographic confine it did not matter whether the chief of the Army is a Muslim or whether you are Chinese, Mon, Malay, or what religion you belong to. These are non-issues in the average Siamese mind. Besides, the Constitution states quite clearly that the king is the protector of all the religions in the kingdom (something that the Prince of Wales must be envious of), and as a special recognition to Islam, the chief Muslim in the country is automatically appointed as the king`s special adviser, the Chula Rajmontri, a title that goes way back in history. I cannot think of any other country in the world that would have such an arrangement. I cannot, for example, imagine Queen Elizabeth II appointing the head of the Catholic Church in Britain as her royal adviser.
It must be said, though, that when the country changed its name to Thailand with an ethnic-cum-nationalist agenda as embodied in the anthem, we had a situation. Today we have inherited this impasse which, in the South, is compounded by barbarity in the name of religion and the authorities` own nationalistic responses. The impasse in the South will not be resolved until a balanced history is learnt and nationalism is replaced by humanity.
Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com (1 May 2009)