Nations and homes

 5 jul 2004

You can think of a nation as a collection of places which a lot of different people call home. Or you can think of it as a unit, something single and unified.

Before the current troubles in the south worsened, Chang Noi went to a conference in the south which talked about the special character of the border region. Two of the papers linger in the mind because of the information they presented and the discussion they provoked.

The first was about restaurants. Several men who had been involved in the communist insurgency or Islamic movements in the border area had taken refuge in Malaysia after these movements collapsed in the 1980s. Some had supported themselves by opening restaurants selling Thai food, especially tom yam gung. They did well because they could claim they were “from Thailand” and so knew about Thai food. Customers believed their tom yam gung was authentic, “real Thai”, and so it became very popular. Many others from the same group of ex-activists copied the idea, and eventually there were lots of these authentic Thai tom yam gung restaurants in Malaysia.

After a time, the political tension in the south eased, and the restaurant owners had made quite a bit of money. Several returned to Thailand, either permanently, or at least temporarily to seek a bride. To the people in their old home villages, they were now “from Malaysia”. They were also richer than the average because of their made-in-Malaysia profits, and so were rather attractive as marriage partners.

The attendants at the conference enjoyed this paper a lot. It seemed a nice little parable about how false political borders can be, and about how people’s lives are much more complex and human than rigid simplicities of national identity. As these men crossed the Thai-Malaysian border, their identities appeared to change in strange ways: from activists to restaurateurs, from defenders of Islam to experts in Thai food, from people “from Thailand” to people “from Malaysia”. But of course they were the same people through all this. It was the categories which were changing.

The second paper was about a village in northern Malaysia where some of the people are Thai-speaking Buddhists, and others Malay-speaking Muslims. All of them believe that in their spiritual make-up they have two lines of descent — one Buddhist, and one Muslim. So even though it is clear who is Buddhist and who Muslim, all take part in each other’s ceremonies at the level of the household and village. Moreover sometimes when a Muslim falls badly ill, that person temporarily “converts” to Buddhism to take advantage of the healing powers of the local Buddhist monks. This is believed possible because of these twin lines of descent. And reportedly it was often effective. The invalid recovered.

The reaction to this paper was much more divided. Some people liked it a lot. For anthropologists, this kind of religious crossover practice is well-known in such mixed communities.

But some others got angry. They thumped the table. They shouted, this cannot be. You cannot just swap religious identity like changing your shirt. You can’t consult another religion for a “second opinion” like consulting another doctor.

Most of these horrified seminar participants were from the national capitals, from Bangkok or from Kuala Lumpur.

Last week, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh sat in Pattani’s Krue Se mosque and blue-skyed the idea of giving the southern border provinces more political autonomy. Why not, he suggested, use the same administrative framework as Pattaya which allows the local people to elect their governor.

This idea is not new. Indeed it dates back to 3 April 1947 which can be counted as the first day of the modern phase of the southern problem. On that day, Haji Sulong Tomina, president of the Islamic Religious Council, presented government with a 7-point petition. The first point was: allow the people of the southern border provinces to elect a local-born person as their governor.

The historical links between that petition and the present events are very strong. The government accused Haji Sulong of treason and threw him into jail. The ensuing uprising exploded on 28 April, the day chosen for the Krue Se incident this year. One of the people accused of fomenting this new phase of unrest is Haji Sulong’s son.

Amid all the obvious confusion and wilful blindness in the government’s current approach to the south, this is a little ray of light. Since the 28 April massacre, Chavalit has emerged as a rather lonely spokesman for a political approach to the issue. It is not difficult to understand why. His political career was built on applying a political approach to ending the communist revolt in the 1980s. He first wondered whether this would work in the south, but got overwhelmed by the desperation of men in uniform to retrieve control of the situation. Now he has come up with this. Given his own fierce opposition to making governors elective in the past, Chavalit’s initiative is all the more surprising.

Two things seem obvious about the current unrest. First, the violence is focused against representatives of the state – police, officials, village heads. It is not random banditry. It has a point. Second, the few reports by sensitive journalists and researchers show that those involved are ordinary people, good members of their family and village, assiduous students and keen sportsmen. Also, they have been training and preparing for some time.

Governments put huge efforts into teaching their citizens to think of the nation as a unity. The Thai national anthem (like many others) is a battle hymn about defending this unity. Even Bangkok buses call on us to “unite the Thai blood-flesh-lineage-race.” But the nation is also a collection of homes of people whose lives are varied and complex.