Polarization and crisis in the twenty-first century
p. 11-39
Texte intégral
1At the start of 2016, controversy erupted over the appointment of a new supreme patriarch, after the high-profile cremation of the last holder of the post, Somdet Phra Nyanasamvara, the previous month. Somdet Phra Nyanasamvara, who passed away in 2013 at the age of one hundred, had been appointed as supreme patriarch by King Bhumibol Adulyadej in 1989. The monk had been the king’s mentor in October 1956 when the young monarch spent two weeks as a novice. Somdet Phra Nyanasamvara, then the abbot of the main royal temple in Bangkok Wat Bovornniwet, had taught King Bhumibol meditation techniques and improved his understanding of a religion the young king was not completely familiar with, having grown up in Switzerland. The royal linkage meant that the rituals of the nineteenth supreme patriarch’s cremation in December 2015 were a grand affair: a procession went through most of old Bangkok, paralyzing the city’s notoriously bad traffic.
A controversial succession
2In the days following the cremation, the question of succession quickly became contentious. According to the Sangha Act of 1962, amended in 1992, the procedure was clear. The prime minister, “on the recommendation of the Supreme Sangha Council,” had to present a name for royal approval. The law adds that the name recommended to the prime minister by the Council must be the monk who has held the rank of somdet phra racha khana, the highest title of the samanasak system, for the longest period. But the text is ambiguous about the prime minister having the option to veto or even change the Council’s recommended candidate. It was left as a matter of interpretation.7
3In 2016, the choice was obvious: Somdet Phra Maha Ratchamangalacharn (b. 1926), the ninety-one-year-old Mahanikai abbot of Wat Pak Nam Phasi Charoen in the Chao Phraya estuary, had been made somdet phra racha khana in 1995, which made him the longest holder of the title by far. Somdet Phra Maha Ratchamangalacharn, popularly known as Somdet Chuang, had also been made chair of the Council in 2013, in effect, the acting supreme patriarch, because the supreme patriarch himself was too ill to perform his duties.
4The supreme patriarch had not attended Council meetings since 1999, when he was hospitalized.8 In 2005 then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra decided to fill the void and appointed Somdet Phutthacharn, or Somdet Kiaw (1928–2013), the Mahanikai abbot of Wat Saket, as Council chair and acting supreme patriarch. The move had ruffled feathers among arch-royalists and bureaucrats, some of whom insinuated that the prime minister’s unilateral action was potentially an infringement on the king’s power. When Somdet Kiaw died in 2013, Somdet Chuang was appointed as his successor.
5Following the 2013 amendment to the Sangha Act, the seventeen members of the Supreme Sangha Council (three were absent) unanimously nominated Somdet Chuang as supreme patriarch during a meeting on January 5, 2016. The meeting was held in secret because the sangha elders knew their decision would attract criticism. And indeed, when their choice was made public a week later, there was an immediate outcry among some Buddhist organizations, for reasons we will see below.
Box 1: Supreme Patriarchs since 1945
Period | Ceremonial Name | Secular Name | Religious Name | Order |
1945–1958 | Somdet Phra Kromma Luang Vajirananavong | Mom Rajavongse Chuen Nobbavong | Sucitta | Thammayut |
1960–1962 | Somdet Phra Ariyvongsagatanana | Plod Ketuthat | Kittisobhana | Mahanikai |
1963–1965 | Somdet Phra Ariyvongsagatanana | Yoo Changsopha | Nanodayo | Mahanikai |
1965–1971 | Somdet Phra Ariyvongsagatanana | Chuan Sirisom | Uttthayi | Mahanikai |
1972–1973 | Somdet Phra Ariyvongsagatanana | Pun Sukcharoen | Punnasiri | Mahanikai |
1973–1988 | Somdet Phra Ariyvongsagatanana | Vasana Nilprapha | Vasana | Thammayut |
1989–2013 | Somdet Phra Nyanasamvara | Charoen Khotchawat | Suvaddhana | Thammayut |
2017– | Somdet Phra Ariyawongsak-hatayan | Amporn Prasatpong | Munivong | Thammayut |
Between 1945–2017, Mahanikai monks held the sangha’s top position for a total of 9 years and Thammayut monks for a total of 48 years.
6The process continued, however, and Somdet Chuang’s name was forwarded to General Prayuth Chan-ocha (b. 1954), who had seized power in a coup in May 2014 and led the junta’s National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO). Exploiting the ambiguity of the Sangha Act, Prayuth as head of government did not forward the suggested name to the king. A few months later, in December 2016, the junta amended the Sangha Act, apparently to block Somdet Chuang’s accession, as we will describe in chapter 2. After the amendment was passed, Prayuth submitted a list of five candidates for the supreme patriarch position to the new king Maha Vajiralongkorn (b. 1952). On February 7, 2017, the monarch appointed Phra Maha Munivong (b. 1927), the eighty-nine-year-old abbot of the Ratchabophit royal temple in Bangkok as the new leader of the sangha, ending a year-long controversy.
7Prayuth was embarrassed by the Council’s nomination of Somdet Chuang for a number of reasons that seem to testify to the polarization and weakening of the sangha in the last two decades. The fissures and fragility of the sangha augur badly for a country undergoing a painful transition—all the more acute now that the long reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej has ended.
Fig. 1: Somdet Phra Maha Ratchamangalacharn or Somdet Chuang, acting Supreme Patriarch until February 2017, featured on a banner, in front of a temple in Thonburi

Photo by Arnaud Dubus
8The main reason why some Buddhist laypeople and monks opposed Somdet Chuang’s appointment as supreme patriarch was his association with the controversial Wat Phra Dhammakaya, a sprawling monastery in Pathumthani, on the northern outskirts of Bangkok. In 1969, Somdet Chuang—then a simple abbot—had presided over the ordination of Phra Dhammachayo, who was to become the long-time abbot of Wat Phra Dhammakaya until 2016. Opponents of Somdet Chuang’s appointment were anxious about the possibility that he would use his position as leader of the Buddhist clergy to protect Wat Phra Dhammakaya and give it the opportunity to realize its aim of taking control of Thai Buddhism.
9But there were other factors in play. Wat Phra Dhammakaya was sympathetic to Thaksin—who had intervened in 2006 to stop a judicial process against Phra Dhammachayo—and to his Red Shirt supporters. Thaksin was overthrown in a coup in September 2006. In April and May 2010, his supporters, regrouped under an organization called the Union for Democracy and Against Dictatorship (UDD), popularly known as the Red Shirts, demonstrated in central Bangkok until they were crushed by military deployed under the orders of prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his deputy Suthep Thaugsuban, both of the Democrat Party. During the 2010 demonstrations, many monks were at the forefront of the Red Shirt protests, sometimes actively fighting against the security forces.
10Since 2010, and through the May 2014 coup that overthrew the government led by Thaksin’s younger sister Yingluck Shinawatra, Thai politics has been defined by the struggle between the Red Shirts and their Yellow Shirt opponents, the latter being ardent supporters of the monarchy and belonging mostly to the traditional elite and middle-class conservatives, backed by the military and bureaucracy.
11Thus, through his links to Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Somdet Chuang was considered by his critics to be also involved, even if indirectly, in the ongoing political tug-of-war between pro-and anti-Thaksin groups. No wonder then that one of the fiercest opponents to Somdet Chuang’s appointment as supreme patriarch was a monk who had played a leading role in the Yellow Shirts’ demonstrations against the Yingluck Shinawatra government: Phra Buddha Isara, the abbot of Wat Or Noi in Nakhon Pathom province.
12As we will see in the section on Wat Phra Dhammakaya (see chapter 2), Phra Buddha Isara was not by any means the first critic of the Pathumthani temple. As early as 1987, Prawase Wasi, a doctor who often speaks on Buddhism and ethics, questioned Phra Dhammachayo’s teachings about nibbāna (nirvana).9 The most authoritative voice against Phra Dhammachayo’s doctrinal distortions came from respected monk Phra Prayudh Payutto, who wrote The Dhammakaya Case in 1988.10 These criticisms were mostly doctrinal. It was only after 2006 that the attacks against Wat Phra Dhammakaya began to be framed in political terms, partly because the earlier warnings by individual monks had not led to any action by the sangha hierarchy.
13The overall leader of the November 2013 to May 2014 demonstrations, which led to the May 2014 coup, was Suthep Thaugsuban. From November 2013 to May 2014 Suthep led, with Phra Buddha Isara and a few others, a movement called the People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC). But Suthep himself preferred to call the tens of thousands gathered every day for months in central Bangkok as the “Great Mass of the People,” perhaps trying to suggest that most of the population was behind him.
14After the coup ended the protests, Suthep was ordained at Wat Thai Sai in the southern province of Surat Thani, and then spent the Buddhist Lent at Wat Suan Mokh in the same province—a temple founded in 1932 by respected monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu. Suthep, the politician-turned-monk, quickly used the temple as a stage to continue to mobilize his supporters through mass ordinations and calls for participation in meditation training (Box 2).11
Box 2 - Suthep Thaugsuban: Monkhood as a political stage
Suthep Thaugsuban spent almost a year as a monk at Suan Mokh temple, in Surat Thani province, accompanied by several other leaders of the 2013–14 demonstrations who were also ordained at the temple—including Issara Somchai, a former Democrat MP, and Uthai Yodmanee, former core leader of the Network of Students and People for Reform of Thailand. During his time at the temple, Suthep repeatedly called upon his “comrades of struggle” to come to listen to the dhamma or to study meditation at Suan Mokh. He also quickly took on a leadership role at Suan Mokh and organized several mass ordinations in cooperation with the provincial authorities.
This was a very rare instance of a monk inviting only a certain section of the population—PDRC supporters—to study Buddhism. His speeches as a monk were clearly political, for instance, calling on the Thai people to support Prayuth Chan-ocha’s military regime.12 During my visit to Suan Mokh in March 2015, I found that while some fellow monks were clearly uncomfortable with Phra Suthep’s behavior, they felt unable to oppose his activities.
Phra Suthep’s politicking was all the more shocking because the founder of Suan Mokh, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, had established the temple in a forest as a place where people could retreat to study Buddhism in quiet contemplation, unlike the official world of Thai Buddhism at the time.
It is customary for Thai military personnel, politicians or technocrats who have been intensively involved in politics to spend a period in the monkhood, as was the case for former prime minister Thanom Kittikachorn (1963–73) in 1976, former cabinet secretary-general Bowornsak Uwanno in 2006, or former prime minister Surayud Chulanont (2006–08) in 2008. It is generally seen as a way to cleanse their image, particularly after having been involved in controversy.
But, none of them, before Suthep, had used their period in the monkhood for direct political gains: their goal was rather to erase and atone for their political past. Suthep’s monkhood has created a new kind of connection between monasticism and politics: it is not, this time, a monk who drifted into politics, like Phra Kittiwuttho or Phra Buddha Isara, but a politician who drifted into religion and used it as a new political platform.
Fig. 2: The Suan Mokh temple founded by Buddhadasa Bhikku in 1932, and where the politician Suthep Thaugsuban stayed as a monk after the coup d' état of May 22, 2014.

Photo by François May
15The events described above illustrate how deeply Thai Buddhism is mired in day-to-day politics, to a degree probably not seen since the 1970s, when conservative forces of Thai society were arrayed against “the Left.”
16Some monks consider that the emerging tensions may threaten the very structure of the sangha. Somdet Chuang belongs to the Mahanikai, the larger of the two orders of Thai Buddhism, the second one being the Thammayut—created by Prince Mongkut in 1833 when he was a monk, before becoming King Rama IV—which has continued to be closely linked with the royal family and the Thai state. Since the 1960s, except for a couple of years, the supreme patriarch has been from the minority Thammayut (see Box 1). Because the senior Thammayut monks tend to receive the most prestigious titles at an earlier age than the Mahanikai monks, they stand a much greater chance than the latter to be eligible for the sangha’s highest post. When Somdet Chuang was nominated in January 2016, the Mahanikai congregation thought that their time had come, but the controversy over the appointment derailed the process and yet another Thammayut monk, Phra Maha Muniwong, became supreme patriarch in February 2017. Thus, despite affirmations of harmonious relationships between the two congregations by monks and analysts, there is brooding discontent among some Mahanikai monks who feel the order has been treated unfairly.13 Some Mahanikai monks are even invoking the possibility of nominating two supreme patriarchs—one for each sect—as is the practice in Cambodia.14
The ambivalence of Buddhist political activism
17During the troubled 1970s, when Thailand was a strong ally of the United States in its war against communism in Southeast Asia, Buddhist monks became involved at both ends of the political spectrum. Phra Kittiwuttho, a well-known Mahanikai monk from the Mahathat royal temple in Bangkok, became a torch bearer of the ultra-rightist and ultra-royalist movement when he said in an interview in June 1976 that killing a communist was a “minor sin”: “It is like when you kill a fish to offer to a monk. There is certainly demerit in killing the fish, but then it is erased when the fish is placed in the monk alms’ bowl,” were Kittiwuttho’s exact words.15 He had also participated in at least one demonstration organized by the far-right group Nawaphon earlier in 1976, in direct violation of the laws prohibiting monks from engaging in political activities. But the Council took no action against him despite abundant criticism in the liberal press.16
18State authorities had in fact been actively enrolling Buddhist monks since 1964 as instruments in their anti-communist struggle, mostly through the thammathut or “missionaries of the dhamma” program, under which volunteer monks were sent during the dry season, between February to June, to areas of northeastern Thailand, southern Thailand as well as Laos deemed to be threatened by communist infiltration. Their mission was to teach a “correct” version of Buddhism in order to counter communist propaganda, as well as to improve the material lives and moral standing of the populace.17 A similar program called thammacharik launched in 1965 aimed to protect northern hill-tribe groups from communism by propagating Buddhism and the national ideology built around the shibboleth Nation-Religion-King.
19Some monks, however, were reluctant to collaborate with the central authorities in their anti-communist campaign. In the early 1950s, a prominent Mahanikai monk, Phra Phimontham, also known as At Asabho (1901–92), who had been close to former prime minister Pridi Banomyong (1900–83), was put in charge of writing an ecclesiastical decree to ban suspected communists from being ordained as Buddhist monks.18 As he appeared reluctant to do so and because of his liberal views, he was sidelined and blocked in his ascension in the hierarchy under pressure from military dictator Sarit Thanarat (1908–63).19 Phra Phimontham was eventually disrobed and jailed under false accusations of breaching the monastic code and for being a communist sympathizer. When the monks who had been forced by the police to make the accusations confessed that they had lied, a lengthy campaign was orchestrated by ultra-conservative Council elders and supporters of Thanom Kittikachorn’s military dictatorship to try to prevent his rehabilitation. It was only in 1975 that Phra Phimontham was allowed to be a monk again, and in 1981 that he was reinstated as the abbot of Wat Mahathat; in December 1985 he was awarded the title of somdet and became a member of the Supreme Sangha Council.20 If there had been no slanderous campaign against him, Phra Phimontham should have become supreme patriarch in the 1980s.
20Between 1973 and 1976, some progressive monks also joined peasant demonstrations to show their identification with the poor.21 In November 1974, young monks occupied the front rank of a Farmers Federation of Thailand rally. One of them said: “We take pity on the farmers who are the backbone of the country ... Being the children of farmers, we cannot turn our backs on them when they need help.” 22 Some of these monks were punished by the Council, in strong contrast with the attitude adopted vis-à-vis Kittiwuttho.
21There is a fundamental ambiguity in the relationship between the sangha and politics. In principle, monks are not supposed to be involved in politics at all. Indeed, Thai monks have never had the right to vote.23 They have a status somehow similar to that of the royalty, a “superior” position where they are supposed to deal only with purely religious issues. As for the monarchy, however, this separation between the petty world of politics and the untainted world of spirituality is more appearance than reality. There are several reasons for this. First, since the end of the nineteenth century, and especially since the Sangha Act of 1902, the monastic community has become a tool of state power—first of the absolute monarchy, and then of whatever regime, elected civilian or military junta, is holding power.
Fig. 3: Statue of Khruba Srivichai at Camadevi temple, in Lamphun

Photo by Arnaud Dubus
Box 3 - Khruba Srivichai, the “Lanna Saint” (1878–1935)
Some provincial monks resisted the centralization of the sangha and the uniformization of Buddhist scriptures and rituals initiated under the guidance of Prince Wachirayanwarorot (1859–1921), a half-brother of King Chulalongkorn who became a monk and later supreme patriarch. The most well-known of those who resisted the reforms is probably Khruba Srivichai, a revered monk born in 1878 in the northern province of Lamphun, who showed a dogged independence of mind and refused to bow to Bangkok’s diktats. Khruba is a title given to him by local villagers who were impressed by his strict adherence to Buddhist discipline and his generosity.
Despite Wachirayanwarorot’s order to only use central Thai writing for Buddhist scriptures, Khruba Srivichai continued to use the northern Thai Lanna script. He was also the only senior monk who did not bother to attend a meeting about the implementation of the 1902 Sangha Act. He continued to ordain monks, without the compulsory authorization from the Supreme Sangha Council in Bangkok as stipulated by the Act.24 In December 1911, he even refused (or failed) to decorate his temple in honor of the coronation of Rama VI (King Vajiravudh).
But Khruba Srivichai’s indifference to the Bangkok-appointed civil and monastic hierarchy was most vividly demonstrated by his multiple initiatives to restore temples and build stupas and prayer halls (sala) across the northern region. His charisma was such that Khruba Srivichai was able to mobilize hundreds and sometimes even thousands of his followers for these public works, without bothering to contact civil or monastic authorities. His popularity and his independence of mind upset the sangha leaders as well as Chiang Mai’s head monk. The ecclesiastical authorities confined him on several occasions to the grounds of specific temples. He was also summoned twice to Bangkok, in 1919 and 1935, to face accusations of rebellion by senior royal monks.25
After each summons, he was allowed to return to his native region, but under severe restrictions; finally, he was stripped of his ecclesiastical position and made a simple monk. His major achievement was to mobilize thousands of villagers and highland people in 1934 to build, mostly by hand, a 12-kilometer-long road between the city of Chiang Mai and the Phra That Doi Suthep temple at the top of Doi Suthep mountain, after the government said they had no budget for the project. This further irritated the Bangkok government, who forced Khruba Srivichai to stay at the Camadevi temple, in Lamphun. He died in 1938 at the age of 60. He is still hugely revered by the northern Thais, who call him the “Lanna Saint.”
22Mongkut’s creation of the Thammayut congregation laid the foundations for such an evolution. Mongkut was dismayed by the state of Buddhism in Thailand, where many monks had poor knowledge of the scriptures and where religion and “superstitious” beliefs were inextricably mixed. Relying on a Mon tradition considered closer to the original Buddhism than the then-prevalent version of Buddhism imported from Ceylon, he wanted to establish a purer and more intellectual tradition under the royal family’s tutelage. One of his sons who became a monk and later supreme patriarch, Wachirayanwarorot, played a key role at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century to develop the Thammayut congregation and give it a central place in the Thai religious world. But the vast majority of Thai monks were not part of it: they belonged to the older congregation, which was named Mahanikai (or the “big congregation”) after the creation of the Thammayut nikai. Today, some 80 to 90 percent of monks still belong to the Mahanikai order.
23As noted, the Sangha Act of 1902 created an ecclesiastical structure modeled on the civil service put into place by King Chulalongkorn at the end of the nineteenth century. The Supreme Sangha Council was set up to serve as an advisory body to the king, but the monks who were members of this council had very limited powers: as Phra Paisal Visalo (b. 1957) says, the real head of the sangha was the king (see Box 4). Today the king remains, according to the constitution, the protector of religions while those controlling political power exert, de facto, the real control over the monastic community.
24Despite subsequent legislation, this framework has not been fundamentally altered since then, establishing a mutually beneficial relationship between the state and the sangha. The holders of political power can use the sangha to legitimate their power, giving it a kind of moral aura based on religion. In exchange, the monks—or at least the senior monks—enjoy the material and financial support and protection of those in power, hence the sangha’s subservience vis-à-vis the state.
25This symbiotic relationship was especially strong during the absolute monarchy as the king himself was, and still is, conceived as being a boddhisatta-king or future Buddha, an idea that has been inscribed in the Thai mind by regular public presentations of the Vessantara Jātaka, the penultimate life of the Buddha.26 The Siamese king had the duty to maintain the sangha and, thus, to punish deviant monks if the monastic hierarchy could not manage to do so itself. This role of surveillance perpetuated itself after the abolition of the absolute monarchy in 1932, but somehow civilian and military governments had a deficit of barami—moral authority or virtue—which weakened the association and their legitimacy to intervene in monks’ affairs. This deficit was linked in large part to the fact that they were not from a “pure bloodline,” unlike members of the reigning royal family. This is the reason why the “new men” who had taken over power were busy making merit at royal temples to “catch up with the monarchy in the area of virtue.” 27
Box 4 - Interview with Phra Paisal Visalo, abbot of Sukato Forest Monastery, in Chaiyaphum province, April 2016
Is the absence of reforms one of the key issues in the crisis affecting the sangha?
Phra Paisal Visalo: The administrative regime of the monastic community of today is rooted in the rules edicted at the time of King Chulalongkorn (r. 1868–1910). The current Sangha Act is not very different to the Sangha Act of 1902. The system of managing Buddhist monks is not very different from that under the absolute monarchy.
The civil administrative system was copied from the British colonial administration in India and Burma. Nowadays, nobody is using this system, but Thailand still uses it. There have been some changes, but this structure is archaic. Concerning the administration of the sangha, there have never been any changes. It is completely modeled on the civil service administration of one century ago, with ecclesiastical region chief, ecclesiastical provincial chief, and all these chiefs are regrouped in the Council of Elders, also called the Supreme Sangha Council. This structure is completely fossilized.
In the past, some monks, for instance Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, had a strong intellectual influence. There are still some today, like Phra Prayudh Payutto or yourself. So, how can we explain that there were no reforms of the monastic administration?
In the Thai monastic tradition, there is no space for self-reform. Be it in Sri Lanka, in Burma or in Thailand, sangha reform has always come from the king. The model is King Ashoka in around 300 AD. After the beginning of the Rattanakosin era in 1782 and the foundation of the current dynasty, the Law of the Three Seals, written by order of King Rama I, organized the monastic community.28
The Thai monks who were reformers have always been at the periphery of the monastic administrative organizations. They reformed themselves and their monasteries, like Buddhadasa Bhikkhu or Santi Asoke. Under King Chulalongkorn, the sangha reform was organized by his younger brother, Prince Wachirayanwarorot. He was a monk, as well as a son of a king and a brother of a king. That is why he could lead such a reform.
Has the administrative centralization of the sangha created a gap between monks and common people?
The sangha has become too close to the state, to the central power. The Sangha Act of 1902 has somehow nationalized the monastic community. Before, monks, but also everything else was rooted locally. When Chulalongkorn became king, he nationalized and centralized everything: religion, language, food, police, and the tax system.
Monks became very close to the monarchy. At the time of Rama V (King Chulalongkorn), the Supreme Sangha Council was created as a committee to advise the king in matters of religion, but the council had no power to make decisions; this power was held by the king. The real supreme patriarch is actually the king. Even after the abolition of the absolute monarchy in 1932, the central state overtook the king’s powers and the sangha was maintained under the strict control of the state.
For example, if the supreme patriarch wants to appoint some monks to important positions, the names must actually be proposed first by a minister. If the supreme patriarch wants to give the honor of somdet [the highest in the Thai monastic hierarchy], the name must be proposed by the minister of education. And as we can see now with the controversy on the aborted appointment of Somdet Chuang as supreme patriarch, the problem is the same for the highest position in the sangha.
In this close relationship between the sangha and the state, it is clear that the state is benefiting because it can legitimate its power in religious terms, but does the sangha also benefit from this relationship?
The sangha is benefiting from the financial support of the state. In Thailand, all monastery abbots receive a monthly salary from the state, as do ecclesiastical chiefs at all levels. Temples also receive funds for building and renovation expenses, as well as for the organization of schools within their compounds.
The monks at the top of the hierarchy are benefiting from the state in terms of prestige. They are delighted with their close links to power. For them it is a question of personal interest. In Thailand, prestige relies on connections, on networks. And connections mean power and money. The most senior monks, the somdet phra racha khana, are close to the prime minister. They can ask for favors, ask for such or such member of their family to be appointed as governor or a high position in the police.
Since King Vajiravudh or Rama VI, Thai national identity has had three pillars: nation, religion and king. Religion here means Buddhism. Do you think this religious pillar today has become fragile?
This ideology that you describe is a nationalist and monarchist one, which is rooted in Thailand. In the difficult transition that Thailand is experiencing, Buddhism could play the role of moral guide. But the country has become very polarized. All the institutions are fragilized. None of them can be seen as neutral. They are either “Red,” or “Yellow.” People who are accepted by both sides are very rare, because whoever we are, we will be classified as one side or the other. The general attitude is: either you are with us, or you are against us. If you are with us, we listen to you, but if you are against us, we don’t listen to you. One of the consequences is that, in society, leaders with full awareness of their actions are very rare.
Why is there such a degree of polarization?
It has been growing for about ten years. It started with the political infighting between the Yellow Shirts and the Red Shirts. Everything has become politicized in Thailand. There are no moral questions any more, there are only political questions.
Is the close proximity in Thailand between Buddhism and state power one of the main issues?
Yes, because it has resulted in the exploitation of Buddhism to reinforce the nationalist ideology. Religion has been used to fight against communism, it has been used to fight the enemies of the state, to oppose all those who are not royalist. They are considered as sinners. We say that they lack gratitude, that they should live overseas.
Buddhist morality is exploited by the central power for politics and for nationalism. For instance, under King Rama VI, Buddhism was used to justify the participation of Siam in World War I. A high-ranking monk said that Buddhism supported involvement in the war. It was on this basis that King Rama VI gave the green light to send Thai troops to Europe. The basic idea was and is always the same: Buddhism must support the nation.29
Fig. 4: Phra Paisal Visalo, at Sukato Forest Temple in Chaiyapum province

Photo by Arnaud Dubus
26The sangha has continued to be a tool of the central state. This has resulted in an ever-increasing distance between laypeople and the sangha leadership, and thus a weakening of the monastic community. The sangha’s relationship with the state is revealed whenever monks are involved in politics. Conservative monks who become politically active in order to support the incumbent government or the state—for instance, Phra Kittiwuttho in the 1970s or, as we will see below, the Mahanikai monk Phra Buddha Isara after 2013—are encouraged by the authorities and considered “not to be involved in politics”—and thus not violating the principle of separation between religion and politics. But socially-oriented monks opposing the state or the powers that be are considered as “political monks” and thus morally corrupt and religiously deviant.30
27One monk who challenged the political status quo was Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, one of the most influential Thai monks of the twentieth century. Buddhadasa Bhikkhu was perceived by some supporters of successive military regimes from the 1950s to the 1980s as a pro-communist monk, mostly because he did not wholeheartedly support those pro-US authoritarian governments. He spoke instead of communist movements being the “normal outcome” of the selfish and materialistic behavior of capitalists.31 He also condemned the official United States’ view that bombing Vietnam was a “moral action” because “this would force [the North Vietnamese] to follow the correct path.” 32
28Buddhadasa Bhikku also gave the impression of challenging the common understanding of the three pillars of Thai identity (Nation-Religion-King) by interpreting them in moral rather than in physical or geographical terms.33 But, as demonstrated by Louis Gabaude, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu was actually willing to challenge whatever doctrine aimed only at catering to materialistic and physical needs, be it liberalism or communism or even the way Buddhism was practiced in Thailand. His position was that only “moral behavior” and a true understanding of the dhamma were valid underpinnings for a political doctrine. So for this monk, a dictatorship was acceptable if “it functions according to the dhamma.” 34
29During his lifetime, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu was viewed with suspicion by some ecclesiastical and political authorities, and was frequently lambasted by ultra-right and nationalist groups. Since his death in 1993, however, his image has been rehabilitated in official spheres and used as a “state formal figure”—a transformation similar to that of a number of other politically controversial monks in Thai history.35 As we will see, the same logic of state authorities condoning politically conservative monks and neutralizing less supportive ones has continued to prevail since the start of the transition crisis in 2005.
The increasing polarization of Buddhism after 2005
30As noted, the sangha and wider Buddhist community has become increasingly polarized since 2005, in parallel with the growing divide between supporters and opponents of Thaksin. At the end of that year, Sondhi Limthongkul (b. 1947), a media tycoon and former Thaksin ally, began to organize gatherings in Bangkok where he would strongly criticize the Thaksin government for alleged corruption. People attending the gatherings mostly wore yellow-colored clothes to advertise their support of the monarchy, and, because of this, were quickly dubbed the “Yellow Shirts.”
31Thaksin, a former police officer who had become by the end of the 1990s a billionaire by obtaining quasi-monopolies in telecommunications, had been prime minister since January 2001. The anti-Thaksin demonstrations gathered momentum in February 2006, just after the prime minister had sold his telecommunications conglomerate, Shin Corp, to the Singaporean company Temasek, without paying taxes. The tax avoidance was not illegal, but it was considered “immoral” and was compounded by numerous other accusations against Thaksin of twisting national policies to benefit his companies and his clan of relatives and business allies. Even before the sale of Shin Corp, members of Bodhirak’s Buddhist group Santi Asoke began to appear among the Yellow Shirt demonstrators (see Box 5).
32These demonstrations eventually led to the coup on September 19, 2006, which overthrew Thaksin’s government. A junta seized power but, less than two weeks after the coup, appointed a former Army chief, General Surayud Chulanont, to lead a government mostly composed of veteran technocrats. After a new constitution was written, elections returned to power in December 2007 a pro-Thaksin party, the People’s Power Party, with veteran conservative politician Samak Sundaravej as prime minister.
Box 5 - Santi Asoke: From asceticism to activism
Santi Asoke was founded by Rak Rakphong, a former TV programmer who was ordained as a monk in 1970 at a Thammayut monastery under the name Phra Bodhirak. Disappointed by what he considered to be the lax discipline and poor spiritual practice of the monks with whom he was in contact, Bodhirak began in 1973 to develop his own religious center, then called Daen Asoke, at Kampaeng Saen, some 40 kilometers from Nakhon Pathom city.36 There, he and his followers practiced what they viewed as the original teachings of the Buddha without submitting to state control. Threatened with punishment by the ecclesiastical provincial chief, Bodhirak reluctantly agreed to register his center as a monastery. In 1975, however, he declared himself independent of both the Thammayut and the Mahanikai orders, and from state-regulated Buddhism, while still a self-proclaimed Theravāda monk.
Santi Asoke’s first foray into politics happened when Bodhirak and his largely urban followers openly supported Chamlong Srimuang (b. 1935), a former general who had worked as Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda’s secretary-general at the beginning of the 1980s, and presented himself as a candidate for the Bangkok governorship in 1985.
Chamlong, a graduate of the Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy and a major-general, has been a high-profile member of Santi Asoke since the end of the 1970s. He gained a reputation for his asceticism, including eating only one vegetarian meal a day and abstaining from sexual relations with his wife.37 With Santi Asoke’s strong support, Chamlong won the gubernatorial elections in 1985 by a wide margin. During his mandate, he tried to implement some of Santi Asoke’s principles particularly on fighting corruption, clamping down on entertainment places, and focusing on the cleanliness of the city. Santi Asoke practitioners had comprised the core of Chamlong’s campaign team and he repaid his debt after victory by appointing some of them to Bangkok’s City Hall.38
In 1988, Chamlong created a political party, the Palang Dhamma Party (PDP, Party of Moral Force), to compete during the legislative elections. Bodhirak and Santi Asoke became more overtly engaged in politically supporting Chamlong: most of the party executive committee and around half of the candidates who contested the seats outside of Bangkok were Santi Asoke followers.39 But the results were disappointing: only 14 out of the PDP’s 295 candidates won a seat and, among them, only one Santi Asoke member was elected.40
Santi Asoke’s foray into politics gave rise to worries that Bodhirak’s movement could endanger the institutional structure of official Thai Buddhism by becoming a third grouping besides the Thammayut and Mahanikai. After Bodhirak rejected a call by the Supreme Sangha Council to submit to its control and to stop criticizing it, a gathering of 150 high-ranking monks led by the newly appointed supreme patriarch, Phra Nyanasamvara, agreed on May 23, 1989 to ask the Council to defrock Bodhirak for “breach of the discipline” and “rebelling against the mainstream monastic order,” and to excommunicate Santi Asoke from the official structure of Thai Buddhism.41 One of the accusations leveled at Bodhirak was the fact that he was ordaining monks despite not having himself been a monk for the required minimum of ten years. Another was his apparent claim to be a Buddhist saint, a capital sin according to the vinaya piṭaka. On June 9, 1989, Bodhirak stopped referring to himself as a “monk” (to take the appellation of samana) and went to his local district to apply for an identity card—implicitly acknowledging that he was no longer a monk (Thai monks hold a monastic ID card, the bai sutthi).42 In December 1995, after six years of hearings, a court gave Bodhirak a three-year suspended sentence and lesser suspended jail-terms to some followers of Santi Asoke for continuing to behave as monks.43 Meanwhile, some Santi Asoke followers themselves began to perceive the links between the group and politicians in a negative light.
Chamlong Srimuang was reelected by a landslide as the governor of Bangkok in January 1990, but he did not wish Santi Asoke members to be fielded as PDP candidates, as the connection with the religious movement was proving too problematic.44 When PDP participated successfully in the March 1992 elections, the party was no longer perceived as being closely connected to Santi Asoke. In 1995, Chamlong was replaced as PDP’s leader by Thaksin Shinawatra, the man who ironically would become ten years later the main enemy of Bodhirak and Santi Asoke.
33Relations between Thaksin Shinawatra and Santi Asoke were good up to February 2006. Because of his political cooperation with Major-General Chamlong Srimuang in the PDP, Thaksin had included some Santi Asoke members among his advisors when he founded the Thai Rak Thai Party in 1998. The Thaksin administration (January 2001 – September 2006) entrusted to Santi Asoke the task of “training” indebted farmers through courses on organic farming and the virtues of economic self-sufficiency.45 The thousands of farmers who attended these courses had their debts suspended for three years.
34Santi Asoke members began to distance themselves from Thaksin, however, when he switched his policies of support for small business and opposition to the International Monetary Fund—which sought to force Thailand to further liberalize its economy after the 1997 financial crisis—to promoting international free trade agreements. Brown-clad male and female followers of Santi Asoke began to join the demonstrations of the People’s Alliance for Democracy, the anti-Thaksin Yellow Shirts’ movement led by Sondhi, in February 2006. There were, at most, one thousand Asoke participants at the demonstrations, and their numbers dwindled in the following weeks.
35Asoke members returned to the streets in late May 2008, when the government was led by Samak Sundaravej, who had declared himself to be a “nominee” of Thaksin. Samak was an old foe of Santi Asoke as he had strongly criticized the connections between the movement and the PDP during the 1988 general elections.46 Thaksin left Thailand to live in exile in August 2008 and was sentenced for abuse of power to a two-year jail term in October 2008. The political situation was then more tense than two years before, as the Red Shirts, composed of Thaksin supporters mainly from the rural north and northeast, had reemerged and were demanding an amnesty that would allow Thaksin to return. On October 7, 2008, violent confrontations between the Yellow Shirts and the police left one person dead and many injured.
Fig. 5: An anti-Thaksin painting drawn by Santi Asoke artists

Photo by Arnaud Dubus
36Santi Asoke followers were also actively involved in demonstrations to reclaim the areas around Preah Vihear temple for Thailand, when tensions between Bangkok and Phnom Penh heightened in 2009.47 Most Asoke participants had joined these demonstrations out of respect for Chamlong Srimuang who, by 2005, had become a bitter enemy of Thaksin mostly because he considered that the latter had led the PDP to its demise.48 Thaksin’s policy of pushing the rural population to become active participants in the capitalist economy, through various spending-inducement schemes, was also at odds with the austerity and self-sufficiency advocated by Santi Asoke.
37Indeed, the growing divide between the Yellow Shirts and the Red Shirts after the 2006 coup progressively affected the monastic community, which became increasingly fragmented, although several analysts claim the majority of monks are sympathetic to the Red Shirts, because they share the same social, and often geographical, origins.
Red monks and Yellow monks
38According to Jim Taylor, around four or five hundred monks from the provinces and from within Bangkok participated in the March to May 2010 Red Shirt demonstrations. These monks were both Thammayut and Mahanikai.49 The number of monks directly involved in the 2010 Red Shirt demonstrations was obviously a tiny proportion of the sangha. But according to a study by Surapot Thaweesak, a professor at the Suan Dusit Rajabhat University, Hua Hin campus, sympathy for the Red Shirts’ cause is widespread within the sangha.
39In his 2011 study “Why Do Monks have to be Red?” Surapot surveyed the opinions of 512 monks, living in the four main regions of Thailand: center, north, northeast (Isan) and south. The survey indicated that in the central and southern regions a large majority of monks affirmed that they did not favour either of the political camps, but in the northern and Isan regions, respectively, only 49.3 percent and 40 percent of the monks were neutral. Most strikingly, however, 47 percent of the monastic population in the north said it was pro-Red Shirts; this was 57.3 percent in Isan.50 The figure of 27.3 percent of the southern monks being openly supportive of the Yellow Shirts completed this picture of a politically divided monastic community. Analyzing these figures, Duncan McCargo considered that “since Isan (the Northeast) accounts for a third of the Thai population, and Isan-born monks are heavily overrepresented among the monastic population generally, these results suggest that a majority of Thai monks outside the South may have redshirt leanings.”51 The historian Niddhi Eoseewong made the same assessment.52
40Coming from roughly the same social and geographical background as the Red Shirt demonstrators, it is perhaps not surprising that indeed, these northeastern and northern monks, for whom the monkhood was often an opportunity to get a better education and improve their status, felt a bond with the socially marginalized. This is confirmed by Surapot Thaweesak’s interviews with prominent monks sympathetic to the Red Shirts detailed in the survey. These monks often emphasized that “government by the people,” “the fight against double-standards,” and “social justice,” were important values for them.53
Fig. 6: A monk on the frontline of the Red Shirts demonstrations on Rajdamri road on May 19, 2010

Photo by Arnaud Dubus
41The political inclinations of some prominent monks were not lost on the Abhisit Vejjajiva government which, just before the start of the 2010 demonstrations, put under surveillance eleven senior monks, including the abbot of Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Phra Dhammachayo, the deputy-abbot of Wat Saket, and the rectors of the two Buddhist universities of Bangkok, Mahachulalongkorn and Mahamakut, all suspected of supporting the Red Shirts.54
42The emergence of a significant portion of Thai monks willing to challenge or at least to criticize the status quo is reminiscent of the progressive monks who joined the farmers’ demonstrations in 1974. But the contemporary phenomenon appears to be much more broadly-based than thirty-six years before, which is remarkable, given the long tradition of the Thai sangha’s subservience to the state. Monks who are critical of the establishment face the opposition of a wide array of entrenched conservative monastic or religious groups.
Notes de bas de page
7 Interview, Phra Paisal Visalo, April 2016.
8 Duncan McCargo, “The Changing Politics of Thailand’s Buddhist Order,” Critical Asian Studies 44, no. 4 (2012): 636.
9 Rachelle M. Scott, Nirvana for Sale? Buddhism, Money, Wealth and the Dhammakaya Temple in Contemporary Thailand (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009), 148.
10 Phra Prayudh Payutto, กรณีธรรมกาย [The Dhammakaya Case], online version, 1998: http://www.watnyanaves.net/uploads/File/books/pdf/the_dhammakaya_case_lesson_learned_for_buddhist_education_and_society_development_expanded_and_revised.pdf.
11 Vichak Panich, พระสุเทพกับสวนโมกขื [“Phra Suthep and Suan Mokh”], Prachatai, November 2, 2014.
12 Jitsiree Thongnoi, “From Marches to Monkhood: Suthep’s Act of Faith,” Bangkok Post, January 25, 2015.
13 Interview, Phra Paisal Visalo, April 2016.
14 Interview, Phra Metthee Dhammachan, May 2016.
15 Charles F. Keyes, “Political Crisis and Militant Buddhism in Contemporary Thailand,” in Religion and Legitimation of Power in Thailand, Burma and Laos, edited by Bardwell Smith (Chambersburg, PA: Anima Books, 1978), 159–60.
16 Ibid., 151–52.
17 Gabaude, “Politique et religion en Thaïlande,” 161.
18 Louis Gabaude, Une herméneutique bouddhique contemporaine de Thaïlande : Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient, 1988), 428.
19 Interview, Chanchai Huadsri, Professor at Mahachulalongkornrajavidalaya University in Khon Kaen, March 2016.
20 Peter Jackson, Buddhism, Legitimation and Conflict: The Political Functions of Urban Thai Buddhism (Singapore: ISEAS, 1990), 94–111.
21 Niels Mulder, Inside Thai Society: An Interpretation of Everyday Life (Bangkok: Duang Kamol, 1990), 121.
22 Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker, A History of Thailand (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 189.
23 Tomas Larsson, “Monkish Politics in Southeast Asia: Religious Disenfranchisement in Comparative and Theoretical Perspective,” Modern Asian Studies 49, no. 1 (2015): 40–82.
24 Taylor M. Easum, “A Thorn in Bangkok’s Side: Khruba Sriwichai, Sacred Space and the Last Stand of the Pre-modern Chiang Mai State,” South East Asia Research 21, no. 2 (2013): 211–36; Katherine Bowie, “Of Buddhism and Militarism in Northern Thailand: Solving the Puzzle of the Saint Khruubaa Srivichai,” Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 3 (2014): 711–32; Katherine Bowie, “The Saint with Indra’s Sword: Khruubaa Srivichai and Buddhist Millenarism in Northern Thailand,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 56, no. 3 (2014): 681–713.
25 See Sid Perou, “Khru Ba Sriwichai, the Engineer Monk,” video, 28:42, July 5, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqw2Gc9x2Ak (accessed October 27, 2017).
26 Patrick Jory, Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jataka and the Idea of the Perfect Man (Albany: SUNY Press, 2016).
27 Christine Gray, “Thailand: The Soteriological State in the 1970s” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1986), 16.
28 The Law of the Three Seals (in Thai: กฎหมายตราสามดวง ) is an ensemble of legal texts from the Ayutthaya period (1351–1767).
29 Interview conducted in Thai.
30 Interview, Phra Paisal Visalo, April 2016.
31 Gabaude, Une herméneutique bouddhique contemporaine de Thaïlande, 421–22.
32 Ibid., 76.
33 Ibid., 434.
34 Ibid.
35 Interview, Vichak Panich, February 2016.
36 Rory Mackenzie, New Buddhist Movements in Thailand (London: Routledge, 2007), 116.
37 Duncan McCargo, Chamlong Srimuang and the New Thai Politics (London: Hurst & Company, 1997), 82.
38 Ibid., 87.
39 Mackenzie, New Buddhist Movements, 121.
40 McCargo, Chamlong Srimuang, 93.
41 Mackenzie, New Buddhist Movements, 123.
42 McCargo, Chamlong Srimuang, 97.
43 Ibid., 98.
44 Ibid., 99.
45 Marja-Leena Heikkilä-Horn, “Santi Asoke Buddhism and the Occupation of Bangkok International Airport,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Südostasienwissenschaften 3, no. 1 (2010): 31–47.
46 McCargo, Chamlong Srimuang, 91.
47 Located on the border between Thailand and Cambodia, the tenth century Khmer Hindu temple of Preah Vihear was attributed to Cambodia by a 1962 decision of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Thailand reluctantly accepted the court’s decision, but still claims the areas surrounding the temple.
48 Heikkilä-Horn, “Santi Asoke Buddhism and the Occupation of Bangkok International Airport,” 42.
49 Jim Taylor, “No Way Forward but Back? Re-emergent Thai Falangism, Democracy, and the New “Red Shirt” Social Movement,” in Bangkok May 2010: Perspectives on a Divided Thailand, ed. Michael J. Montesano, Pavin Chachavalpongpun and Aekapol Chongvilaivan (Chiang Mai: Silkworm; Singapore: ISEAS, 2012), 290.
50 Surapot Thaweesak, พระทำไมต้องแดง (Why Do Monks have to be Red?] (Bangkok: Thongtham, 2011).
51 McCargo, “The Changing Politics of Thailand’s Buddhist Order,” 633.
52 Interview, Niddhi Eoseewong, July 2016.
53 Surapot Thaweesak, “Why Do Monks have to be Red?”
54 Thai Rath, March 2, 2010.
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
Malaisie - Chine : une « précieuse » relation
David Delfolie, Nathalie Fau et Elsa Lafaye de Micheaux
2016
L'Or Blanc
Petits et grands planteurs face au « boom » de l’hévéaculture (Viêt Nam-Cambodge)
Frédéric Fortunel et Christophe Gironde (dir.)
2014
Le Soft power sud-coréen en Asie du Sud-Est
Une théologie de la prospérité en action
Hui-yeon Kim
2014
Investigating the Grey Areas of the Chinese Communities in Southeast Asia
Proceedings of the Symposium organised by IRASEC at the Hotel Sofitel Silom (Bangkok) on January 2005, 6th and 7th
Arnaud Leveau (dir.)
2007
State and Media in Thailand During Political Transition
Proceedings of the Symposium organized by the French Embassy, the German Embassy, the National Press Council of Thailand and Irasec at the Thai Journalist Association Building on May 2007, 23rd
Chavarong Limpattamapanee et Arnaud Leveau (dir.)
2007
Mekong-Ganga Cooperation Initiative
Analysis and Assessment of India’s Engagement with Greater Mekong Sub-region
Swaran Singh
2007