Amnesia

A History of Democratic Idealism in Modern Thailand

Arjun Subrahmanyan

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781438486505
  9781438486512
• eBook ISBN:
  9781438486529
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Describes the profound social impact of the overthrow of the Thai absolute monarchy in 1932, and explains the importance of democracy in a country long known for authoritarian politics.

Thailand's monarchy and military have dominated the narrative of the country's modern history, and their leadership is often accepted as evidence of a cultural preference for authoritarianism. Despite a long history of military coups that have upended the course of the country's democracy, however, Thailand's democratic history is a vital though largely ignored aspect of modern Thai society. Based on extensive archival research, Amnesia delves into the social and political beginnings of Thai democracy and explains how a bloodless revolution against the monarchy in 1932 introduced a constitutional democracy and ignited enduring hopes for a fairer society and a more representative government. The "People's Party," a small group of commoners who staged the revolution in the name of democracy, found an enthusiastic audience for their bold populist rhetoric among wide swathes of society. In Amnesia, Arjun Subrahmanyan illustrates how the idealism of the first decade of Thai democracy, now largely forgotten, still shapes Thai society.

Chapter One

The New Regime and the Old

Compromise, Rebellion, and the Enemies Within

In 1932, Siam was the last absolute monarchy in the world, and the crown faced crisis. Rumors of civil unrest and revolt against the Bangkok monarchy, coupled with widespread popular hardship, fueled an uneasy atmosphere in the beginning of the year. The fall in price of exported rice in the wake of the economic depression¹ that began in 1929 deprived paddy farmers, the vast majority of the population whose labor sustained the elite and underpinned Siam’s place in the international economy, of their main income and led to criticism that the king’s government was indifferent. At the same time, public gossips criticized the elite for holding tremendous wealth that could have helped the poor at a desperate time. Within the military, rumors of rebellion became common currency, and something of a joke. Beer and whiskey loosened tongues, and drinking buddies among the officers and men in the army and navy would gently rib each other for joining a table of two or three: “You must be plotting something!”²

Public speculation had it that the April 6, 1932 celebration of Bangkok’s 150-year anniversary as the dynastic capital would be canceled for financial reasons; as spiritually and politically powerful as the monarchy thought itself to be, perhaps it could not pay its bills.³ Also at the time a prophecy reportedly first made at the city’s founding in 1782 that the kingdom would collapse 150 years hence recirculated in Bangkok. In April for the commemoration “blood would pool in the stomachs of elephants, there would be killing for seven days and nights, the earth and sky would change places,” and the royals would be killed amid revolt.⁴

At ceremonies on the royal grounds that clear, hot April day, a cooling breeze brought relief to the assemblage of royal-ennobled elite sweltering in their full regalia. And, apart from the winds stymieing the king’s repeated attempts to light ceremonial candles—which some people took as a bad omen—the April celebrations proceeded smoothly.⁵ The festival of kingship formed the last grand display of unchecked royal power. For a genuine threat existed, as a small group of plotters at that very time honed their plans to end the absolute monarchy. Beginning in the same April, ten men met seven times to work out the best way to end the absolute monarchy with the minimum disruption and violence but with maximum surprise.⁶ These men led the “People’s Party,” a mysterious, secretive group that the public would later learn comprised around 100 young civilian and military state officers.⁷

The leading “Promoters,” as members of the People’s Party called themselves in echo of a vanguard political strategy adopted from Russia and China, formed a tight-knit group originally of seven young men who came together for the first time in Paris in February 1927 to plan the overthrow of the absolutist system.⁸ The foreign students’ group grew their network from a middle tier bureaucratic base, and successfully enrolled four senior military officers whose armed support made the plan a reality five years later. The civilian leader of the group was Pridi Banomyong, thirty-two-years old at the time. Born to a Thai-Chinese small farmer and landowner in central Ayuthaya province, Pridi gained a law doctorate at the University of Paris in 1927 where he studied on a government scholarship. His wife, with whom he was related through their great-great-grandparents, came from a well-connected family. In 1885, her grandfather—at the time an attaché at the Siamese legation in London—joined a group of princely reformers who tried, and failed, to convince King Chulalongkorn (r. 1868–1910) to introduce a constitutional monarchy.⁹ Phibun Songkhram, aged thirty-four in 1932, was a junior army officer and leader of the middle-tier army cohort. From a family of Nonthaburi province market gardeners, Phibun was born into a sturdy two-story houseboat on a canal not far from Nonthaburi’s provincial offices. He graduated at the top of his cadet class at the army staff college and like Pridi then studied on a state scholarship in France. Phibun graduated from the artillery school in Fontainebleau in 1927.¹⁰

Of the four senior officers, two particularly important in our story are Phraya Song Suradet (1892–1944) and Phraya Phahon Phonpayuhasena (1888–1947). Close friends, the two men were army colonels sympathetic to the frustrations of junior officers who led the military planning for the revolution.¹¹ Song, of mixed Thai-Vietnamese descent, studied military science in Germany as did Phahon, whose Chinese father rose in the government service and became an ennobled civil servant. Both were linked personally as well to the original Promoters through Prayun Phamonmontri (1897–1982), a former royal page, army officer and then military reservist studying political science in France who came from a palace and government-connected family. Prayun’s father had taught Song and Phahon at the military cadet academy in Bangkok, and Prayun’s German mother taught German to Song and Phahon in Bangkok before the two left to study in Germany.¹² Phahon also had an immediate family connection to the Promoters through his nephew, Nep Phahonyothin (1900–1946), a British jurist and then student in political economy at the University of Paris who joined the plotters. Teacher-pupil relationships bred loyalty. Song Suradet and Phibun Songkhram in the army college, and Pridi Banomyong in the justice ministry’s law faculty, among others, were revered teachers who used their positions to spread the revolutionary message and win supporters.¹³

As the day of reckoning approached, the plotters pushed ahead but remained wary. In the run up to their strike, the Promoters mainly met at Prayun’s house; they kept a pack of playing cards on hand as they sat at a table, in case the police paid a visit.¹⁴ Late in June, the Promoters screwed their courage to the sticking place, and changed Thai history. Heavy rain overnight on June 23 relieved a humid evening, during which the plotters finalized their plans. June 24 dawned refreshingly clear and mild.¹⁵ Song, the logistics chief of the revolution, sent armored cars rumbling through the streets of the Siamese capital Bangkok and they quickly surrounded the ministries and palaces that formed the heart of state power, and cut internal communications. On the pretext of a military exercise, the Promoters sent many military units to the Royal Plaza outside the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall, the premier symbol of royalism where the king ordinarily met with his senior princely advisers.¹⁶ At 6:00 a.m., the group executed a bluff: Phahon announced to the assembled soldiers at the plaza that the old regime had been deposed and a constitutional system established. Cheers went up from the rebel officers, and the soldiers who were led there on the pretext of a training exercise joined in. In the words of a historian, “Everyone thought everyone else had joined the revolution; and none dared think of resistance.”¹⁷ Squat and strong, Phahon then discovered the gates to the throne hall locked, but with the help of an iron bar he broke the lock and forced his way into the grounds.¹⁸ The throne hall, seat of royal power, then became the commoner party’s headquarters.¹⁹

Figure 1.1. The new era: Front page of Siam Ratsadon newspaper, June 24, 1932. The picture shows the thirty-two-year-old Pridi Banomyong, with his official title, Luang Pradit Manudham (“Fashioner of Righteous Men”), and he is listed as “State Councillor, People’s Party.”

Within a few hours, the absolute power of the 150-year-old Thai monarchy had been deposed in Southeast Asia’s only independent country. Despite the atmosphere of suspicion of the past few months, the quick strike caught the ruling class unprepared. Many princes were arrested at their palaces, among whom was the interior minister still in his pajamas,²⁰ and taken hostage along with the senior Bangkok army commanders under the absolute monarchy who were in the city that fateful morning. Remarkably, only one captive was injured in the move against the king and no one was killed. The People’s Party established itself at the throne hall that Phahon opened.²¹

Through the afternoon, despite their success, confusion reigned among Bangkok people and civil servants. Nervous soldiers, idled by confusion among the higher ups, whiled away the time drinking and seeking gossip. Sri Krung newspaper, one of whose founders had participated in a failed 1912 revolt against the absolute monarchy, became the lifeline for news-hungry Bangkokians. The paper supported the Promoters, and printed flyers free of charge for the group to disseminate; onlookers saw many military cadets racing to and from Sri Krung’s offices with flyers for distribution. The editor of the paper that day was as important as anyone in Bangkok, and people crowded his offices all day seeking information.²²

The People’s Party manifesto that Sri Krung printed that June morning announced that the king’s government had “treated the people as slaves and animals” and intentionally kept them in ignorance, because “if the people have education they will know the evil” that has been done to them.²³ To the Promoters, the world’s last absolutist system was an oppressive and embarrassing anachronism in an age of popular authority. They issued a six-point proclamation of their aims: to maintain the country’s independence; to maintain public safety and greatly reduce crime; to improve the economic well-being of the people by securing full employment and making a national economic plan; to provide equal rights for all so as to eliminate princely privileges; to give people all lawful liberty and freedoms; and to provide universal education.²⁴ The People’s Party pledged to limit kingly power in the name of popular welfare and empowerment. They proclaimed, “The time has ended when those of royal blood farm on the backs of the people,” and “When we have seized the money which those of royal blood amass from farming on the backs of the people, and use these many hundreds of millions for nurturing the country, the country will certainly flourish.”²⁵ Initially, the rebels suggested that a president may be appointed and a republic formed if King Prajadhipok refused to accept limited monarchy.²⁶ By the early afternoon, the group had consolidated their power. Prince Boriphat Sukhumphan Kromphra Nakhonsawanworaphinit,²⁷ a wealthy royal and the most powerful minister in the kingdom, and the man arrested in his pajamas early that morning, acknowledged the group’s governance in a public announcement. As interior minister and also military governor of Bangkok, he recognized the People’s Party and called on “all military and civilians to maintain public peace and avoid all unnecessary bloodshed.”²⁸

Other senior royals fled ahead of capture by the People’s Party and traveled by train to King Prajadhipok (r. 1925–1935) at the king’s seaside palace Klai Kangwon (Far from Worry), a few hours south of Bangkok. Playing golf on the palace course that afternoon, the king was surprised by a hurrying courier bearing a telegram notifying him of the revolt. He faced an uncertain future. By midnight on the 24th, the king huddled with senior advisers and family members to evaluate his options. The majority opinion favored a military counteroffensive, comprising four major units that would descend from the provinces on Bangkok and defeat the rebels. They discounted the People’s Party strength and avowed that their “will was equal to or greater than the force of arms” against them and that the people of Bangkok were loyal to the monarchy and would fight for it. The minority argued that the People’s Party did not mean to liquidate the monarchy, and that the king had two options: to leave the country and negotiate with the rebels; or return to Bangkok and cooperate with the People’s Party to govern under a constitution. Senior princes from the military and ministries advised a fight; the king’s wife and her parents favored capitulation to the rebels’ demands by returning to Bangkok.²⁹

The confusion of events vexed the king. He could not be sure whether the People’s Party were a small group without larger backing, or whether they represented the thin end of a dangerous wedge of princely resentment against the king and his series of bureaucratic layoffs, meant to balance the government’s budget in the depression crisis, which cashiered many elite civil servants over the prior years. What was Prince Boriphat’s role in acknowledging the People’s Party? An ambitious and powerful man, was he too somehow involved in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Thai Language Conventions
• Introduction The 1932 Revolution in Thai History
• Chapter One The New Regime and the Old: Compromise, Rebellion, and the Enemies Within
• Chapter Two A Fragile Alliance: The Working Classes and the People’s Party
• Chapter Three Spokesmen for the Peasantry: The Revolution and Social Welfare
• Chapter Four Making Citizens: Education and Propaganda in the New Order
• Chapter Five Buddhist Democracy in the Revolution
• Chapter Six The Revolution Betrayed: Triumph and Tragedy in Assembly Politics
• Conclusion History beyond Royalism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover