Thaification

A name board on a Buddhist temple in Chiang Mai written in Lanna characters (อักษรธรรมล้านนา). The use of this script was discouraged and Northern Thai is now written with the Thai alphabet.

Thaification is the process by which people of different cultural and ethnic origins living in Thailand become assimilated to the dominant Thai culture, or more precisely, to the culture of the Central Thais. Thaification is a step in the creation in the 20th century of the Thai nation state where Thai people occupy a dominant position, away from the historically multicultural kingdom of Siam.

Motives

Thaification is a byproduct of the nationalist policies consistently followed by the Thai state after the Siamese coup d'état of 1933. The coup leaders, inspired by Western ideas of an exclusive nation state, sought to increase the power of the Central Thais. The businesses of interspersed minorities, like the traditionally merchant Thai Chinese, were aggressively bought out by the state, which gave preferential contracts to ethnic Thais. Thai identity was reinforced both in the heartlands and on the fringes. Central Thailand became economically and politically dominant, and its language became the language of the media, business, and education. Equally, its values became the national values. Central Thai culture’s being the culture of wealth and status made it hugely attractive to those on the edge economically and socially.

Targets

The main targets of Thaification have been ethnic groups on the edges of the Kingdom of Thailand, geographically and culturally: the Lao of Isan (อีสาน), the hill tribes of the north and west, and the Muslim (มุสลิม) Malay minority of the south. There has also been a Thaification of the large immigrant Chinese and Indian populations.

Policies

Thaification by the government can be separated into four sets of policies:

Rural development

In the first set of policies, the government has targeted specific policies and actions at the fringe groups. An example of this is the Accelerated Rural Development Programme of 1964, the Isan component of which included the strengthening of allegiances with Bangkok and the rest of the country as one of its objectives.

Education

The second set of policies consists of policies applied nationally, but that disproportionately affect the fringe groups. One example of this is the prescribed use of the Thai language in schools. This had little effect on Central Thais who already used the language in everyday life, but made bilinguals of speakers of Isan in the north-east, of Northern Thai or Kam Mueang (คำเมือง) in the north and of Yawi (ยะวี) in the south. Harsher methods were imposed on the Thai Chinese; after the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, a series of anticommunist governments starting with that of dictator Plaek Pibulsonggram sharply reduced Chinese immigration and prohibited all Chinese language secondary schools in Thailand. Thai Chinese born after the 1950s had "very limited opportunities to enter Chinese schools"; those Thai Chinese who could afford to study overseas studied English instead of Chinese for economic reasons. As a result, the Chinese in Thailand have "almost totally lost the language of their ancestors", and are gradually losing their Chinese identity.

Encouraging nationalism

The third set of policies was designed to encourage Thai nationalism in all the country’s people: obvious examples are the promotion of the king as a national figurehead, saluting the flag in school and the twice daily broadcasts of the national anthem (Phleng Chat - เพลงชาติ) on radio and television at 8 AM and at 6 PM. Encouraging Thai nationalism had the obvious side effect of discouraging other loyalties, such as that to Laos in Isan or that to Melayu (มลายู) in the south.

Increasing the role of the state

The fourth set of policies, consisted of those that were not overtly nationalistic, but could nevertheless promote nationalism. Increasing school attendance, for example, when coupled with the proscription of minority languages in schools, had the effect of discouraging the use of those languages in favour of Thai.

The backs of Series 14 and 15 100-baht banknotes first announced 20 October 2537 BE/AD 1994 and continued unchanged on the Series 15 of 22 October 2547 BE/AD 2004, depicted boys receiving instruction at a Buddhist wat in days of old; pupils at a modern school flying the national flag; and the inscription (in translation) "Education in our nation is of the first importance/therefore I shall diligently improve it./Thus remarked Rama V." These were replaced without fanfare by Series 15 (Revised) 19 September 2548 BE/AD 2005, to depict Rama V freeing the slaves. All images of all Thai baht banknotes and coins have also been removed from all related Wikipedia articles, except for the one on Thai baht in the Thai language.

See also

• Democracy Monument, Bangkok
• Education in Thailand
• History of Isan
• History of Thailand
• Mandala (Southeast Asian history)
• Tai Tham script
• Thai cultural mandates

• Socialization
• South Thailand insurgency

Notes and references

• Thongchai Winichakul. Siam Mapped. University of Hawaii Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8248-1974-8
• Wyatt, David. Thailand: A Short History (2nd edition). Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-300-08475-7

External links

• In Defense of the Thai-Style Democracy. Pattana Kitiarsa. Asia Research Institute. National University of Singapore. October 12, 2006. File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat.

Additional reading

• Impact of survey and map-making in Siam detailed in Twentieth century impressions of Siam its history, people, commerce, industries, and resources, with which is incorporated an abridged edition of Twentieth century impressions of British Malaya. Editor in chief: Arnold Wright ... Assistant editor: Oliver T. Breakspear ... Published 1908 by Lloyds Greater Britain Publishing Company, Ltd. in London [etc.] Library of Congress classification: DS565.W7 Open Library