OUR KING OF KINGS
His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej has never abandoned his devoted people in a long reign that has won him worldwide acclaim, writes Alan Dawson
Adversity always builds strength and character. His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej has always had the resilience to overcome the many obstacles he has faced throughout his life to become one of the greatest kings in modern history.
Since he came to the throne in 1946 as a teenager, he has earned not only the love, respect and adulation of his people but also become recognised worldwide for his vast accomplishments. He serves as a role model for all contemporary monarchs.
He has achieved such status through devotion to his subjects and unfailingly just decisions in everything he has done during the 70 years (and counting) of his reign.
When he was born on Dec 5, 1927, his parents were living in Massachusetts in the US. His father, Prince Mahidol, was earning a degree as a doctor of medicine at Harvard University. And his indomitable mother, Sangwal Talapad, had a new baby and two older children to care for — the King’s brother and sister.
Adversity came at an early age. When the King was just two, Prince Mahidol died after a lengthy battle with kidney disease. His mother, showing the spirit that would later earn her massive popular respect, set about bringing them up as well-educated, well-rounded children, fully ready to move to the responsibility of becoming adults. Little did she know that they would become kings of Thailand.
In 1935, three years after the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, King Prajadhipok (Rama VII) announced from his London residence that he was abdicating. He also declined the privilege of naming his successor. That task fell upon the regent, Prince Naris, and Chao Phraya Woraphongphiphat, the court minister, a position that was the equivalent of the present-day president of the Privy Council.
In keeping with palace succession laws, they chose His Royal Highness Prince Ananda Mahidol, then a student in Switzerland. He remained there and a Council of Regents represented him for some time.
Just seven months after returning to Thailand for a visit, King Ananda Mahidol died tragically. The crown passed on June 9, 1946, to his younger brother, Prince Bhumibol Adulyadej, who returned to Switzerland to continue with his education.
The newly inaugurated King, then just 18 years
old, was on his way to Don Mueang airport to return to Switzerland on Aug 19, 1946. When his motorcade passed by Wat Benchamabophit, a distraught man cried out: “Don’t abandon the people.”
His Majesty recalled in a journal years later that he wanted to shout back: “If the people do not abandon me, how can I abandon them?”
About 20 years later, in the 1960s, the man was granted an audience with the King and said he shouted because he saw the King looked so sad after having lost his brother, to whom he had been very close. The man, a farmer, said he was worried that the young King might not come back to Thailand.
The King told the man: “It was your words that made me realise I had the duty to return.”
Little more than a year after returning to Switzerland, the King met MR Sirikit Kitiyakara, 15-year-old daughter of the Thai ambassador to France, His Serene Highness Prince Nakkhatra Mangala Kitiyakara. But adversity struck again. The King suffered serious injuries in a car accident in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1948 and almost lost his sight. When “volunteer nurse” MR Sirikit flew to his bedside, his recovery became certain. The two were officially engaged at her 17th birthday party in London.
The King and his fiancee returned to Thailand on March 25, 1950, aboard the steamship Selandia. A month and three days after their return, His Majesty and MR Sirikit were married at a simple ceremony at Sra Pathum Palace. The coronation took place just a week after the wedding, on May 5, 1950.
Over the following years, the world began to learn about the multi-talented monarch.
Consider the arts. His Majesty is an author, composer, world-class musician and photographer. He has played saxophone with top jazz artists such as Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton and won their applause. His own compositions are played around the world by jazz bands of today. His Majesty is one of a tiny handful of honorary members of the elite Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.
In sports, His Majesty, sailing with his eldest daughter, Princess Ubolratana, won a gold medal at the 1967 Southeast Asian Peninsular Games, now the SEA Games.
A Buddhist ordained as a monk early in his reign, His Majesty is by the constitution and action the protector of all religions. His personal donations made it possible to translate the Koran into Thai. His success in bringing an end to political violence in 1973 and 1992 is also well known. His Majesty has managed an almost impossible task of staying above politics while always aware of events, saving the country from itself more than once.
In the decade after his coronation, Their Majesties the King and Queen made important foreign tours in a strategy to lift Thailand’s profile in the world. Arguably, they made the most impact in America, where the royal couple’s visit was the top news of 1960. They met musical legends Elvis Presley and Duke Ellington.
After accomplishing his foreign duties, the King turned his attention to tackling the poverty of his people. Since a visit to Canada in 1967, he has only left the kingdom once for a two-day trip to Laos in 1994. His Majesty, often with the Queen by his side, embarked on hundreds of trips around Thailand and initiated thousands of projects to improve the livelihood of his subjects.
In the process he did what few other monarchs had been able to do — establish a real and affectionate connection with his people. He did this through hard work, gruelling schedules and paying close personal attention to the common villagers that he visited. His strength was remarkable as he strode up hills, waded through rivers and drove long hours through difficult terrain to visit subjects in the remotest areas where even local officials seldom ventured.
Learning from villagers first hand that their poverty was caused by lack of water, land and simple technology to carry out farming, His Majesty initiated a land acquisition project in 1966, and he gradually built up agricultural cooperatives in the Central Plains. This brought unity and harmony to farming communities as they jointly managed the projects and shared know-how.
After visiting a hill-tribe village in Doi Pui in Chiang Mai, where villagers grew opium, the King started the first crop substitution project in 1969 to replace the illicit drug with cash crops, in this case peach trees, and tackle the poverty that was the root cause of drug production and trafficking as well as deforestation.
His Majesty became an expert in agronomy, particularly local use and management of water. Within the grounds of Chitralada Palace, he set up experimental paddy fields, rice mills to alleviate farmer debt, started a dairy farm that developed into a fully fledged business and drove the Department of Fisheries to carry out fish breeding schemes that would become a cheap source of protein for people throughout the country.
His work took its toll on him but His Majesty never relented. In 1981, visiting border troops, police and officials working on the problems of the massive influx of Cambodian refugees, the King was bitten by a mosquito and infected with a rare, malarial-type ailment. His very life hung in the balance for several days of extremely high fevers. When he recovered, he made no changes to his schedule.
His Majesty never stops working even when he is not in the best of health. He has initiated and guided wastewater management projects to tackle the problem of river pollution, conceiving the aptly named “monkey cheek” water retention projects as part of measures to tackle flooding after the great flood of 2011.
After the economic crisis of 1997, His Majesty began referring to what is now known as the sufficiency economy, which essentially refers to ways of living and management that are careful, based on the Buddhist principle of the “middle path”.
In a birthday speech in 1998, His Majesty explained the concept of sufficiency: “If one is moderate in one’s desires, one will have less craving. If one has less craving, one will take less advantage of others ...”
From the success of the more than 4,000 royal projects around the country, six study centres have been established to conduct research and produce knowledge applicable to local conditions that can be shared with the rest of the world. They also serve to prove that the various items in the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2016 have already been tackled by His Majesty through his royal initiative projects. He is a true world leader in sustainable development.
In May 2006, His Majesty was presented with the United Nations Development Programme’s first Human Development Lifetime Achievement Award by then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, who addressed His Majesty as “the world’s development king”.
The King’s reply to the man who begged him not to abandon the people as he left for Switzerland in 1946 still resonates.
“If the people do not abandon me, how can I abandon them?”
And he never has.