FROM PROSTRATION TO PROSTRATION

A history of rich Thai people telling poor Thai people how to behave

After leading a coup in 2014, Gen Prayut Chano-cha announced a code of “Twelve Thai Values”, telling people how to think and behave. It is difficult to imagine Angela Merkel announcing “Twelve German Values”, or even Narendra Modi announcing “Twelve

Indian Values”. Since the mid-19th century, there have been lots of Thai manuals about proper body language and oral language in social encounters. These books tell a story about power and hierarchy that Patrick Jory narrates in fascinating detail.

In 1873, King Chulalongkorn banned prostration at the royal audience. Foreigners found it “uncivilised”. In fact, the practice continued within the palace. The idea of dramatising power relations through relative height was too deeply entrenched. But in other ways, public behaviour began to change.

In traditional society, there were two main codes of behaviour, one for the monkhood, stressing self-control, and another for royal courtiers, emphasising submission and service. The modern era of manners manuals began in the late-19th century after the creation of a new bureaucracy, the kha ratchakan or servants of the king. Some were old nobles. Some were clever commoners rising through education. The two soon clashed over the issue of whether birth or merit should determine status.

In 1900, MR Pia Malakul, an official who had both royal blood and a good education, wrote a manual titled Qualities Of A Gentleperson, designed to resolve this conflict. It defined a new ideal, the phu di or gentleperson, who combined the self-control of the monk, the submissiveness of the courtier, and the efficiency needed of the new bureaucrat. This manual warned nobles not to be too arrogant while teaching commoners the body language and speech of courtly society. Updated several times, it has been in print ever since. A slew of other manuals refined the same lessons for soldiers, doctors, teachers and ladies. In Thai publishing, this genre is probably surpassed only by astrology manuals.

Through the early 20th century, a new urban society developed in Siam, dominated by a middle class of officials, professionals and businessmen, many of Chinese background. At the same time, a wave of liberal and egalitarian ideas swept across the world, eventually bringing an end to Thailand’s absolute monarchy, but not to the enthusiasm for manuals. There was a demand for guidance on how to behave in new social situations such as the office, shop, club, public transport or place of entertainment where society was more mixed. And there were still people keen to tell others how to behave. A new wave of manuals redefined the phu di ideal as purely a matter of manners that could be learnt, with no need for noble birth. The importance of self-control remained but the old emphasis on submissiveness was replaced with mutual respect. In the 1940s, the government issued edicts designed to remove the hierarchy built into the Thai language and to prescribe ways to dress and behave which reflected a new egalitarianism.

The old nobility rankled at this erosion of privilege and after a royalist coup in 1967, the nobility struck back. In Jory’s words, “conservative ideals of conduct harking back to the era of absolute monarchy made a remarkable comeback”. Through mass media, the monarch became the focus of national identity and a model of excellent behaviour. Bureaucrats revived courtly manners and rituals as a way to distinguish themselves as uniquely linked to the monarchy. Prostration returned. Khunying Dutsadimala, the daughter-in-law of the author of Qualities Of A Gentleperson, updated the manual for a new era. The target group was no longer the bureaucrats alone but the whole of society. Manners were taught and practised in the system of mass education and were now labelled as “Thai”, claiming them as part of national identity. Many of the prospering new businessmen and urban middle class accepted these practices that marked themselves off from the rural mass. The rash of manuals from this era has intricate detail on prostration and self-abasement for different situations, and on the niceties of language infused with hierarchy and deference. The aim, in Jory’s phrase, was “a national court society”.

But this was a dream founded in nostalgia. Thailand was swept by globalisation. New democratic politics developed. Conservatives argued that proper manners and behaviour was a way to defend “Thai culture” from the “flood” of foreign influence. They mocked the new politicians for being uncultured and ungentlemanly. But in reality, the game was over. Large numbers of people, especially among the young and the newly assertive lower classes, were not interested in being told how to behave, particularly how to be deferent. Jory paints the passing of King Rama IX as the passing also of the idea of the phu di. The generals who now dominate politics and society may be fiercely royalist but few see them and their allies in business and politics as models of gentlemanly behaviour.

In summing up, Jory suggests that the survival of the monarchy, and thus of the court as a model, is one reason for the extraordinary stamina of courtly manners, but the other is the “peculiar nature of Thailand’s middle class — divided between a bureaucracy originally created by the absolute monarchy, and whose loyalty is to the king, and a largely Sino-Thai commercial class, for a long time insecure about its status in Thailand”. A more bourgeois and international model of behaviour, which has tended to triumph elsewhere in a commercial and globalised world, has failed to establish dominance.

This is a brilliant, entertaining and often surprising book that views Thailand’s modern history from an unusual and illuminating angle.