Watching the world go round the Samsara way

The Nation
http://nationmultimedia.com

By Pornpimol Kanchanalak
Published on April 30, 2009

EARLIER in the week, a man proclaimed to be a red-shirt "leader" of the Songkran riots surrendered to the authorities. He dressed in Maoist military garb, looking rather "accomplished", as if at long last he had found a hook on which to hang his cause. Forget about the enormous wealth that the movement's uber-leader possesses; now it is not democracy that the reds seem to be in search of, it's an "egalitarian" society.

While we may be witnessing a rebirth of Maoism/communism in Thailand, in China, the birthplace of Maoism, the ideology is now described as the culprit behind the country's "economic and political disaster". Even though there is no official mention of the social calamity of Maoism, people who lived in China during those years knew full well that fear and suspicion permeated every corner of society. Neighbour spied on neighbour, parents on children, and vice versa. Everybody glanced over his shoulder in trepidation as turncoats were rewarded and trust vanished. Destroying the lives and livelihoods of others was "honourable" if carried out "in the name of the people".

For the majority of people during those years, the sky was grey - the colour of the Maoist civilian uniform, and it was closed. There were no real opportunities, only ones dictated by the Communist Party honchos.

Closer to home, in Cambodia between 1975-79, the Khmer Rouge was the communist ruling party of Democratic Kampuchea. It was responsible for the deaths of approximately 1.5 million people, or one-fifth of the country's population, over that period. During the Khmer Rouge rule, Cambodia regressed into a primitive state where fear and terror reigned supreme. The only "profession" allowed was farming.

In Cambodia today, capitalism blossoms, and the country is becoming more self-assured and at peace with itself. Today, a former Khmer Rouge member-turned-premier has the title of "Somdej" - a nobleman. He reinstituted the monarchy as a figurehead, as he felt his society needed it. Why he felt that way is not entirely clear. These days, foreign investors see Cambodia as a more attractive place for their funds than Thailand.

In India - a society where women have been viewed as second-class citizens, where a dowry is given by the bride's family to the groom, and where a widow will kill herself to escape shame after her husband's death - a strong woman in the form of Indira Gandhi held unrivalled power as prime minister. India's caste system is rooted as far back as several centuries before Christ, and its lowest caste is "the untouchables". The country's tenth president, KR Narayanan, was a Dalit, an untouchable.

More than 10,000 years ago the areas known today as the arid deserts of the Middle East were lush green with abundant wildlife and great river systems. Eight thousand years ago, the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, now in war-torn Iraq, were the seat of civilisation - a place where people settled and started to farm. At a time when Europe was populated by itinerant tribes living in mud huts, the Egyptians had their written language and were recording their history on papyrus, the first paper. They created an intricate system of government and taxation.

The Arabs believed the world was round when the Europeans thought it was flat. They devised algebra and discovered chemical substances such as alkaline. More than 1,000 years ago, when Europe was ravaged by the wars of Attila the Hun, the people of Arabia were enjoying peace, luxury, poetry and things of beauty. Many Western scholars of the time, such as Plato, Pythagoras and Archimedes, travelled to Egypt to study.

Today, Egypt's bureaucracy is one of the most cumbersome in the world; its per capita income - at US$1,290 - ranks the fourth lowest among the Arab countries. Iraq today bears no resemblance to its gleaming civilised past. Nomadic tribes roamed the Arabian desserts before the petrodollar poured in and changed everything almost overnight.

Saddam Hussein of Iraq was a staunch ally of the United States in the latter's conflict with Iran. The US created the man who turned into its deadly enemy, before being hunted down by his own former patron.

Northern Ireland, after more than three decades of violent conflict - "the Troubles" with England, that left the place in ruin - found peace in 2005 when the Irish Republican Army declared an end to its campaign of armed violence and decommissioned its arsenal. Since then, Northern Ireland has become an economic and financial phoenix as foreign direct investment pours into the region. Peace breeds prosperity like nothing can.

Today, Bhutan is considered by the West as the last Shangri-la, the only country in the world where "Gross National Happiness" is a mandated government policy. The West has been fascinated by the Bhutanese monarchy, whose foresightedness and strong arm has placed the country where it is today. The Western world is willing to ignore the Bhutanese government's expulsion of thousands of Nepali refugees in the southern part of the country to keep it homogenously strong, at the same time as Tibet fell to the Chinese and Sikkim became the 22nd state of the Indian Union. It hails the palace's policy to put restrictions on growth that would harm the long-term prospects of the country's livelihood.

The West often compares Bhutan's success to Nepal's disastrous situation with its revolutionary Maoists and the massacre of the entire royal family by the drugged-up crown prince. Amid the surrounding chaos, Bhutan has held itself together, in part because it has taken a hard line and kept its soul.

It is the same West that is trying to tear our system apart, finding every fault in the book and throwing it all at one single institution - the monarchy. One commentary went as far as to make an uncorroborated statement that the institution was "standing between Thailand and its modernity".

They ridicule the notion of "sufficiency economy" without trying to understand what it is really all about. If they had, they would see that it is about sustainable development - a term with which they must be familiar. They talk about "double standards" in Thai society and politics. But do they hold themselves up to one single standard across the board? Worse, many Thais seem to willingly go along blindly with the attempt to shred our social fabric into pieces, just for the sake of doing it.

In reflecting on human history, the Sanskrit word samsara comes to mind. It's the cycle of karmic "account balance" - a merry-go-round of human ignorance and folly that turns birth into death and back into birth, peace into war, riches into ruins - not only for peoples but for nations and the world.

Things never remain the same. People who have it bad want to make it good, and people who have it good, itch to make it bad. It is all the samsara way.