Rolling back the crimes of 'Thai-ness'

New light is being shed on the distinct cultures of Thailand’s Northeast thanks to a project being launched by Khon Kaen University’s Department of Culture and the city’s authorities.
A memorandum of understanding signed today will mark the start of the joint project, which aims to preserve and promote Isaan culture. The emphasis will be on the learning of the Tai Noi script as a gateway to understanding the region’s past and also creating new indigenous literature. The project will also promote home-grown performing arts such as mor lam and seek to improve the museums that showcase the region’s cultural and historical treasures.
The initiative is an attempt to build on a European Union-funded effort – the Isaan Culture Maintenance and Revitalisation Programme. Eighteen public schools will participate in the project, with more expected to follow when the first phase ends in 12 months’ time.
The scope and aims of the project are impressive, but success in achieving them is stymied by the absence of an official national language policy in Thailand. That lack means the Lao dialects spoken by millions in Isaan are not officially recognised as regional languages that should be taught and studied in Northeast schools.
Obviously any project that aims to preserve local indigenous culture in Thailand should be welcome. The Thai state needs to show that it values such efforts by forging a national language policy that offers official recognition to the many Isaan Lao dialects – including Black Tai, Lao Song, Lao Paun and Phu Tai – and their Khmer counterparts.
And as a national policy, that recognition should extend to the distinct ethnic cultures and dialects in the rest of the country.
Thailand’s ethnic minorities have for too long been forced to accept the domination of a state-constructed culture of “Thai-ness”.
Until relatively recently, public schools were required to fine any student who spoke the “local” language in class. The victims of this policy still talk of the humiliation they suffered at the hands of the state’s effort to “Thai-ify” them.
They recall the awkwardness and indignity of having to speak Thai to friends or colleagues in public institutions, while anywhere else the conversation would have been held in their own language. 
For a national language policy to be a success, it must be underpinned by real concern for human dignity. Moreover, the Thai state and mainstream society must learn to accept and appreciate the country’s demographic diversity, rather than seeking to mould minority cultures into conformity.
The failure of such “moulding” is most evident in the Malay-speaking South, where resistance to the state construct of “Thai-ness” has flared into decades of armed conflict.
In other regions, too, the pressure to conform to government-sanctioned norms and manners has spawned deep resentment towards the state among minorities.
Sad to say, our authoritarian tendencies have destroyed much of the local diversity that makes this country so rich and civilised.
To protect what remains, we must make the proper distinction between the state and civilisation, so that the former does not destroy the latter.