Supplanting DHARMA with democracy responsible for present ills

The above are very fine points, of course. Like arguing whether English literature began in the 1300s with Geoffrey Chaucer or centuries earlier, the arguments can go on ad infinitum.

For laymen like us it is sufficient to regard 1282 as the year in which the first Thai scripts emerged. The dexterous character of King Ramkhamhaeng and the absence of any other such inscriptions, despite several decades of nationwide archaeological excavation, lends credence to the claim that the Thai scripts were invented in the year referred to. However, linguists and archaeologists should view the stele as more than just literature or a historical artefact.

The important fact about the inscription is that it is the first written constitution in this country, and possibly the second oldest in the world, dated 77 years later than the Magna Carta.

There is, of course, a major difference between these two charters. The Magna Carta of 1215 was forced upon King John, whose misrule united the barons against him, whereas the Thai charter of 1292 was a written confirmation of the benevolent system of government and common laws already in existence at the time.

In the case of England, the rebellious charter continued to inspire people down through the ages and its residues can be traced in the declarations of independence in America and South Rhodesia.

The Thai charter has none of that rebelliousness. Benevolence was given, not exacted. Nor was it a contract referred to in disputes between a sovereign and his subjects. Any such spirit of transaction was unthinkable. Thus when the kingdom of Ayutthaya subjugated Sukhothai in the 14th century, it followed the latter’s precedence (or at least some of the clauses in the inscription) as a matter of tradition, and to all intents and purposes the stele was forgotten.

The constitutional content of the Sukhothai charter can be summarised as follows:

1 Government by dharma (as opposed to democracy).

2 Tradition of succession. Nowadays this would be expressed in terms of law. 

3 Freedom of occupation and trade.

4 The king does not (and we may read here: may not) raise customs duty previously instituted under Khmer rule. The clause is, in a strange way, reminiscent of the barons’ demand in the Magna Carta, which led to the establishment of an English parliament.

5 The right to appeal directly to the king, including the right to appeal against the nobility. This clause is still observed today, except that the “nobility” tends to screen appeals away from the Crown.

6 Magnanimity towards subjugated city-states, prisoners of war and refugees, who are to be well treated, given the necessities of life and rehabilitated within the realm. This clause pre-dates the International Red Cross charter (the Geneva Convention) by 572 years. Later, however, Siam only followed such stipulations periodically.

The charter then covers a number of common laws: cases judged on evidence and impartiality, inheritance custom (rather than law), and right to occupy vacant land, etc.

The inscription ends by proclaiming that the country is governed by equality through dharma. 

This point is worth dwelling on.

Dharma, of course, goes back to the teachings of the Lord Buddha. But it contains universal values rather than a set of codes belonging to a particular religion. No fundamentalist would be allowed here! It deals with the Middle Way, amelioration and restraint. Government by dharma would encompass democracy, without letting the latter overshadow morality, mutual respect, kindness, the sense for consensus and compassion.

All these are very much lacking in democracy as we know it. They are neither tenets nor priorities in either the capitalist or socialist versions. Still less are they enshrined in Plato’s original concept of demos, which involves a kind of totalitarianism to which the present-day “People’s Republics” may be compared.

The present ills afflicting our nation stem from the fact that the tradition of government by dharma has been supplanted by an alien form of governance, namely democracy. With nearly all cultural imports, adaptation has proved awkward and, in this case, harmful.

But this has become a fad: Government after government has proclaimed adherence to demos, and some unwittingly so in terms of the word’s original meaning.

By contrast, the monarchy has held steadfast to the forgotten tradition. When His Majesty took his coronation oath, the words used were “We shall rule by dharma for the well-being of the Greater People of Siam”. 

This is a forgotten tradition that is linked to the forgotten constitution of 1292.

 

The above article is adapted from a piece that first appeared in The Nation on November 15, 1983.