Writing about politics in Southeast Asia – and particularly in Thailand – provides an outlet for all types of creative and colourful comparisions. That’s just as well because anybody hoping to provoke their readers to sit up and pay attention often needs blunt and provocative imagery. Today, I was struck by a long article in The International Herald Tribune that began with a metaphorical flourish:
About a week ago, the Thai press reported on a 30-year-old man, apparently not a brilliant one, who, for unexplained reasons, was tormenting an elephant. He hit the animal, according to the newspapers, whereupon the usually placid beast wrapped the man in his trunk, slammed him down, and trampled him to death.
This may be stretching a point, but it seemed to me, visiting Thailand after an absence of a few years, that the elephant-kills-man story is a pretty good metaphor for the delicate state of Thai politics these days, almost a year after an army coup overthrew a democratically elected government that had run afoul of important segments of Thai society.
The ruling coup’s leadership is the elephant in this scheme of things, striving to be a useful beast, indeed making plans to exit the stage as soon as its plans for a constitutional referendum and new elections, all by the end of the year, have been carried out.
But then there are those people angry about military rule and, in some cases, allied to the government of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that was overthrown last September.
They have been trying, in the name of democracy, to get all Thailand sufficiently riled up to attack the elephant.
So far, however, the elephant has trampled them.
Of course, here on New Mandala there are many different perspectives on Thai politics and society. Perhaps not everybody will agree with the elephant metaphor. So, it’s worth asking: what’s your metaphor for Thai politics? Can anybody out there do better in the metaphor stakes than The International Herald Tribune’s elephant?
7 responses so far ↓
1 polo // Jul 31, 2007 at 3:54 am
Why couldn’t it be that the people are the elephant and the military are the not-so-brilliant man? At this point who crushes who is still unknown — maybe they live together seeking alms like those chang-and-mahout teams from Sisaket.
Anyway, that show how useless the metaphor can be. But given Bernstein’s long history of fondness for gross generalization about China, about which he knows much more, it’s not surprising. Another tourist-eye view of the situation.
2 TA // Jul 31, 2007 at 4:17 am
http://www.norporkor.com/violet-memorandum.html
3 jonfernquest // Jul 31, 2007 at 8:12 am
I agree with polo. It’s a useless throw-away metaphor. I always think of Samsara when I think of the current political situation, the eternal wheel of suffering.
“Dukkha” is an expletive in Burmese and a key concept in Buddhism with a lot of associated images that could be used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha
“…the word roughly corresponding to a number of terms in English including sorrow, suffering (or pain), affliction, anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, aversion and frustration.”
Some images:
In classic Sanskrit, the term dukkha was often compared to ***a large potter’s wheel that would screech as it was spun around, and did not turn smoothly***. The opposite of dukkha was the term sukkha, which brought to mind a potter’s wheel that turned smoothly and noiselessly. In other Buddhist-influenced cultures, similar imagery was used to describe dukkha. An example from China is the ***cart with one wheel that is slightly broken, so that the rider is jolted each time the wheel rolls over the broken spot.***
4 Grasshopper // Jul 31, 2007 at 11:52 am
Napoleon : Bhumibol
Snowball : Surayud
Squealer: Devakula
Old Major: Sonthi
Mr Jones: Thaksin
hahaha, I suppose it is quite ordinary to compare a political situation to Animal Farm, but they are the analogies I would go with…
5 Grasshopper // Jul 31, 2007 at 11:58 am
jonfernquest, life is pain is a major theme throughout all major theologies. maybe that you are turning towards religion is more apt than your metaphor itself!
6 jonfernquest // Jul 31, 2007 at 9:50 pm
“life is pain is a major theme throughout all major theologies”
Yep, like the passion of Christ on the cross during Catholic mass. I would be the last to apply generalisations like my posting above to all Thais or all Burmese, all Sri Lankans, etc…and if someone claimed that because I am 100% nordic I am condemned to life as a Ingmar Bergman film or depressing Ibsen play, yuck, no way, but…
There is some uniquely Buddhist combination of the themes of anissa, anatta, dukkha, illusion [maya], reincarnation, conditioned dependence, the momentum and influence of kamma. Take this interview with writer Seksan Prasertkul from Sunday’s newspaper, the 550 Jataka stories, Yukio Mishima’s Sea of Fertility Trilogy, or the last chapters of the Chinese classic Hung Lung Mung [Dream of Red Mansions….
“maybe that you are turning towards religion is more apt than your metaphor itself!”
Or everyone else nowadays for that matter, if Jatukham amulet craze is any indication. And also, in Burma with all its political problems, when you sort the layers of serious published literature you find at booksellers, the revolutionary ideas of socialism, communism, and revolution of the 1950s into the 1970s, were gradually replaced by more and more religion, probably with the aid of censorship and laws against ordinary folk writing religious works. I’m certainly sympathetic with Buddhist ideas, but not going to shave my head just yet, thank you. Too much to enjoy in life.
7 jonfernquest // Jul 31, 2007 at 9:52 pm
whoops, mistake: “were gradually replaced by more and more religious works, probably with the aid of censorship”
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