In a recent posting about Thaksin Shinawatra’s birthday, there were some marvelous pictures of monks taking part in the festivities.  One pair showed some monks removing a curse, with their begging bowls used to signify the removal of the curse.  Other pictures showed live monks in conjunction with pictures of Thaksin (Actually, Mr. Thaksin was not just in conjunction, but looking down on the monks beatifically.  I’m not sure which was more striking: the cut out of Thaksin standing behind the senior monk, or the pictures of Thaksin overlooking a group of chanting monks, hand raised in the sign-language gesture of “I love you.”).  Regarding these monks, one of the comments pithily noted simply, “Rentamonks.”  This was not an unreasonable comment, I suppose, but also troubled me.  Why can’t monks support Thaksin?  What do most monks think about the recent troubles in Thailand?  And what does their relative silence say about Buddhism and politics in Southeast Asia more broadly?  This is not the place to discuss this comprehensively, but it’s interesting to note there have been no four-letter word essays about this central (?) yet silent (?) figure: the monk (auspiciously, if we Romanize the word from both Thai and Dai-lue (ie from Sipsongpanna), we get phra and dubi, both 4-letter words).

For the most part, monks have been largely absent from the public discussion of the colored shirts. This absence is especially noteworthy because within several months of the coup that started the current phase of Thai politics, there were several significant demonstrations by monks over the status of Buddhism in Thailand, and in particular whether or not Buddhism would become an official religion.  To the best of my knowledge, the conversation about the status of Buddhism as the de jure as well as de facto national religion of Thailand was not finished, rather it went private, something to be talked about within monasteries between monks, but not in public, in much the same way that monastic opinions about reds and yellows seems to be taking place.

In June of this year, I was in Bangkok talking with both monks about their views on politics, and also with non-monks (mainly taxi drivers) about monks and politics.  The official line, and that espoused by most lay folk that I spoke with is that monks (and in this context, I mean lifers, not the men who have ordained for a month or a rainy season) in Thailand do not have political views.  I was told that the Supreme Sangha Council has told monks that they are not allowed to express their views on politics (despite the fact that the constitution guarantees this right for all Thai citizens, lay and monastic), and that they should stay away from political rallies in particular.  Those that do go to these rallies (birthday parties, airport closings and so forth) are not exactly committing a sin, but they are in a place inappropriate for monks.  They also open themselves up to criticisms of being “copy monks” (or “rentamonks”). 

There is then a lot of pressure on monks in Thailand to shut up about the political world, and many that I spoke with are just as happy not to be dragged into the discussion.  At the same time, though, there is tension.  Many monks would like to be allowed to vote, and at least some would not mind being able to speak more freely about politics.  Although the monks that I met at the red shirt rally on June 22 looked uncomfortable, they said they weren’t doing anything wrong, and that they weren’t false monks.  They were there, they told me, “because they love democracy.” 

Monks have of course long (always?) been involved in politics in Thailand (as well as other places).  This used to be framed in terms of monastic legitimation for the king and/or state (think for example of the Sinhala monks saying its okay to kill Tamils in the Mahavamsa, or Phra Kitthivuttho saying it’s okay to kill communists).  More recently, there has been a tendency for scholars at least to pay attention to monks as liberal figures, figures who ordain trees or preach against the excesses of modern capitalism.  The reality of course is that the Sangha is filled with monks on both sides of the aisle, and always has been, because monks do not cease to be people with connections and ideas when they shave their heads and take on the saffron robes.  What I think we need to pay more attention to is when it is okay for phra to edge into the political realm in Thailand and how they do so.

Monks throughout the Buddhist states of Southeast Asia of course have different roles in the civil society of their respective communities.  Moreover, I would suggest that what is considered to be appropriate activity for monks changes over time, both in and out of politics.  Monks in Sri Lanka can vote, in Thailand they can’t.  The Burmese Sangha tradition of political protest which flowered under the British means that they can act in ways that the Thai Sangha cannot or will not.  This does not mean, though, that Thai monks aren’t any less political than other monks, or other Thais.  Rather their position constrains (most of) them from making certain kinds of statements in public.  In other words, I would suggest that there is a monastic idiom of political expression.  This idiom is much more muted than lay political expression, and it only rises to public attention in certain contexts.  When monks speak outside this idiom, they risk censure.

Talking ranges from communicating mundane facts to building meaningful relations with other human beings. Communicating personally with others generally requires the establishment of a shared language but it seems to me that something more is needed, such as a shared ‘conversational context’. What I mean by this is a language-use which is underpinned by a structure of shared associations, references and situations that facilitates mutual understanding on a personal level. Even though two people speak the same language this is not enough to guarantee communication of this sort, since they might not share the same context that has shaped their individual language-use. They might use the same word and yet mean different things by it because of differences in cultural background, life experiences etc. This is not to say that people must come from identical backgrounds in order to speak meaningfully to each other; nor am I saying that personal communication is impossible. All I wish to point out is that talking involves more than just speaking the same language.

This was running through my mind when I was in Vietnam for two weeks last November; with no knowledge of the language and little time in which to learn it. I was lucky enough to have a friend working in Hoi An for several months who willingly took me to all his favourite noodle places, drove me on a motorcycle around the countryside and introduced me to his friends. As a result, I did not feel like the average tourist coming to Vietnam and having to discover everything for herself. This feeling of belonging, however, often made me forget that I was still a tourist to many of the Vietnamese people. Indeed, there were various episodes during my trip that forcibly reminded me of this indispensable fact.

One moment for reflection came to me during my trip to the famous fish market in Hoi An. Wandering around the market, assailed by wonderful smells and sounds, I decided I wanted to talk to some of the vendors. Stopping to buy some Vietnamese coffee, my gaze fell on a beautiful wooden box. The sharp-eyed vendor noticed immediately and launched an offensive involving discounts and a cut-price hand massage. I foolishly took this is as my chance to try and talk with her – How is the box made? Is that gorgeous smell inside cinnamon? She answered all my questions in good English and I was excited because I thought that I was ‘getting to know’ this woman. Of course I immediately realised that I was not ‘getting to know’ her because we were not actually having a conversation in the strictest sense. She was responding to me but she was not talking to me because her words were merely part of her sales pitch.

As soon as I realised this I felt guilty since I had no intention of buying the box; I just wanted to talk to her but instead I was unwittingly misleading her and wasting her valuable trading time. Of course it seems obvious that this would happen: the market space is for selling and not for idle chit-chat. Yet, a similar situation arose in a wholly unexpected place. I was being taken on a tour of an old house in the ancient part of Hoi An by the owner. The first thing she told me was that it had been in her family for generations; the second thing she told me was that the family trade was embroidery and that I could buy some tablecloths for my mother. The tour lasted five minutes but for twenty minutes her cousins tried their best to convince me to buy a buffalo-horn pipe for my non-smoking father whilst we drank green tea. Again I tried to engage the guide in conversation, but she would only go as far as to answer me in short, well-spoken sentences.

The more I observed and interacted with people in Vietnam, the more I came to the conclusion that any space is space in which to do trade. In these ‘trading spaces’ it seemed to me that I was not being related to as a fellow person but as a role, which for them was that of a tourist; and that this determined our ‘conversational context’. As a traveler who had a taste of a more personal side of Vietnam – I spent time chatting in cafés with Vietnamese friends, I talked to a friendly man at Hanoi airport about US politics – I felt it was possible to have a shared, responsive conversational basis with someone from a different cultural and linguistic background. However I realised that not many western travellers would be lucky enough to experience this, I think, due to their presuppositions about Vietnam and vice-versa. Their only chances of talking with locals would probably be exclusively within this nebulous space of trade. Meaningful communication between locals and tourists does not even begin because of their assumptions about each other, which is actualised in these ‘trading spaces’.

I don’t think this phenomenon is exclusively Vietnamese but is arguably common to many rapidly developing countries experiencing economic growth and tourist booms. According to the Financial Times UK banks have been set to expand in Vietnam, tourism statistics on the blog Vietnam Travel show that 4.2% of the country’s GDP is accounted for by tourism which, ignoring the recession for the moment, has been rapidly increasing over the last ten years.

Due to the huge influx of tourists a certain image of the foreign, notably western, traveler appears to have been cultivated; an image of great affluence and naivety both in equal measure. Hoi An notably markets itself primarily to wealthy tourists as seen by the abundance of exclusive resorts and chic hotels that have opened along the coastline. Cloth and antique shops feel comfortable charging higher prices every year because they know that westerners won’t haggle and will often accept the first price offered. Then there is the two-price system in restaurants; going out for dinner with my Vietnamese friend would invariably be a few dollars cheaper than eating only with western friends, once more because western tourists are unaware of how much things generally cost. The only way of finding out is, of course, talking to a local about prices. But as I have suggested, this is not always easy.

It seems therefore that tourists are caught in a trap. They are unable to engage fully with local people because of Vietnam’s economically effective tourism policies which unfortunately constructs the problematic divide of ‘us’ and ‘them’. As a result, travelers to Vietnam are forced into certain patterns of behaviour: taking packaged trips, frequenting western-style bars and cafes, rarely eating street food, which in turn reinforces their categorisation as a ‘western tourist’ by the Vietnamese.

Indeed, I would say that the Vietnamese are caught in exactly the same trap as the tourists. It is not solely Vietnam’s responsibility to end the self-reinforcing cycle of this kind of de-personalised tourism. Vietnam is arguably responding to ‘outside’ perceptions of itself as an economically viable business sphere, a novel cultural experience and a piece of colonial history. Indeed, the ‘trading spaces’ I mentioned previously seem to be generated by this economic and political climate which allocates social roles to individuals: such as ‘locals’ and ‘tourists’. These individuals find themselves inevitably acting out their given roles namely because they are treated in terms of these roles by others, and this self-perpetuating cycle is vindicated by wider socio-economic practices.

This cursory picture is not intended to be wholly negative since the number of travelers coming to Vietnam is increasing every year, with the resulting boost of the nation’s economy and political prospects. Yet it seems to me that ordinary travelers are getting a rather shallow experience of Vietnam and I suggest this could be partly remedied if the ‘conversational context’ was decoupled from trade. This might go some way to enable people create spaces in which they can meaningfully talk to each other.

Jagruti Dave is a doctoral student in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University.

The notion of external ‘help’ to the people of Burma has taken a beating from across the ideological board. The debate around the issue even made international headlines during that brief moment following the tragedy of Cyclone Nargis when Burma was apparently interesting enough to the rest of the world to warrant significant reportage (September 2007 notwithstanding). Central to this debate has been a narrow understanding of politics as the struggle over institutional authority to which opponents (otherwise in seeming disagreement) have held fast. Speaking of the Cyclone Nargis aftermath, Ban Ki-moon told the UN General Assembly in May 2008 that “this is not about politics. Our focus is saving lives.” The following month, The Irrawaddy argued that “the international community, in its efforts to depoliticize the humanitarian crisis still unfolding in Burma, may end up ensuring the ruling regime’s political survival while doing little or nothing to save lives.” More recently, this dispute flared up at the Burma Day conference held in Brussels this past October.

In the most polarized cases, this debate sets those who advocate pressure aimed at national-level political reform (or in some circles ‘regime change’) against those who argue for ostensibly apolitical (yet State regulated) humanitarian and development assistance. Not only has this debate grown unnecessarily tedious, but it’s a false dichotomy which has hindered the development of more innovative and just forms of engagement with contemporary Burma. Both approaches remain overly focused on elite politics and miss opportunities to implement politically-mindful forms of intervention which support rural villagers’ everyday efforts to resist abuse. At least, that’s one of the assertions of a new report released this week by the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG). Given recurring discussions and debates on New Mandala, the new report, entitled Village Agency: Rural rights and resistance in a militarized Karen State is of particular relevance.

In an effort to move beyond the above debate, the report’s authors criticize narrow understandings of politics and resistance that prioritize struggles over formal authority and neglect the many ways through which civilians (especially the country’s overwhelmingly rural population) resist abuse and engage daily with the informal political processes that surround them in order to address humanitarian and livelihood concerns. This approach has much in common with those of James Scott and Benedict Kirkvliet insofar as ‘everyday resistance’ and ‘everyday politics’ are given their due place of importance. In areas of Karen State under Burma Army control, for example, village-level resistance to exploitative abuse (such as persistent forced labour, movement restrictions, arbitrary taxation and ad hoc demands) has included negotiation, bribery, lying, outright refusal, confrontation, various forms of discreet false compliance, jokes and counter-narratives, and temporary evasion. In areas of more overt armed conflict this resistance has involved villagers’ efforts to support displacement in hiding as a means of evading attacks and forced relocation by the Burma Army. Such persistent forms of resistance are amongst the most effective means currently employed to address humanitarian and livelihoods concerns in Karen State (and presumably elsewhere in rural Burma). They are also political.

Despite the success of village-level resistance strategies in addressing humanitarian and livelihoods issues in rural Burma, these efforts have largely been missed by external actors attempting to ‘help’ improve current conditions in the country. The marginalization of indigenous ’self help’ efforts has been due, in part, to external depictions (often as part of otherwise well intentioned journalism and advocacy) of villagers in non-ethnic Burman-dominated areas like Karen State as helpless victims passively terrorized by the Burma Army. Seemingly without ability to assess and concretely respond to their situation, the voices and concerns of these individuals have been excluded from ongoing political processes (like humanitarian relief programmes and foreign policy debates) intended to ‘help’ them.

There is currently a great opportunity for external actors to help address intertwined humanitarian and human rights concerns in Burma by incorporating village-level resistance strategies into a variety of ongoing aid programmes. This requires that the far-too-often excluded voices of rural villagers be included in the political processes that affect them and that their concerns shape any related intervention.

Stephen Hull is a researcher with the Karen Human Rights Group.  Their Village Agency report is available here.

The word is ‘kilt’. The metaphor might be a stretch, but in the spirit of the four-letter word series, the word ‘kilt’ reminds us of why there’s more to some policies than meets the eye.

As Thailand careens eagerly toward aims of achieving Gross National Happiness by bringing itself in line with Bhutan on some aspects of domestic policy, it’s worth asking if another aspect of Bhutan’s domestic policy – let’s call it the ‘forced-kilt’ policy for the time being – bears the weight of scrutiny.

Much like the quaint Scottish kilt, the Bhutanese have a national costume. For the men, it’s called a gho – a heavy knee-length robe that all citizens wear when visiting official government buildings, institutions and monasteries or during official occasions, and which workers of the government must wear while on duty. And, like the Scots, the men wear it proudly, with pulled-up socks and protuberant shoes.

Putting aside the question of what national dress even means for Thailand (see previous discussion at New Mandala) – the Bhutanese equivalent, the gho, is a symbol for something deeply problematic in Bhutan’s history: its imposition of a cultural system on an entire country’s population, hundreds of thousands of whom belong to a minority ethnicity.

The enforcement of a mandatory dress code in 1989 – men must wear the gho and women must wear the kira – comes from a far more broad code of conduct, Driglam Namzha, which dates back to the 17th century and prescribes behaviour, customs, and language and is a foundational aspect of Bhutan’s social and cultural norms. Driglam Namzha’s heavy-handed promotion starting in the 1970s, however, has been seen largely as an effort to “Bhutanize” the population by upholding the practices of Bhutan’s predominantly Buddhist, and northern- and western-residing ethnic groups, who are collectively referred to as Drukpa. Excluded from the Drukpa are the southern-residing, primarily Hindu and ethnically Nepali residents of Bhutan, the Lhotshampa.

For the Lhotshampa, the imposition of Driglam Namzha has led to exclusion and isolation. In his excellent book on the topic, Unbecoming Citizens, Michael Hutt notes that local officials in Bhutan often used their discretion to apply Driglam Namzha unfairly, resulting in beatings, arrests and fines for those who were seen out in public without wearing the national dress. While Bhutan’s northern climate is suitable for a heavy, kilt-like material from which ghos and kiras are made, the warmer southern climate makes their wear uncomfortable and impractical. So when local officials lean toward a strict application of Driglam Namzha and require Lhotshampa farmers to wear the gho and kira, let’s put it this way: they aren’t going to be grossly happy. The same is true for language and education policies in 1989 that eliminated the teaching of Nepali in the schools.

And these compulsory social and cultural laws have not remained an internal matter. Driglam Namzha and associated regulations that coalesced to unify Bhutan’s identity – including increasingly strict citizenship laws – led to the little known exodus of tens of thousands (the exact number is contested) of Lhotshampas from Bhutan in 1990. They crossed through India and on to Nepal, where more than 100,000 live in refugee camps today. In the succeeding 18 years, not a single refugee has been permitted to return to Bhutan. What’s happened to the Lhotshampa refugees in Nepal is a larger story and probably deserves another four-letter word article. For now, let’s just say that they’ve been four-letter worded – and I don’t mean ‘kilted’.

So what does it take to be grossly happy? Bhutan is widely recognised for national policies protecting itself from an onslaught of an overzealous international development regime, and many have pointed to these policies as exemplars on the road to smart development. At the same time, Bhutan has also enacted policies to protect itself against the erosion of ‘pure’ Bhutanese identity and culture. Are these policies that Thailand truly wants to mirror?

Like a kilt, or a gho, what’s important is what lies beneath the cover. Take a closer look underneath before passing a blanket positive judgment on all of Bhutan’s policies.

Susan Banki is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law at Griffith University.

A recent article in the Asia Times states that Cambodia is about to overhaul its laws that deal with NGOs.

In late September he [Hun Sen] called for the revival of a controversial law which would require the country’s more than 2,000 associations and NGOs to complete a complex registration process and submit to stringent financial reporting requirements. The draft law is expected to be passed by Hun Sen’s Cambodia People’s Party (CPP)-dominated National Assembly in the coming months. “Cambodia has been heaven for NGOs for too long,” he said in a speech broadcast on national radio on September 26, adding that he had given up hope of reading any positive reports written by international or local NGOs. “The NGOs are out of control … they insult the government just to ensure their financial survival”

Although many NGO, both international and local, are liable to see this as further silencing of government critics, similar to the recent banning of the UN’s Human Right’s Commission member Yash Ghai, few can deny that cleaning up the NGO sector of Cambodia is long overdue. There are literally thousands of “NGOs” operating in Cambodia that are simply used as a tax loop hole. NGOs don’t pay taxes and can employ foreigners without much bureaucratic fuss. NGO laws, or lack there of, for many years have provided relatively easy visa entry for foreigners of dubious morals to stay for extended periods in Cambodia.

In many cases, what should be registered as a business is actually registered as an NGO so that the managing director may conduct business whilst still attracting funding from larger bilateral donors or international NGOs. It has for local agri-businesses especially, been a useful form of foreign direct investment from donors. Some have used donor money to establish contract farming relations, with the NGO acting as marketing agent. This has occurred in some cases due to donor perceptions of Cambodian agriculture. Direct assistance to local NGOs has been justified in the name of agricultural and private sector “development” that is typically characterised as backward and poor. Furthermore, many local NGOs are run by part time, ex or full-time government employees as sideline businesses.

Thus the Cambodian institutional landscape has long been blurred between aid, business and government. Tighter law enforcement should help to seperate out clearly the different functions of government, business and charity. It remains to be seen however, as Asia Times suggests, whether this law signals Cambodia’s distancing from western donors due to expected oil revenues and towards further Chinese patronage or whether it is simply a move to finally address a longstanding problem.

For weeks, a steady stream of four-letter words have run through my mind in connection to the unfolding events in Thailand.  Most of these words have reflected either my fear of what might happen next or my frustration at my failure to make sense of what has already transpired.  Unfortunately, while many of these four-letter words possess a transgressive pleasure, they lack analytic possibility.  In turn, the words appropriate for polite conversation are marked by their absence, rather than their presence, in Thai politics: a lack of justice, the impossibility of fairness, the dwindling of the already-faint rule of law, and the disappearance of impartiality.  Instead, what is present is a politics of murk, a murky politics, or in Thai, การเมืองมืด. 

Removed from politics, what characterizes murk? According to Merriam-Webster, murk is  “gloom, darkness, fog.” Murky is “characterized by a heavy dimness or obscurity caused by or like that caused by overhanging fog or smoke; characterized by thickness and heaviness of air; darkly vague or obscure.”  The most recent edition of the Royal Institute dictionary defines มืด as “missing light, for example a waning moon; to have little light, for example, you should not read books when it is murky because it will damage your eyesight; the implicit meaning refers to that which is known but cannot be seen, for example, an invisible hand; the time close to dawn, for example waking but it is murky; nighttime, for example, its already murky, why don’t you turn on the lights?” ["ว. ขาดแสงสว่าง เช่น เดือนมืด, มีแสงสว่างน้อย เช่น ไม่ควรอ่านหนังสือในที่มืด เพราะจะทำให้เสียสายตา, โดยปริยายหมายความว่า เหลือรู้เหลือเห็น เช่น มือมืด.  น.  เวลาใกล้ฟ้าสาง  เช่นตื่นแต่มืด คำ่ เช่น มืดแล้วทำไมไม่เปิดไฟ" (865)].  In the Royal Institute definition, murky is characterized as dim, shadowy, and the unknown.     

Murky politics are similarly characterized by lack, erasure, and uncertainty.  As Thongchai Winichakul noted a few weeks ago, the space for frank dissent and discussion is disappearing.  Every public statement or writing about the current state of politics, including this short essay, risks being cast as either pro-PAD or pro-TRT/PPP, with little space in-between.  Offering an example of censure in another register, on 17 October, drawing on reporting by the Campaign for Popular Media Reform, the Asian Human Rights Commission reported that a community radio station in Kanchanaburi was closed under unclear circumstances.  These restrictions on speech have bodily implications as well, as  the possibility of contention without violence or medical help after violence disappears.  During the clash between the PAD and the police on 7 October, reports indicate that the police used dangerous, untested canisters of tear gas and the PAD used their own stash of weapons to fight the police.  The temporary refusals by physicians to treat police after 7 October also indicated a dangerous precedent. On 7 October, police were deemed unworthy of medical care at Chulalongkorn University Hospital. Who next? How can dissent exist, let alone flourish, without basic guarantees on safety and restraint for all parties involved?      

Perhaps most worrying about the politics of murk in Thailand is that the ability to imagine a just, future democracy — or a path out of the current situation without a coup or violence — is waning.  Instead, recalling Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the development of totalitarianism in mid-century European politics, dire predictions of disaster for those who do not heed one call or another proliferate.  My point is not to suggest that Thailand today is analogous to post-war Europe, but rather to point to the danger when any ideology — of party, ruler, or nation — becomes unquestionable.

Counteracting murky politics will require the imagination and labor of many people.  One strategy for creating a just future is to critically remember the past. In the excellent Rule of Lords column,  Awzar Thi recently called on the human rights community to remove itself from politics and “make a clear psychological and rhetorical break from the concepts of society and state upon which the perpetrators of cruelty and guarantors of impunity depend.” He draws on the memory of Jit Phumisak to demonstrate the necessity of questioning the established order.  Writing in the long aftermath of the dissolution of the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), in Commodifying Marxism: The Formation of Modern Thai Radical Culture, 1927-1958,  Kasian Tejapira argues that “… there still exist in Thailand the residual nuts and bolts of cultural resistance that had been tempered and molded by the long, frictional combination of communism and Thai culture.  And that as long as the modern ravages of dictatorship and capitalism are still visited upon the Thais, there will be enough new radicals to reassemble them into powerful cultural weapons in the fight for their own and humanity’s survival and dignity” (202).  Finding what remains of a progressive past — one in which the ruling order was peacefully challenged through the actions of courageous individuals — in order to create a Thai future in which humanity can survive is urgent. In addition to Jit and the early Marxian cultural-political thinkers mentioned above, a radical remembering of the risks and struggles of the students, farmers, and workers between 1973 and 1976 and the courageous actions of human rights defenders and environmental activists in the face of state and private sector violence during the Thaksin government are two places to begin.  The urgency of doing so will remain even once the current crisis is resolved, not least because the residue which will be left by the murky politics of the present remains as yet unknown.

Tyrell Haberkorn is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Peace & Conflict Studies at Colgate University.

I’ve dislocated both shoulders on several occasions – although fortunately, not at the same time. With the corpse-like limb dangling from its socket, any movement is acutely painful. Nevertheless, I find the best solution is to grasp the limp wrist with my remaining good hand, and slowly but firmly twist outward and downwards in a clock-wise spiral. This results in the shoulder popping back into its socket – rather painfully, but accompanied by great relief. 

The first time my shoulder dislocated I was travelling on the Ye River, with Mon relief workers, and a small detachment of Mon National Liberation Army (MNLA) soldiers. This was a couple of months before the June 1995 ceasefire between the Burmese military government and the New Mon State Party (NMSP – the MNLA’s political leadership). Negotiations to end the fighting were already underway, and both sides were on high military alert. The Tatmadaw (Burma Army) was attempting to push the MNLA back from its forward positions, in order to increase pressure on the Mon insurgents to agree a ceasefire, and also to limit the amount of territory ceded to the NMSP under the ceasefire agreement. 

Two days earlier, we had left Sangkhlaburi (in Thailand) at dawn, and taken a chilly boat ride across the misty lake, and then upstream to a Mon refugee camp. From there, we had walked for about eight hours, up one side of a heavily forested mountain – the top ridge of which constituted the Thailand-Burma border – and then steeply down the other, before arriving in the NMSP’s jungle headquarters, on a tributary of the Ye River. Along the way we had seen and heard hornbills – their giant wings booming as they flew between the treetops overhead – and wild boar rustling and snorting in the undergrowth. As usual in the rainy season, we had to continuously pick leeches off our ankles, before they inched up under our longyis. 

The next day we met with the NMSP leadership – or at least, those who were not at the ‘front line’, or meeting with the Burma Army in Moulmein. Then we set off up-river, to visit civilians displaced by the recent fighting. We travelled part of the way by boat, before stopping for lunch by the riverside, and then continuing on foot. 

A word about that lunch. I had been happily half-snoozing in the back of the boat, when the loudest and most alarming noise I’ve ever heard erupted seemingly inches (but actually several feet) from my left ear. One of the soldiers in our party had spotted a four-foot monitor lizard basking on a branch, overhanging the river. He had let off a round with his M16 rifle, and killed the creature with great skill. Incidentally, he also terrified me.  

We pulled into the riverside, hauled the poor, dead lizard into the boat, and proceeded to butcher it there and then, and prepare a curry while we continued upstream. When we ate this for lunch one hour later, it was pretty tough and tasteless. However, when we eventually had the rest of the lizard in a similar curry that evening, it tasted superb. In part of course, we were just plain hungry; also though, I think that enzymes had broken down the lizard’s flesh during the long hot afternoon it had spent in the bottom of the boat. This is why ‘game’ meet needs to be hung for a while before eating. 

With lunch over, and following a twenty minute rest in the shade, we continued on our way, walking single-file along the narrow path which ran parallel to the river. To begin with, the journey continued in a relaxed and enjoyable manner, as we exchanged stories of favourite jungle lunches from times gone by. (I offered tales of monkey-shit curries provided by generous Karen hosts – a delicacy unknown to the Mon.) However, the tone of our little expedition soon became much more serious. 

The signals Sergeant attached to our accompanying party of a dozen soldiers had received some alarming news. The day before, a Tatmadaw column had set out from Kanni (a few miles up-river from Ye town, and a dozen miles west of our current position), but MNLA intelligence had lost track of the enemy troops in the jungle. There was a suspicion that the Burma Army unit might be heading east, in order to launch a surprise attack on the NMSP headquarters area. If so, they might be heading our way, with aggressive intent. 

This information was revealed to me in dribs and drabs over the next few hours, as we moved forward as quietly as possible (but for crackling twigs underfoot, and occasional bouts of radio communication). The procedure was as follows: half-a-dozen MNLA men would go ahead a few hundred yards, check out the path in front, then send a signal back down the way to my three Mon civilian friends, the other soldiers from our bodyguard and I; we would then scamper as quickly and quietly as possible up the path to the forward group, at which point we began again. Our slow progress continued thus for three or four exhausting hours. 

By this time, we were proceeding along a very narrow path, the edge of which dropped in a steep ravine down to the tumbling and bolder-strewn river, perhaps fifty feet below. Although I was still a little scared, one couldn’t help but admire the stunning range of glorious green vegetation in the semi-jungle all around. I was quite tired by now, and the novelty of our situation having worn off a little, was not concentrating fully on the task at hand.  

I slipped – and my flip-flop clad right foot skidded off the path, and over the edge. Fortunately, as my body lurched downwards, I shot out my left arm and grabbed some vine-like stuff, which was loosely cladding a (in retrospect, jolly convenient) nearby tree. With an instinctive jerk, I pulled myself back onto the path, and rolled over in shock – and pain. Although I had saved myself from a very dangerous tumble down a jagged, rocky riverbank, I had in the process yanked my left shoulder out of its socket.  

No one knew quite what to do. After a bout of trial, and very painful error, I worked out how to re-locate my shoulder – and we continued on our way. 

This little episode prepared me well for the next time my arm popped out. This was about a year later, while ice-skating with friends in Portsmouth (on the south coast, in the UK). 

We were happily careering round the edge of the rink, when I fell (not for the first time) – and reached out to save myself, by grabbing the perimeter railing. In a similar manner to that described above, my shoulder popped out with a searing jolt of pain, and I skidded across the ice. I crawled on my knees to the side of the rink, and hauled myself upright with my good right arm. I was a little dazed, and unsure what to do next, as the dodgy limb dangled uselessly by my side, my left hand a good six inches lower than the right. 

I realised after a few moments that several of our fellow skaters had stopped to stare, and this attracted the attention of the ice rink staff. However, none of them (including the twit-ish ‘First Aid Officer’) would help at all, beyond muttering about ambulances and hospitals. Therefore, I composed myself, gritted my teeth, and twisted my shoulder back into place. Rather heroically I thought (or foolishly, according to my friends), I carried on skating for another half-hour – although at reduced speed. 

The next time I dislocated my shoulder, there was a slight twist (excuse the pun) involved. I was in Brussels for a Burma conference, and had recently awakened, shaved and dressed, and was preparing to head downstairs to breakfast. Putting on my suit jacket, I flung back my right arm – and out popped my previously sound shoulder. 

Having stumbled painfully around my hotel room for a few minutes, pathetically trying to tie my tie, I took the lift down to the breakfast room. I made something of a spectacle of myself, as I traipsed through the diners, with my arm dangling. As has become usual in such situations, I could find no one able to offer assistance. I therefore had to right myself under the gaze of assembled Burma-scholars and policy wonks. At least my peers and betters cut me some slack, when I addressed them later that morning on the subject of humanitarian vulnerability in Burma. 

The next time it happened was in our apartment in downtown Bangkok, smoothing down a bedsheet. These days, I’m a lot more careful with my movements. However, it’s only a matter of time before I dislocate my shoulder while picking my nose!

In late 2005 I made my first trip to Cambodia. Before my departure from Australia I’d bought myself a guidebook to the region. Instead of being stranded and needing to survive in an unfamiliar environment, the theory was that all I would have to do is turn to the guidebook of laziness for warmth and friendly advice. But upon submitting to the tome of general knowledge for those just visiting I felt guilty. What would I learn from this trip that I couldn’t live vicariously through everyone else before me? Of course, fulfilling all the requirements for an A grade cliché, to be separate from ‘the rest’, I wandered off the beaten path in Southeast Asia. However, my preconceived notions of a Tintin-esque adventure weren’t fulfilled in this manner.

Instead, what I relate to the New Mandala hive in the following occurred at one of those junctures where it is impossible to boast of charming remoteness.

One afternoon at Sugar and Spice’s bar and lodge in Siem Reap I met a Dutch man who claimed he worked for the UNHCR. After countless Tiger beers I was quite enamored by his stories of aiding victims in Haiti and Israel. As I was doing a degree in International Relations, I felt properly ingratiated and morally righteous sitting with this person, so I was not expecting what was to come. Getting emotional, he began to tell me about a Khmer girl he slept with. He estimated that she was around 12 years old. He said that the money he gave her would feed her family for a month and, therefore, his actions were justifiable. As though he thought I would think nothing of that, he then offered me use of his shower as I had told him I was sleeping in the cheaper rooms. Stunned.

Quickly I left the table and went for a walk. I saw some rambunctious Brits who were stoned, sitting outside their huts. I loathed everything that I thought I must represent. I wished to be Khmer. I kept walking and came to the Red Piano restaurant. Just round the corner were hundreds of women milling about talking loudly, and gyrating provocatively. They called to me and I nodded and made an about turn towards Sugar and Spice. This sequence of experiences was quite confusing and I decided to join the Brits and their long tradition of peaceful resolution. One said to me, “I think Angkor Wat is like the biggest playground in the world, I don’t care about all of this history shit.”  Stunned.

The next morning, still confused and disappointed with myself, I went to buy some fruit. Walking passed the Red Piano, I saw some of the same women from the evening before sleeping on the road. As I got closer, I saw that one woman was squatting – her hands covering her face. I went to give the seemingly distressed woman a rambutan. She shouted at me and I didn’t know how to react except to make a hasty retreat. Interpreting her comments to be filled with anger and cynicism at the fruits of my evil foreign currency, my guilt about not punching the pedophile and reporting him, and the clichés that I came to Cambodia for, I accepted her outburst as confirmation of my self-depreciating conclusions. However, as I was about to turn the corner, she called out again, this time in English, and said “big party.” Stunned.

Later that week, I watched the dream I had of the sweltering Sun set over the never-ending Mekong sepia and understood a little more. Beginning to understand ones personal acquiescence surely isn’t a ‘new perspective.’ Perhaps though, my perspective isn’t what this story is about.

Colum Graham is, in his own words, an average westerner. He recently graduated with a pass degree and is presently saving money to bite the Honours bullet. The story he wrote before this one is titled “Inside North Korea”.

The first time was the worst, although the second was pretty bad too. The only two times in my life I’ve been on an intravenous drip.

I’ve had malaria about 20 times — although I can’t be sure exactly, because towards the end I was self-diagnosing, and medicating with Artesunate and Mefloquine. During this period in the mid-to-late 1990s I was travelling regularly in KNU (Karen National Liberation Army) Fourth and Six Brigades, and the Mon ceasefire zones, home to some of the most drug-resistant strains of malaria in the world. In the rainy seasons I would walk into places which during the dry season were more or less accessible by 4-Wheel Drive. Looking back, I can’t properly explain why I didn’t use mosquito repellent or nets. Jungle macho, I suppose — plus the fact that the villagers we stayed with had none of these things. Towards the end, I had built up some resistance, and was throwing off a fever every four-to-six weeks, without thinking much of it. I would barely take the afternoon off work, and more than once made the five-six hour drive from Sangkhlaburi to Bangkok with a 40° fever, and veins full of quinine derivatives, Red Bull and paracetamol. I discovered that the best way to regain strength after a bout of malaria was eating dogmeat taut gratiam (fried in garlic). However, I had to explain to General Shwe Saing that dog wasn’t the only meat I liked to eat. (The sound of yelping, followed by gunfire, followed by silence, followed an hour or so later by an invitation to dinner became too regular a routine.) I also discovered that a bottle of Singha beer processed through a liver only recently recovered from PV malaria produces a devastating hangover. (I still shudder to recall my dark brown piss during bouts of PV, full of dead blood cells, if I understand correctly: thus ‘blackwater fever’.)

Anyway, the first time I picked up malaria was on the Tenasserim River, way down south, in 1992. By the time I got back to Chiang Mai, I was feeling pretty rough. I took several malaria tests, but each came out negative. (I hadn’t realised that the paracetamol I was taking to control the fever was also masking the evidence of parasites in my blood.) The small NGO I was working for thought I was malingering, and packed me off to the border. By the time I got to Mannerplaw (KNU headquarters, until 1994) I had the classic symptoms: high fever spikes, aching bones, tingling skin, terrible teeth-chattering chills, searing headache, and a strange light-heartedness, followed by drenching sweats and sleepless exhaustion. I had my blood tested again at a KNU clinic, and was gratified to be told I had PF malaria (+ three). I spent the next two weeks in Too Wa Lu hospital (which I later learned had been assessed by a French medical agency, which recommended that it should be de-commissioned, and encased within concrete, as a public health risk). Towards the end of my stay, a young Karen soldier in the next bed died of his battle wounds in the night, without as far as I could tell having regained consciousness since arriving in hospital the afternoon before. A few days later, I was back in my small house in neighbouring Pwe Ba Lu village. It took me at least a week to re-gain enough strength to walk a few hundred yards into the main village. I was struck by how un-moved most people were by accounts of my ordeal. Everyone on the border had malaria, time and again. It was just something you put up with. My incredibly friendly and gracious Karen hosts were far more concerned that I had no access to regular electricity or Western food.

However, on that first awful night, even the lovely and imperturbable Thramu E- was taken aback. I was thrashing about on a bamboo bed, hooked up to quinine and saline drips, which had yet to kick in. A huge, round, black, cartoon-like pig burst through the door, and started charging in circles around my sick-bed. I called out to Thramu: “Get rid of that pig – before it rips the needles out of my arm!” She just giggled – but looked really quite frightened. When the hallucination subsided, I found myself bursting into snippets of half-remembered teenage punk anthem, which also rather alarmed E-. After a while (I don’t know how long, as I was later told that I had slipped in and out of a coma, and was in danger of collapsing into a full-blown cerebral malaria), I decided to kill myself. I had got into a spot of romantic bother, which combined with the malaria, the drugs, and my natural disposition to paranoia, had formed in me a sudden conviction that all my problems could be easily solved, by ending my life. Immediately, I was able to view my troubles in perspective: after all, these were trivial concerns, in the context of my own death. In that moment, I felt a surge of life-affirming well-being, which came with the realisation that I didn’t have to kill myself.

I spent another two weeks on that sweat-soaked bed, before I had the strength to walk out the door. In all that time though, as the quinine went drip, drip, drip — and my head went buzz, buzz, buzz — I knew that it was going to be okay.

Ashley South is an independent analyst, who specialises in politics and humanitarian issues in Burma and Southeast Asia. His most recent book is Ethnic Politics in Burma: States of Conflict. 

In 1983 Charles Keyes wrote “the evidence from monastery libraries in Laos and Thailand reveals that what constitutes the Theravādin dhamma for people in these areas includes only a small portion of the total Tipiṭaka…Moreover, the collection of texts available to the people in the associated community are not exactly the same as those found in another temple.” What Charles Keyes observed in 1983 can be confirmed today with even the most cursory inventory of the major monastic, royal and governmental manuscript libraries of Laos and Thailand. Generally, the most popular texts were the ānisam’sa (Lao/Thai: anisong) which are blessings used in ritual and magical ceremonies, paritta (incantations for protection), xalong (ceremonial instructions for both lay and religious ceremonies), apocryphal jātaka (non-canonical birth-stories of the Buddha), stories drawn from the Dhammapada-atthakathā, kammavācā (ritual instructions and rules), local epics (including the Xieng Mieng cycle of stories, Thao Hung Thao Juang, Xin Sai, Om Lom Daeng Kiao), excerpts from the Visuddhimagga and Maṅgaladīpanī, grammatica (excerpts from the Padarūpasiddhi, Kaccāyanavyākaran’a, and local grammatical handbooks), and tamnan (relic, image and temple histories).

As a graduate student I was trained in Indic philology and grammar –- in reading Sanskrit and Pali canonical and commentarial texts to supplement my vernacular skills. However, working in monasteries in Southeast Asia, I realized that my study of the semantics of Pali texts was only partially useful. In studying Pali and Sanskrit I had been studying “language” not “languaging.” The difference is great. As Becker writes, “a language is a system of rules or structures, which…relates meanings and sounds, both of which are outside of it. A language is essentially a dictionary and a grammar. Languaging, on the other hand, is context shaping. Languaging both shapes and is shaped by context. It is a kind of attunement between a person and a context. Languaging can be understood as taking old texts from memory and reshaping them into present contexts…It is done at the level of particularity.” This is what the students and the teachers in Southeast Asia are often doing; they were languaging Pali. They were not learning the Pali language. Certainly Pali has been an important language in the study of Theravada Buddhism (let’s put aside the major problems with the term “Theravada” for now) for 2,500 years, but it should not be seen as more important than local vernaculars.

Most books on Buddhism state that Pali is the signature language of the Theravada lineage of Buddhism. However, it is important to observe that Pali canonical texts are most often in the minority in Southeast manuscript collections not only in Laos and Thailand, but also in Cambodia and Burma. There is little evidence that Pali was widely used as a language of composition in Southeast Asia except for a few exceptions. The general impression that Pali is essential for the study of Theravada Buddhism started in the mid-nineteenth century. Western scholars of Theravada Buddhism, as well as royal and Sangha reformers in Thailand and Sri Lanka emphasized the importance of Pali. There certainly has been an increase in the study of Pali especially due the reforms of King Mongkut and Prince Wachirayan in Thailand which have had some ramifications in Cambodia and Laos. However, despite these reforms, even now less than five percent of monks in Thailand and less in Laos and Cambodia (there are no confirmed statistics for Burma) take higher Pali examinations. Therefore, the signature language of Theravada Buddhism, remains largely unstudied.

This should not, however, be seen as a sign of loss. Pali is alive and well ritually in Southeast Asian liturgical and magical practices. It is used in the blessing of water, houses, water buffaloes, children, and amulets. Short Pali incantations are composed anew for shrines and dedications. Pali is heard chanted in several different styles (22 major styles) throughout the region. For a student of Buddhism then, learning Pali is extremely important even if it isn’t for reading texts for semantic understanding. Without understanding the importance of Pali ritually, we miss why Pali stays relevant in Southeast Asia. When thinking about language and religion therefore, it would be wise to ask ourselves what we mean when we say Pali. Do we mean a living language that is used conversationally? A language used for composition of texts and correspondence? A language of jurisprudence? A ritual language for invoking protection, blessing objects and people, and cursing?

Justin McDaniel is an Associate Professor at the University of California – Riverside.  He is also the author of Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words: Intertextuality and Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Northern Thailand (2008) and the moderator of the Thailand-Laos-Cambodia listserv.