From The Nation, June 28, 2002

Southern Heritage

Nantiya Tangwisutijit
Tne Nation

The Islamic maritime state of Pattani antedates Siam and its history should be studied separately and with respect

All Muslims in the deep South want is not a separate state, but respect for their differences of belief and culture.

A few decades ago, the name of Yusouf Longpi was well known by residents of Thailand's deep South. He was a secretary-general of the Pattani United Liberation Organisation, or Pulo, an armed group which advocated an independent state for ethnic Malays in the five southernmost provinces.

After decades of turbulent struggle against the government, however, Yusouf surrendered in return for amnesty. At 54, the one-time top commander of Pulo leads a simple life, having put down his automatic rifle and instead taken up a manual sewing machine to make a living.

The story of Yusouf surprisingly resembles those of many sultans and rulers of Pattani and its neighbouring states on the Malay peninsula in the 16th century. They rebelled against the oppression of Siam, but ended up surrendering and returning to stay under the Kingdom's power. Three centuries later the king of Kedah, now a state of Malaysia, did the same. To Thongchai Winichakul, a distinguished history professor who now teaches at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, it would be fascinating if the stories of Yusouf and the sultans of Pattani were taught in high schools. Teachers would have to explain to their students about the relationship between Siam and Pattani and why such rebellions have taken place since ancient times.

"This is not to convert the students or make them become pro-Pattani," he said. "I believe they have the ability to understand stories of conflict from history. I don't think it would be a great surprise for people to know a diversity of stories from the past. On the contrary, it would be a good basis for growing up."

The stories of Yusouf and the ancient rulers of Pattani are an example of "Stories from the Borders: the Anomalies in the Geographical Logic of Thai National History", a keynote speech delivered by Thongchai, which was a highlight at a recent international academic gathering. The conference, co-organised by Prince of Songkhla University at Pattani and Harvard's Department of Anthropology, was attended by some 300 scholars from different parts of the world.

The history professor maintained that learning about stories of different people and ideologies from the past in an "honest" way is a vital step towards critical thinking, a quality much needed to live in the growing social complexity stemming from our fast-changing world.

"We need a new kind of historical culture," he said. "Why should we always look for harmony when explaining incidents from history? Why don't we remember the stories as they were? The past is the past. It does not mean there were conflicts in the past and now we have to remain in those conflicts. [In contrast,] isn't it good to know where the problems came from?"

The geographical logic of Thai national history which determined the present knowledge of Thai history has its limits, said Thongchai. Under the logic that Thailand's current political space and sovereignty was also that of its past, we would not be able to understand, for instance, why Phitsanulok sided with Burma when it sacked Ayutthaya in the 16th century.

"Such geographical logic misunderstands the political system of pre-modern states," he explained. "[In fact] the relationship between those kingdoms and chiefdoms was a hierarchical one in which overlords of different levels of power competed or paid submission to one another depending on the situation. That's why we saw, after the second fall of Ayutthaya, an emergence of many independent chiefdoms."

In other words, ancient states did not operate under a concept of unity, but loyalty within a network of hierarchy, he said. One chiefdom could pay tribute for protection to two or three superior overlords at the same time. Relatively smaller kingdoms around Siam and Burma such as Lanna, Luang Phrabang and Vientiane were always under many overlords at one time.

The relationship between Ayutthaya and its tributaries was not like the one between Bangkok and the provinces today, Thongchai stated. The past prosperity and grandeur of Siam, therefore, could not be projected as the size of the country because the tribute to Ayutthaya by no means implied that the smaller kingdoms also submitted their land to Siam. In fact, they remained autonomous in their relations to the ones in power.

Besides the assumption that the present geo-body is the scope of the past territory, Thongchai describes six other types of geographical logic. These include a single and homogeneous state as the subject of history; the capitals and their successive history; the scale of modern political geography as the scale of history; the nostalgic geography of past prosperity; territorial losses as national trauma; and national enemies.

Under the realm of Thai national history, Pattani has always been a part of Siam, a tributary state inhabited by Khaek, or Malay Muslims, that was full of internal conflicts. The medium-sized coastal kingdom was seen as an opportunist for attacking and seizing Ayutthaya for several days when the kingdom was engaged in a war with Burma in the 16th century. Its consecutive rebellions against the central power forced Bangkok to take action leading to the division of Pattani into seven small states during the reign of King Rama II.

"[From such a point of view, however,] we hardly know Pattani in its own light as a ancient port city that had existed centuries before [the founding of] Sukhothai," Thongchai said. "Neither do we understand the history of Pattani whose prosperity or impairment depended more on the condition of maritime trade than its political relationship with Siam."

The history of Pattani actually contrasts with the national history of Siam in many aspects. While the supposed origin of Siam from southern China to Sukhothai, Ayutthaya and Bangkok was a north-to-south line. Pattani did not come from the north and its history is full of struggle against the power of Siam.

"Ayutthaya's strength meant a threat to Pattani," Thongchai said. "On the contrary, Pattani prospered and enjoyed more independence when the central power Ayutthaya turned weak."

The 1902 annexation of Pattani, which has its centennial anniversary this year, ended the life of Pattani as a kingdom. Until then, the coastal polity enjoyed a certain level of autonomy. It was not a border area of Siam, but a joining of two zones: the Buddhist zone of the mainland and Islamic of maritime Southeast Asia. The kingdom of Pattani was reduced to a few provinces of Thailand and some states of Malaysia after Siam "lost" the territory to British colonialism in 1909. The history of Pattani can serve as a new kind of historiography: writing history from the interstices, the concept endorsed by Thongchai. People who inhabit and cross interstices or borders are difficult to classify by modern notions of boundaries, margins and sovereignty. They perhaps are the remnants of pre-modern identities in the sense that nationality or mother-tongue are not their primary concerns.

"[However], a history of each area is usually slipped into a celebratory narrative of the success of national integration," Thongchai wrote in a previous paper. "In most cases . . . it is possible to write a counter history about how each of them had been different and separate from the core of a nation, thus a history of reluctance to integrate, of resistance or separatism."

Stories from the borders expose problems, limits and flaws of the master narrative of national history which is characterised by unity, be it one race, core culture, language, territory and so on. To solve this disharmony and tension, shall these stories continue to be suppressed?

"Or should the domination of national history end?" asked Thongchai.