Towards a more focused framework

At any rate, if historians are becoming more willing to construct models to guide their research and interpretation, it should not be necessary to apologize for the line of speculative construction which now follows. First of all, it is proposed to elicit a general framework for the linking of past and present from passages by an American doyen of Asian Studies, Lucien Pye.19 Although Pye tends to work at a level somewhat ‘above’ the more precise detail of his subject, there is no doubting the corresponding clarity, and hence the heuristic value, of his broad outlines. In the chapter headed ‘South-East Asia: from God-kings to the power of personal connections’, Pye has no hesitation in postulating the relevance of ancient ideas about power for the legitimacy of modern government, while also stressing the importance of colonial rule – not as a total break with the ancient past but as a bridge between the ancient and the modern, because of certain affinities with traditional political doctrine and structure.

As we focus now on the evolution of concepts of power in South-East Asia, our starting-point will be the heritage of a bifurcated image of authority: one part informed by the models of authority and power introduced by Western colonial rule, and the other rooted in the traditional cultures that have been kept alive by the vitality of religious beliefs in the region. The notions about the nature of power associated with most of the nationalist movements were, paradoxically, quite Westernized because their inspiration was the anticolonialism of the more Westernized elites. Yet the day-to-day politics of the post-independence period has seen a revival of the more traditional concepts of power …20

The problem [of understanding political power] was profoundly complex in South-East Asia because of the profusion of historic memories of what power should be. Power could be part of the cosmic order, could rest in God-kings who ruled essentially as theatre, or could be synonymous with status – thus leading to the general conclusion that power should never be applied to mundane matters. All of these ideas combined to make it far from clear to South-East Asians just what their governments should be doing.

In the colonial era these historic images of power had been incorporated with surprising ease into patterns of rule which were premised upon the legitimacy of rulers and subjects as parts of the natural order though with completely separate ways of life. Western colonial rule had generally meant little direct governmental involvement in people’s daily lives, especially in Indonesia and the unfederated Malay states, where indirect rule was prac- tised, allowing traditional sultans and local potentates to preserve their prerogatives … [despite extensive economic changes] colonial authority, with its stress on law and order and on constitutional development, rein- forced images of power as status, not of power as utility.21

Introduction 17 Paradoxically, in spite of their unpopularity, colonial officials could seem well attuned to traditional concepts of power as they manifested the fearful wrath associated with the personalized power of their predecessors, or implemented strict regulations which could seem not unlike the sumptuary laws of ancient South-East Asian kings. Colonial rule also reinforced the idea that power should be hierarchically arranged and that order required avoidance of competition among contenders. Power was also a monopoly of a distinct elite, born to rule, not diffused in society.

Despite such similarities, however, some more fundamental questions remained unresolved by Independence: what should be the basis of legitimacy, and the objectives, of the new governments? Two contradictory approaches emerged: there were either attempts to humanize the idea of power by identifying it with the father figures of Independence and their ‘charismatic’ appeal; or there were attempts to work from or through the impersonal institutionalization of hierar- chies, typically colonially created bureaucracies, but also armies and in some cases the political parties. However, bureaucracies came to stand for immobilism, maintaining hierarchical power by sheer inaction. As it happens, the concepts of power associated with both approaches already had a place in local cultural traditions.22 Yet in this situation of compatibility with traditional concepts, and some degree of complementarity between the two new ones, these two leadership types constituted a dual block to the requirements of economic development and modernity generally, such as a core of governmental authority with strong executive power and the capacity for flexibility in response to changing needs.23

Although working at the very highest level of generalization about the differential capacity for development of given South-East Asian societies (e.g. Thailand, Burma),24 at least Pye relates modern political performance to the effects of historic political structures and political culture. This seems better than the approach from childhood socialization seen elsewhere in his book.25 Even if the latter is taken to refer to just one of the mechanisms of transmission of authoritarian values (which could be valuable if it were spelt out as an explicit theory of transmission), one might still wish to see the major emphasis placed on historic structures as the primary source of political values, and on continuity of structures as a major factor in (though not a necessary condition of) transmission of such values to the modern era, where they have emerged from latency to be exploited as a basis of legitimacy by more modern types of government. (In Chapter 4 Pye is clear about the source, and one can read about the political mechanisms of transmission between the lines of his passages on how colonial rule avoided any complete break with the past.) One might add that folktale and chronicle, many kinds of ritual object including sacred statuary, and the whole of politico-religious architecture, also seem likely vehicles of transmission. In Thailand there is scarcely a historian who disputes the importance of the bureaucracy as a repository and conveyor of values of patrimonialism, hierarchy and monarchism.26 Similar importance is attached to the Buddhist Sangha through its own distinctive organization and doctrines. Language itself is both a reflection and a reinforcer of past patterns of behaviour, partly through the use

of status-loaded pronouns and terms of address (which are redolent of a social hierarchy with an implied pinnacle), partly through prescription-loaded concepts of order and disorder (which resound with the same resonances).27 The present writer would only enter a reminder, once again, of the importance of continuity of monarchy itself: it would be naïve if not narcissistic to allow a fascination with ‘culture’ to distract one’s attention from the real, concrete continuities attribut- able to colonial Indirect Rule in the Malay Peninsula, Brunei, Cambodia and (as far as it went) Laos, or to the imperialist indulgence enjoyed by Siamese monarchy in return for the economic and diplomatic amenability of the State. Note that such continuity of structures goes beyond the mere affinities between ancient South-East Asian structures and modern-era colonial structures (even if divorced from monarchy), which Pye invokes. Not least among the significant features of Indirect Rule were the preservation of regalia and ritual, as well as the ‘legitimized centre’. These assets of monarchy were then consolidated by monarchs themselves as they took over the reins of power at, or just before, Independence (Cambodia, Brunei); or by political elites who saw advantages for their own legitimacy in a pact with monarchy (Malaysia, Laos, Thailand). Monarchs came to symbolize, if not personify, the potentially less tangible ‘nation–state’, and later benefited, in turn, from its consolidation.

In order to make the durable influence of much older political structures more vivid by referring again to the persistence of relevant values, separately from the structures themselves, we could turn to Pye’s observation about the vitality of religion in the region.28 When he refers to ‘religion’ he partly has in mind the resilience of religious beliefs acting as a block to modernization in some ways, and competing with secular nationalism, or becoming an issue dividing communities of differing religion. But he also clearly conceives ‘religion’ in a far broader sense, as a cultural complex enshrining traditional concepts of power: an ideological system in which kings were viewed as possessing divine or semi-divine attributes, being if not ‘participants’ in godship then at least conduits of cosmic power or counterparts on earth to the lords of heaven. In general support of this conception of religion as a cultural system – with axiomatic implications for the transmission of beliefs about power down to present-day societies, even if they are not spelt out – we could also summon the anthropolo- gist Clifford Geertz, with his definition of religion as:

(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.29