On 9 November 2006, the Bangkok Post published a brief article about 100 Thai Buddhist villagers fleeing their homes in Yala, one of the southernmost provinces in Thailand. Women, men and children, abandoning their homes and livelihood, travelled to their capital district where they found refuge in Wat Nirotsangkatham.Footnote ¹ By the beginning of December their numbers had grown to over 228 people.Footnote ² None of the Buddhist refugees felt they would be safe returning to their villages. Instead, they made a temporary home at the wat (Buddhist monastic compound). The villagers were not the only laity then residing at the wat. Thai soldiers were already living at Wat Nirotsangkatham, guarding the entrance and fortifying its perimeters.

Drawing upon fieldwork in southern Thailand between July 2004 and August 2007, this article argues that the Thai State's militarisation of southern Thai wat and the role of Buddhist monks fuel a religious dimension to a civil war in southern Thailand.Footnote ³

It is difficult to give an accurate account of the southernmost provinces' demographics. Thailand's government commits to a 10-year cycle in their census reports, and the next extensive report will not come for several more years. There have been smaller projects done by the National Statistical Office as late as 2003. Information from these reports indicates an 80 per cent Muslim majority in the three southernmost provinces as well as a substantial differential in Muslim/Buddhist growth rates; in each province Buddhist populations were shrinking as opposed to the growing Muslim populations.Footnote ⁴ Since the recent escalation in violence began in 2004, we can speculate that the Buddhist population levels have decreased even more.

Previously in southern Thailand, a wat signified a place for communal gatherings and Buddhist veneration. These shared spaces attracted Thai Buddhists, Thai Chinese Buddhists and Thai Malay Muslims. Southern Thai monks consider the space of the wat changed in the contemporary context; they feel locals viewed and used their wat in a distinctly different manner prior to 2004 (and the State's declaration of martial law). Emblematic of this, the abbot of Wat Kuannaw in Pattani province explained in a phone interview that before the increase in violence: ‘Islam was just Islam and Buddhism was just Buddhism. They did not intermingle. But, whenever we had Thai cultural events like Mother's Day or Father's day, Muslims would come to our wat.’Footnote ⁵ Locals, whether they were Malay Muslim or Thai Buddhist, gathered together at wat for Thai national celebrations such as the Thai New Year (Songkran) and the Thai king's birthday.

In the past 50 years Malay Muslim attitudes toward entering a wat have fluctuated.Footnote ⁶ Chavivun Prachuabmoh noted in the 1970s that the majority of Pattani Malay Muslims felt that ‘if they just watch or study [at a wat], it is all right because they do not participate in the religious ceremony’.Footnote ⁷ These Malay Muslims saw the wat as a communal resource: a place to sit and chat with other locals about everyday events, a space to use for celebrations or work (such as ngaan wat, nora wayang kulit and silat performances). Though engaging in Buddhist ceremonies at a wat was shunned, local Malay Muslims would come to borrow supplies or seek medicinal and charm-related help from the monks who resided at the wat, such as in the case of de-hexing.Footnote ⁸

Southern Thailand has had a long tradition of Malay Muslim and Thai Buddhist interaction and co-existence. Kenneth Landon writes that in the early half of the twentieth century, ‘older Malay communities have members who speak both Malay and Siamese and who follow their religion only to the point of refraining from pork-eating and wearing the tarboosh.’Footnote ⁹ A clear indicator of this surviving tradition is the record of Malay Buddhist monks in the southernmost province of Narathiwat, who are venerated for their spiritual achievements.Footnote ¹⁰ Further north in the southern province of Satun, familial ties to Buddhism are remembered in practice. Malay Muslims ordain as Buddhist monks in response to boons granted by their Buddhist ancestors. Anthropologist Ryoko Nishii found that in most cases, ordinations resulted from Malay Muslim children who had fallen ill. Their parents, believing that the illness was caused by their ancestors, ‘prayed to the ‘Buddhist’ ancestors to cure their child. In return for the cure, the child was promised to become a Buddhist monk, novice or nun.'Footnote ¹¹ These Malay Muslims embody the past unification of Malay-ness and Buddhism in southern Thailand.

Since martial law was declared in southern Thailand in 2004, Malay Muslims do not frequent wat.Footnote ¹²Wat are guarded against power outages and armed assaults by covert operatives, soldiers and State police, who occupy some of its buildings. As a result, the State militarises Buddhist space and, with it, Buddhist identity.

Monastic to military compound

The most common place signified in Thai Buddhism has always been the wat, which has been often viewed by locals as a communal investment.Footnote ¹³ The significance of the wat has changed, however, due to the practices that take place in the wat.

The local investment in a wat can be measured from different vantage points. For the sake of brevity I will outline only two levels of analysis: the religious and the secular.Footnote ¹⁴ In religious terms, having a wat allows the surrounding religious community easy access to annual ceremonies and rituals, such as funerals, ordinations and holidays. Buddhist monks who live in the wat go out daily for morning alms (binthabat). This routine provides the local laity affordable and continual opportunities to make merit. But from a secular perspective, having a wat allows the community access to such common facilities as basketball and volleyball courts, schools, meeting areas, medicinal and therapeutic counseling for people of all faiths.Footnote ¹⁵ These two different communal functions lead scholars such as Donald Swearer to consider a wat the ‘religious, cultural and social center of the community’.Footnote ¹⁶

The State's implementation of martial law and insurgent violence within Buddhist villages in southern Thailand provoked a different function for wat in the area. Wat Nirotsangkatham serves as a striking example of this new appropriation. In an early December afternoon of 2006, I talked to the Buddhist abbot (čhao āwat) from Wat Nirotsangkatham. In his office, he explained to me that some of the current refugees living at his wat had donated money years ago in order to erect the very buildings in which they were now living: ‘Now, the villagers want the wat to help them. It's like what they did in the past comes to help them now … This building where villagers stay now was built by them.’

Thai and Thai Chinese Buddhist refugees from Yala's Bannang Sata and Than To districts see the wat as more than just a religious and national space; they have made the wat their home. Though many Thai Buddhists believe the wat to be sacred spaces endowed with protective powers, many of the Yala refugees chose the location for more mundane reasons: facilities and shelter large enough to accommodate them. In the middle of the day under one of Wat Nirotsangkatham's pavilions, a community leader for the refugees relayed some of the refugees' initial considerations for sanctuary, ‘Other places were not big enough to fit all of us’, and then added, ‘and it is safer here because of the soldiers.’Footnote ¹⁷ The community leader's latter point speaks to an important social association concerning southern wat within violent environments. In addition to their religious and secular significance, wat are now recognised as among the most militarily fortified areas in the three southernmost provinces.

One of the more recent and devastating attacks came right after the Chinese New Year in 2007 when there were a number of bomb attacks on restaurants, karaoke bars, shops and Buddhist homes in Pattani and Yala. The Bangkok Post considered this attack the ‘biggest wave of coordinated bombings, terrorism and murders’ for the border provinces.Footnote ¹⁸ It was during these attacks that I was staying in a kuti (monk's quarters) at Wat Chang Hai in Pattani province. On the night of the attacks, Wat Chang Hai as well as other buildings in Pattani and Yala provinces suffered a power outage due to the bombing of the centralised power stations.

Wat Chang Hai, known for its connection to Lūang Phō Tuat, is an internationally renowned Buddhist pilgrimage site. Commanding over 13 rai Footnote ¹⁹ of land that includes a school system and supporting amulet shops and restaurants that reside in its vicinity, Wat Chang Hai has become a local investment. The legacy of Wat Chang Hai is owed largely to the Hokkien Khananurak family, who financed the renovation of the wat in 1936. Patrick Jory writes that the Khananurak family supported numerous other Thai wat and stand as an example of Chinese families in the southern provinces that enjoyed good relations with Chinese, Thai and Malay communities.Footnote ²⁰

In 2007, I found that many shops were vacated. These empty stores were visible indicators of the economic impact of the violence in the southernmost provinces. A few restaurants remained open, but all closed their doors at 5:00 p.m. coinciding with the locking of the wat's front gates. Monks and locals explained that stores and restaurants used to stay open later than 5:00 p.m. before 2004. I frequented one of the restaurants that managed to get enough business to stay open. It is a small family-owned establishment with a dozen wooden tables and chairs, with a small television mounted on the ceiling in the back. The day after the organised attacks, I went to the restaurant in order to observe the customers and their conversations.

There were very few customers, and they spoke in hushed tones about specific bombings. The old man who owned the restaurant appeared to be more concerned about the lack of customers than about a potential attack on his restaurant. Wat Chang Hai is surrounded by the heavily Buddhist populated district of Khokpo. But this was only one of his reasons for feeling secure: ‘There are quite a lot of [Buddhist] people in this area’, he explained. ‘I always leave the lights on at night. Many people walk past [my restaurant] at night. And the police and soldiers are also around. Terrorists would not dare to come here.’Footnote ²¹

Akin to the situation at Wat Nirotsangkaham and Wat Chang Hai, soldiers and national police have made wat throughout the southernmost provinces their primary base of operations as well as their homes. Thai wat have excellent strategic positions; they are near the highest population of Buddhists in an area, have access to an ample supply of food and water, and contain facilities large enough to accommodate the police and soldiers.Footnote ²² Abbots generally feel receptive to soldier and police needs and make an effort to accommodate them. One abbot from the capital district of Pattani explained that the soldiers at his wat had no daily stipends. ‘The soldiers need food and need to use the bathroom, so this is why they stay at my wat. [Thus] the soldiers depend on lay donations to my wat for food.’Footnote ²³ As one policeman stationed at a wat noted:

But the occupation of the wat is more than a pragmatic exercise of protection and sustenance. Pierre Bourdieu states, ‘Space can have no meaning apart from practice; the systems of generative and structuring dispositions, or habitus, constitutes and is constituted by actors’ movement through space.'Footnote ²⁵ It is what people practice in the wat that shapes the significance of the wat. The practices within southern wat have changed dramatically — particularly due to the new military occupants.

It had been nearly 30 years since the Thai military began using southern Thai wat. Thai soldiers have a history of living in wat during times of crisis and conflict. During the Second World War, soldiers occupied wat in the northeast and southern provinces. Later in the 1970s, wat were used as training grounds for the Border Patrol Police's Village Scouts, while simultaneously housing soldiers in areas considered hotbeds of communist forces in the southernmost provinces.Footnote ²⁶ This military occupation of wat has recently resurfaced.

Since 2002, the Buddhist space has become militarised through military personnel working and living in these wat. The military residing at a southern wat usually raise the outer walls and stretch barbed wire around the entrance as well as the perimeter to protect the wat's occupants from being observed and attacked. The military have converted Buddhist pavilions into barracks, transformed sleeping quarters into bunkers and created lookout posts near the entrances, such as in Figures 1–6.

Figure 1.

Buddhist pavilion before militarisation

Figure 2.

Buddhist pavilion after militarisation

Figure 3.

Buddhist quarters before militarisation

Figure 4.

Buddhist quarters after militarisation

Figure 5.

Buddhist quarters before militarisation

Figure 6.

Buddhist quarters after militarisation

Some wat have over 40 police officers or soldiers living in them. Military personnel are armed with handguns and M-16s and wear camouflage uniforms. I had heard that there were both Muslim and Buddhist police and soldiers living in wat, but every wat I visited was manned only by Buddhist personnel.Footnote ²⁷ This distinction of strictly Buddhist military personnel encourages locals to collapse religious and political identifications and view the Thai State as a Buddhist State.

Police, soldiers and government officials (khārāchakān) maintain that there is no religious preference or requirement for police and soldiers working at a wat. Footnote ²⁸ This is an important stance for the State to take. Both Thai Buddhist and Muslim residents in the south feel alienated from the State due to reoccurring acts of corruption and illicit activity by government officials.Footnote ²⁹ The notorious disappearance of Somchai Neelaphaijit, a popular Muslim human rights attorney, symbolises the State's failure to honour and protect the rights of southern Thais.Footnote ³⁰ Due to these and other examples, there is thus an acute need for the State to appear impartial. Hence, having Muslim soldiers and police working at wat might lessen the symbolic impact of having State officials living in a Buddhist wat. The absence of Muslim soldiers and national police, however, enhances the symbolism of a State Buddhism, the official religion of the Thai State.

Only a handful of large military camps exist in the southernmost provinces. For instance, in Pattani province, there are only two soldier units, one for combat and one for community support activities. Soldiers are sent to live in wat for as long as two years before relocating to another location. Once their superior officers issue commands for relocating, the new site is generally in southern Thailand.Footnote ³¹ The advantage of stationing soldiers in the south is that the extended duration allows soldiers to become familiar with locals and build up trust and contacts in the surrounding communities. When asked, monks often say they prefer soldiers rather than police living in their wat, although the decision-making ultimately is not theirs. They characterise soldiers as being hardworking and more respectful of the Buddhist precepts than police while living inside the wat. Decisions on deployment come from the military, which assesses each location's needs and importance in accordance with government funds.Footnote ³²

Many abbots in safer areas stress that they did not ask the State for protection and that the military is at the wat due to governmental concerns. Early one evening just before the Chinese New Year, I was sitting with an abbot in front of his monk's quarters (kuti). It had just finished raining and the abbot was smoking his cigarette and relaxing on his front step. He explained to me:

This abbot's wat had over 20 soldiers patrolling its perimeters with entrenched stations at every entrance. The abbot's position on the violence changed considerably after the Chinese New Year, when his wat suffered a power outage for an hour and there was an arson attempt just a few kilometres away. Yet even during this heightened moment of fear and tension, the abbot's lack of appreciation for the soldiers differed greatly from abbots who lived in more isolated areas, with higher populations of Muslims and higher rates of murders and bombings.

Many of the soldiers I interviewed in the wat have had international work experience in areas such as Aceh. A few fought in Vietnam during the US War. They typically assist with the general upkeep of the wat, sweeping the grounds and cleaning the latrines. Although they make their homes in the wat, they keep their personal habits private within their quarters. Because of their respectful and helpful nature, and the long-term protection they bring, some abbots and monks have built bunkers and living quarters especially for them in their wat. While monks generally prefer soldiers to police, they are less enthusiastic about the military commanders who dispatch the soldiers and live outside of the violent climate. One abbot, sitting with four laity underneath his pavilion, relayed this with bitterness in his voice:

As the violence increases, there is more interaction between soldiers and monks within wat, especially those that are more remote and have a higher percentage of Muslims living in the village. Their shared isolation sometimes encourages a collusion of resources, with monks and soldiers exchanging information about locals around the area.

Police are brought in from different provinces throughout Thailand and live at a wat from 6 months to a year. The majority of the national police stationed in the southernmost provinces hail from central and northeast Thailand and have little experience or prior knowledge about southern Thailand. Rotating on and off duty within the wat, police have days or nights to relax and drink. Their conduct within the wat contrasts sharply with that of the soldiers. Soldiers generally keep to themselves and maintain strict vigilance while living in the wat. One reason for the monks’ preferences for soldiers became apparent to me at one wat where I stayed: policemen had created an outdoor kitchen to eat their food and consume alcohol just metres behind the novices' quarters. After dinner, they end the night with a few hours of drinking whiskey and soda beneath the abbot's pavilion. This habitual behaviour has led to empty whiskey bottles overflowing from trashcans within the monks' quarters.Footnote ³⁵

Religiously transgressive actions such as drinking intoxicants within a wat are not the only military behaviour within a wat that is worth noting. In December 2006, I asked five policemen on duty within a wat if the police living at the wat make merit (tam bun). A policeman in his mid-30s gestured around at the barracks and his fellow policemen, armed with M-16s, and responded: ‘Yes, we do. Actually, what we do right now is merit as well.’Footnote ³⁶ The act of protecting monks and the wat becomes a means of making merit, a duty inherent in southern police and soldiers' responsibilities. This encapsulation of merit-making within military duties underscores the effects of colluding State and Thai Buddhist elements.

The State's appropriation of Buddhist space has altered the southern Thai wat's spatial significance. Serving as a home base for the military, wat have lost some of their sacrality in exchange for a strident nationalism; hence, if one were to visit multiple wat in an area – a common act for Thai Buddhists on pilgrimages – locals might consider their actions indicative of military communication rather than religious devotion. This change in the wat's spatial significance has impacted its patronage; Buddhist monks have reported that local Muslim officials in the three southernmost provinces try to avoid contact with the wat as much as possible. Ačhān Mahāwichī, a former Secretariat to the Pattani Sangha leader who has been a monk for over 20 years in Pattani, explains that these days a trip to the wat is viewed by many Muslims as a sin:

According to Ačhān Mahāwichī, the second highest monk at Wat Chang Hai, the wat has become a profane space for many Malay Muslims in the southernmost provinces. For the Islamic village leader, entering a wat meant entering a space of impurity, a profane as opposed to a sacred space. The association of coming to the wat with committing a sin, while not universally recognised, demonstrates a growing public consideration of what coming to a wat signifies within an area under martial law.

Local Malays' recent negative attitudes regarding wat have heightened the significance of visiting the wat. A person entering a wat may imply more than simply a visit; it could indicate one's adherence to Buddhism. As there is no specific ritual or official declaration for conversion to Thai Buddhism, the public and regular performance of visiting wat (and making merit) becomes an identity-making or identity-reaffirming exercise.Footnote ³⁸ This emerging perception contrasts with local views prior to martial law. Before 2004, visiting a wat held fewer implications and Buddhist identity was largely denoted in two ways: by participating in specific merit-making exercises and, one could argue, eating pork (which is still a very powerful religious signifier).

The new significance of visiting a wat arises out of a violently charged environment coupled with the Thai State's militarisation of the wat. While the militarisation of Buddhist monasteries is not unique within Buddhist traditions, it is still important to assess its social implications in light of the current context.Footnote ³⁹

For safety precautions, religious practices and ceremonies at southern wat have either declined or stopped since martial law. The funeral rites, which usually occur in the afternoon or night, are now held during the day in areas outside of capital districts. In the more dangerous areas, the monk's practice of performing morning alms has stopped; monks in these wat rarely go outside. One 66-year-old monk, seated at a bench outside his monk's quarters explained:

The absence of monks going in and out of wat only accentuates the presence of the military, which regularly enter and leave to perform checks around the area. In addition, if a local walks past the entrance of a wat, instead of seeing monks performing daily chores, they will see fully armed uniformed military standing guard day and night. These habits and practices shape the significance of space and have an important effect on the surrounding Thai community. Monks are becoming less visible while the military become more visible in and around the wat. The stationing of soldiers and police, along with their military habits, has helped transform the wat into a military space and, in doing so, exacerbated relations between Buddhists and Muslims in the southernmost provinces.

The 228 Buddhist refugees who stayed at Wat Nirotsangkatham see the wat as a safer space than their villages, which according to the refugees, are over 95 per cent Muslim. According to the refugees, murders occur almost daily in their villages. When I came to visit them at the wat, there was a funeral for a man from a neighbouring village in progress. The sister of the deceased told me that in her village everyone is a target — from the elderly to two-year-old children. She is a farmer and just like the refugees, considers her village no longer safe to live in. Part of the refugees' decision to come to the wat derives from the recent conversion of southern monastic compounds into military compounds. Buddhist villagers stay inside the protective perimeters of the wat and leave as seldom as possible, only to buy food. Seeing a wat as a sanctuary from violence does not distinguish it from the violence; rather, it highlights the wat's role and preferential treatment by the State in a violent climate.

Southern Thai wat have taken on defensive functions for the Buddhist laity living in the surrounding areas. Much of this change comes about through physical changes to the wat grounds — barracks, wire, and blockades positioned at the entrance. Another factor in converting the public perception of the wat has been the visceral change in the occupants who enter and exit it. Instead of the wat acting as a base for monks to leave from for their morning alms, it is now a base for the military to leave from for their daily rounds. But has this militarisation enhanced the State's preferentiality toward Buddhism?

Since 2005, there have been more Muslims murdered than Buddhists in the three southernmost provinces.Footnote ⁴¹ Yet, with all the fortifications at wat, there is not one Muslim making use of a wat as a place of refuge.Footnote ⁴² Living under martial law in southern Thailand, wat have clearly become an exclusive military space for Thai and Thai-Chinese Buddhists.

Military monks: Buddhist secrets and justifications for violence

In a school within a wat, a monk in saffron robes sat beside me in a corner of the room where, 20 feet away from us, another monk gave a Pali lesson to seven novices. We spoke in hushed voices yet our bodies were relaxed, our countenances devoid of emotion. The conversation was different from most conversations a layperson might have with a monk. Emblematic of this, I asked him: ‘Why did you decide to be soldier?’

He explained that this was quite typical for a 21-year-old Thai man. We talked about the training exercises he went through, the places he stayed at, and then I paused. Clearing my throat, I turned to him and asked: ‘When you became a military monk, did you have to train more?’

‘No’, he replied. ‘I finished training when I was 22. Then I ordained as a monk. For this position we have to start as a non-commissioned corporal and work our way up from there.’Footnote ⁴³ Our conversation continued but I could not stop thinking about how publicly, yet at the same time secretively, we were discussing the militarisation of monks within this Pali classroom. It was with this conversation that I realised that a new space for violence had emerged in the Thai sangha.

The path for violence in the Thai sangha comes from a long-held relationship with the State. Buddhist States throughout South and Southeast Asia have enjoyed a healthy relationship with monastic Buddhism. This extended tradition led scholars such as anthropologist Stanley Tambiah to argue that Buddhism was not merely centred on enlightenment, but also kingship and a principle polity.Footnote ⁴⁴ The design and infrastructure of Buddhist principles and rules were amenable to political application. The role of the early Indian Buddhist Mauryan emperor Aśoka was an actualisation of the religion's political design, not an aberration or evolution of the religion.

However, as the structure of polities changed, so did the State's application of Buddhism. One important and significant change occurred in the early 1900s. As nation-States developed in Europe and colonial pressures beset States in Southeast Asia, a new form of religio-political Buddhism surfaced in Siam: State Buddhism. Historian Kamala Tiyavanich applies the term State Buddhism in reference to Siamese nation-building under King Chulalongkorn, which created and perpetuated a new form of Buddhism in order to centralise and unify the country.Footnote ⁴⁵

Stanley Tambiah,Footnote ⁴⁶ Somboon Suksamran,Footnote ⁴⁷ and Yonei Ishii,Footnote ⁴⁸ provide detailed accounts of bureaucratic parallels and political applications of the Thai sangha. In each instance, the State was an active force in shaping and utilising the power of the Thai sangha. Peter Jackson, examining the role of Thai Buddhism in Bangkok, considers this use of legitimating a bureaucracy endemic to Thai administrations throughout the twentieth century:

According to Jackson, twentieth-century Thai political regimes applied symbolic capital from State Buddhism to buttress its own capital (and insure their legitimacy).

The intimate relationship between State and sangha becomes accented in the southernmost provinces due to the violence. The most visceral and symbolic collapsing of distinctions between Thai Buddhism and the State, comes in the State's advent of the military monk (tahānphra). Military monks are fully ordained monks who are simultaneously armed soldiers, marines, navy, or air force personnel.Footnote ⁵⁰ Military monks, while embodying the interconnection between State and sangha, also reflect the violent dimension inherent to the amalgam.

For many non-specialists in Buddhist studies, the idea of a militarised monk conflicts with basic Buddhist principles. A monk's purpose is to avoid life's vulgarity, to aspire toward enlightenment. A soldier's lifestyle is virtually the opposite – they are committed to a job that requires them to confront the vulgarities of life. Beyond the ideological complications, there is the ecclesiastical interdiction that prohibits soldiers from becoming monks. However, as anthropologist Hayashi Yukio explains in his study of the Thai-Lao of northeast Thailand, people's religious practice is always rooted in experience. Buddhism ‘does not consist merely of cultivated knowledge sealed in texts, or of its interpretation. Rather it consists of practices that live in the “here and now”…’Footnote ⁵¹ While the Buddhist textual tradition clearly disallows the presence of a military monk, Buddhist traditions on the ground demonstrate a different attitude. Throughout the development of Buddhisms in countries like China, Korea and Japan, we find that similar to Thai Buddhists, these Buddhist traditions also had military monks.

In Thai society it is common for Thai Buddhist men to ordain as monks for a short time at least once in their lives. The Thai Theravāda tradition is unique in allowing men to temporarily become inducted into the sangha (monastic institution). Other Theravāda, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna traditions treat ordination as a permanent life decision. Anthropologist Charles Keyes notes that Thai men gain considerable esteem through temporary ordinations; these short periods generally occur during khaophansā (Buddhist Lent). Through entering the Thai sangha, men regardless of class have access to education and a means of increasing their social status.Footnote ⁵² In addition to its social benefits, it is also popularly believed that by becoming a monk a son grants his mother the merit to enter heaven.

According to the Vinaya there are certain interdictions surrounding ordainment. Many of these interdictions revolve around physical or social characteristics, such as if a person has a disease, is a criminal or is handicapped. Most of these guidelines are the result of the historical Buddha trying to cope with specific socio-political and economic dilemmas. One of these prohibitions relates to the ordaining of soldiers:

Since this historic incident, active soldiers have been prohibited from entering the sangha.Footnote ⁵⁴ The Thai State has acknowledged and supported the ecclesiastical interdiction toward ordaining soldiers. In order to avoid the overlapping of duties to the State and sangha, the Chulalongkorn administration in 1905 created a legal provision called the Thai Military Service Act, which made monks exempt from military service. This provision eliminated the tensions of monks enlisting in the army. And so, in accordance with ecclesiastical restrictions, the Thai Military Service Act sought to avoid the monk-to-soldier process. However, we find later in contemporary Thai society that the tension is not in the monk-to-soldier process, but the reverse: soldier-to-monk.

The Thai Buddhist tradition, through its temporary ordinations, has allowed manoeuvrability around these guidelines for Buddhist soldiers. According to stipulations articulated by the Office of National Buddhism, soldiers are allotted one four-month paid leave of absence to ordain at a local wat. Soldiers generally take their leave during the annual period of khaophansā and return to duty after the rains retreat has ended. That leniency surrounding ordination has extended even further by another and more covert exercise regarding the new status of military monks.

A covert military unit authorised by a confidential department began assigning Buddhist soldiers to ordain while remaining on active duty as early as 2002. Every year since then, there have been groups of military monks assigned to specific posts. According to military monks, the secret military unit operates semi-independently. Its operations are unknown to most of the military in Bangkok, although there have been numerous reports that implicate the Thai monarchy, especially Queen Sirikit (such as reports of ordaining groups of military monks for the Queen's birthday).Footnote ⁵⁵

It is difficult however to determine how many people in the military truly do not know about the military monks versus those who refuse to disclose what they know. As the State-appointed guardians of Thai monastic lifestyles and activities, the Office of National Buddhism does not acknowledge the presence of these military monks. When asked about the presence of military monks, the Director of the Office of National Buddhism dismissed the issue, explaining:

The official stance of the Office of National Buddhism mirrors that of the Thai Buddhist Vinaya, which, as Thai historian Craig Reynolds notes, goes so far in distinguishing monks from soldiers that it forbids monks from even observing an army in battle dress.Footnote ⁵⁷ Although the Director from the Office of National Buddhism argues emphatically that military monks do not exist, they are a very real and active part of many wat in southern Thailand.

Accounts of military monks in southern Thailand are cloaked in rumours and secrecy.Footnote ⁵⁸ In numerous interviews with abbots, journalists and local Buddhists, there are allusions to military monks — at times, short but direct confirmations of them, but always these discussions follow under an air of hesitation and reluctance. If not for interviewing military monks themselves, I might have taken their depictions to be a communal fabrication.

To dismiss this atmosphere of secrecy would be to dismiss the very ideological efficacy of the military monk. Thai Buddhism is viewed as a peaceful, meditative and supportive tradition that is bereft of violence. Monks, as embodied agents of this tradition, are considered diametrically opposed to agents of war, i.e., the military. Hence, there is a reluctance to talk about military monks. Anthropologist Michael Taussig postulates that truth comes in the form of a public secret. The importance of this public secret is knowing what not to know.Footnote ⁵⁹ Living in an environment that normalises bombings and armed attacks, southern monks and some privileged Buddhist laity are aware of military monks, but they know they should also not openly talk about them.Footnote ⁶⁰ Discussing military monks would bring together elements that are socially considered opposites: Buddhism and violence.

One clear indication of this is from many interviews with abbots in the southernmost provinces who claim to know nothing about military monks. Contrary to these abbots' assertions, a high-ranking monk in the southernmost provinces confided that abbots throughout the region met in 2004 and discussed the issue of military monks receiving military stipends.Footnote ⁶¹

The very concept of military monks represents a powerful clash between Thai Buddhist doctrine and practice. This conflict between praxis and doctrine, when made public, creates discomfort for a Thai Buddhist. One example of this came during an afternoon interview with Phra Nirut, a high-ranking monk in southern Thailand. The interview was light-hearted and relaxed until I asked him about military monks.

Phra Nirut paused for a few seconds and sighed. Almost reluctantly he nodded, confirming that he knew a little about them. To press the issue a bit more, I asked his opinion about military monks — were these gun-wielding monks legitimate or not? After the question was posed, Phra Nirut squirmed a bit in his chair, smiled faintly, and let out a series of filler words. He finally replied, ‘I cannot say. It depends on many things.’ He paused again and I decided to let the silence linger. Frowning slightly, Phra Nirut spoke again, this time in a soft voice, ‘For me, it is not ok. For me, it is not ok.’Footnote ⁶²

Phra Nirut's inability to condone military monks could very well be a reaction to their changing role in southern wat. Starting in 2002, military monks went, with limited guidance by the Thai sangha, to areas that were lacking monks.Footnote ⁶³ Their stay at their assigned post was indefinite and depended upon the longevity of the circumstances surrounding their assignment. If a military monk decided to quit his post, another would come and take his place.

Wat need a minimum of five monks in order to perform crucial ceremonies, such as the annual Kathin ceremony during khaophansā. Populating these understaffed wat with military monks enabled the wat to perform important rituals, thereby granting Buddhists in these areas a chance to make merit, while simultaneously augmenting the State's presence through its interrelationship with the Thai sangha.Footnote ⁶⁴

However, the situation changed when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra declared martial law in 2004. The Thai State found a new use for them. Instead of using the military monks to fill voids in the monastic infrastructure, military monks were stationed in particular wat in order to bolster their defences. In the late evening, one monk sat at a table outside his monk's quarters with me and relayed what he had heard about military monks:

One clear indication of this strategy of stationing military monks is their commissioning throughout the three southernmost provinces. The majority of military monks are sent to Narathiwat, the second largest group to Yala and the fewest to Pattani. These proportions match the level of violence and instability in these three provinces. In 2006 and the early half of 2007, there were not many military monks in the southernmost provinces and no confirmed networking among them.Footnote ⁶⁶ Typically, soldiers training in southern Thailand are selected before they graduate to become military monks — going through full ordination at a local wat from their home neighborhood, or at more clandestine locations in southern Thailand. Nonetheless, they are active and vigilant protectors of the wat and their monks.

Early one evening, while smoking his hand-rolled cigarette within the wat, one military monk, whom I refer to as Phra Eks, proudly opened up his saffron robes to reveal a Smith and Wesson tucked beneath the folds around his waist. Although he keeps his M-16 hidden in his sleeping quarters, at night he generally carries the handgun in case of trouble. For Phra Eks, a military monk's primary duty is to protect monks from terrorists (phūkokānrai):

Phra Eks's disguise is more than a superficial undercover persona or a means of preserving a public secret. Seemingly contradicting himself, he also asserts that he is not merely acting as a monk, he is a real monk (phra čhing).

Phra Eks is 30 years old and comes from a poor Thai Chinese family of nine in one of the border provinces. His father, who died when Phra Eks was very young, served as a soldier in southern Thailand. Being one of seven children, Phra Eks helps his mother take care of his siblings by contributing part of his salary each month to the family.Footnote ⁶⁸ In this way, he is able to confer both merit and money to his mother.

Phra Eks considers himself to be both a soldier and a monk. When I pressed him as to his ultimate allegiance, he replied that his job as a soldier simultaneously fulfils the duties of a monk. For Phra Eks, his duties do not conflict with one another. In the event that the wat was attacked and he killed an attacker, although this would transgress the most important of the parajikas (severe offence to violating Buddhist law) by killing a human being, Phra Eks would remain a monk.Footnote ⁶⁹ Realising that such a circumstance could be quite complicated, he explained that there are certain people present who would ‘clean up’ the situation in order to allow him to remain at his post.

Although Phra Eks recognises the gravity of murdering a terrorist, the defence of the wat and its occupants overshadows it. I asked Phra Eks on several occasions why the existence of military monks was necessary. He explained:

Phra Eks sees a Muslim terrorist attack on Buddhist monks as emblematic of an attack on the nation's moral integrity. If there were no military monks, Thailand would sink into chaos and its people would become selfish. Phra Eks rationalises that this ideological threat of moral turpitude justifies the use of violence. His stance on terrorists is reminiscent of the rhetoric that ultra-conservative monks used to describe communists in the 1970s. For staunch Thai nationalist supporters like Phra Kittiwuttho, a communist challenges the nation and religion and is the living embodiment of Māra, the manifestation of desire. Phra Kittiuwuttho justifies violence against communists as well:

Kittiwuttho's justification in the 1970s against the communists rests on two concepts: the antagonist to the State is a manifestation of Māra, an embodiment of moral depravity; and, killing such a manifestation is not the same as killing a ‘complete person’. While Phra Eks does not go so far as to articulate a dehumanisation of Malay Muslim terrorists, his justification for violence is similar to Phra Kittiwuttho's. Phra Eks will attack those who seek to bring about a chaotic and selfish nation, a nation which Kittiwuttho would consider dominated by Māra. It is the ideological threat to nation and Buddhist principles that provokes both monks to condone the use of violence. But unlike Phra Kittiwuttho, Phra Eks's rationalisation enables him to personally enact violence.

This rationale of justifying violence may be endemic throughout various Theravādin traditions. In Sri Lanka, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) has blurred the lines between sacred duty and murder. Sri Lankan JVP monks have rationalised the violence they commit through Buddhist justifications and a legacy of precedence. Their precedence is traced back to the Sinhalese mytho-historical chronicle called the Mahavamsa. In this work, the Buddhist King Dhutthagamani wages a sacred war against foreign invaders led by Tamil King Elara in the second century BCE. The killing of heathens did not constitute murder, since the Tamil warriors were neither meritorious nor, more importantly, Buddhist.Footnote ⁷²

During the 1980s, the JVP monks re-conceptualised Dutthagamani's cause within the ethno-religious war between the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and the Sinhalese Buddhist State.Footnote ⁷³ In 1988, JVP monks waged a rash of violent attacks upon police, teachers and politicians as their demands for President Jayewardene's resignation. Their threats, brutal physical assaults and an attempted assassination all became means to a more important and justifiable cause: the preservation of the nation and Sri Lankan Buddhism.Footnote ⁷⁴ Interestingly, the rhetoric employed by JVP monks is similar to that of Kittiwuttho's regarding Communists, and is not too different from the mentality of the Thai military monk, Phra Eks. This commonality suggests a uniform latent tendency in Theravādin traditions for justifying violence.

Yet the Buddhist justification for violence and the advent of militant monks goes beyond the borders of Theravāda Buddhism. Historically in East Asia, under the canopy of Mahāyāna Buddhism, there were cases in which both monasteries and monks were militarised.Footnote ⁷⁵ In China there are many instances of soldier-monks who led revolts and rebellions, such as the Maitreya Messianic rebellions during the Sui and Tang Dynasties (613–26). During the course of defending its borders Korean armies enlisted monks as soldiers to fight off the Jurchen, Mongol, Japanese and Manchu invaders.Footnote ⁷⁶

Japan has also had a long history of militarised monks. As early as the tenth century under the abbotship of Ryogen, Tendai armies marched into battle. These soldier-monks were well aware of their transgressive behaviour and, because of their actions, were dubbed ‘evil monks’. Regardless of the immorality, they saw their tasks as necessary. Christoph Kleine explains that once the purpose became cosmic in importance: ‘Armed monks had an important task to fulfil, for the sake of Buddhism and thus the sake of all sentient beings.’Footnote ⁷⁷ During the Warring States Period of the 1500s, the Japanese warrior monks (ikko-ikki) became prevalent and as late as the early 1900s, Japanese Zen monks marched at the front of the lines during the Russo-Japanese war (1904–05).Footnote ⁷⁸

The rationale for violence in Theravāda Buddhism may be a latent tendency in the actors of its performances and rituals; one that is not awakened until a specific situation triggers this defensive yet aggressive reaction. I assert that the current violence in southern Thailand, much like the ethnic fratricide during the 1980s in Sri Lanka, or the violence committed by the Khmer Rouge (which, according to Kittiwuttho, awoke in him the need to defend Buddhism) is activating the latent tendency for militant Buddhism in southern Thailand.

In the southernmost provinces, many monks have stopped their morning alms, lay attendance at the wat has dropped and dozens of monks reportedly have been killed. Ordinations, which are uncommon due to the low population of Buddhists in the southernmost provinces, have decreased in number. One district I visited had had only one ordination in over a year. He was a young teacher who decided to ordain for a few weeks before defrocking and returning to lay life.

Those who remain see the existence of Thai Buddhism in the region endangered. For them, the violence is not merely about worldly existence and all its mundane matters, but rather about the survival of the dhamma, the Buddhist doctrine. One monk in favour of military monks explained that this militancy was a necessity:

It is in this respect that military monks and some monks regard Thai Malay Muslims as their enemies. Phra Eks, when asked to define Thai-ness (kwāmpenthai) articulated this polemical perspective:

Violence against monks and their wat has provoked a latent tendency in Thai Buddhism for demonising the Other and justifying violence. It is this mentality that has spurred irregular behaviour for Thai monks, such as some abbots who go to sleep at night with guns next to their beds.

Caught between the jaws of socio-political circumstance and Buddhist doctrine, a few high-ranking southern monks offer doctrinal justification for the military monks. Although the Vinaya (Buddhist monastic code) strictly prohibits monks from using any aggressive force, it does allow for them to defend themselves. The advent of the military monk position is an application of this allowance.Footnote ⁸¹ Looking across different Buddhist traditions, Richard Jones gives a slightly different view that could justify the Thai Buddhist State's creation of military monks. According to Jones, the monk's most central social obligation is to teach the dhamma. Any action taken to preserve this primary social responsibility is secondary in importance to the repercussions of not teaching the dhamma.Footnote ⁸²

Under this rationale, military monks are present in order to ensure that monks still exist in southern Thailand to teach the dhamma. Military monks may be doctrinally and patriotically justified in their actions, but their purpose still must be concealed. I once asked Phra Eks if I could take his picture. He refused, explaining, ‘This would be too dangerous.’ Phra Eks needs to be concerned about exposure. A photograph of him brandishing a gun would expose the secret and lead to his alienation and possible death.Footnote ⁸³

Anthropologist Stanley Tambiah argues that militancy separates a monk from his sacred identity. Referencing the militant activities of the JVP monks of Sri Lanka, Tambiah explains, ‘The monk who has finally taken to the gun can no longer be considered a vehicle of the Buddha's religion…’Footnote ⁸⁴ In this vein, a picture of Phra Eks with a gun would expunge him of sacrality, destroy the pacifistic view of the southern monks, and undermine the clandestine nature of the military monk programme.Footnote ⁸⁵