as I have indicated, is an important figure in these debates, less because he was overtly political than for the distinctiveness of his Buddhist teachings and the influence they have had on Thailand’s growing, professional middle class—an influence visible in the way members of the NHRC brought Buddhism and human rights together. His teaching and practice became especially important in the early 1970s, at the height of the Communist Party of Thailand and antileftist reactionary movements, and at just the time that Saneh was a lecturer in Political Science at Thammasat University, placing him at the center of the tumultuous politics of the 1970s. If he eschewed political participation, Bhuddadasa was nonetheless an important interpreter of Buddhism and exerted political influence in the ways that antiauthoritarian political critics picked up his teachings (Jackson 1989, 132). Other influential monks were, by contrast, much more politically active, both in their public pronouncements and in an organizing capacity. Most prominent among these monks was Phra Kittiwuttho.
Reactionary and Progressive Buddhisms: Kittiwuttho and Buddhadasa
In the 1970s, during the “communist scare” against which Phra Kittiwuttho directed his energies, many of the first commissioners and workers at the ONHRC (the bureaucracy supporting the commission) were professors or students forming their political dispositions. Following large demonstrations at and around Thammasat University in Bangkok in 1973, the authoritarian government of Thanom Kittakachorn and Praphat Charusatien fell, and Thanom and Praphat went into exile. From 1973 to 1976, there was a progressive, elected government, but during that time, right-wing forces organized on several fronts, forming a variety of more and less militant organizations. A pivotal figure on the right, Kittiwuttho played such an exceptional role. I contend that when members of the NHRC formulate human rights through Buddhism, they in part respond to Buddhist politics stemming from Kittiwuttho’s expanding influence and to the results of his initiatives. In brief, Kittiwuttho claimed that it was meritorious within Buddhist morality to kill any and all leftists, and in 1976, members of right-wing organizations among whom he had influence participated in the mass murder at Thammasat University of students protesting Thanom and Praphat’s return from exile (Baker and Pasuk 2005, 188–195). This context, the use of Buddhism to silence or kill one’s political adversaries, informs the NHRC’s Buddhist claims for human rights.
Kittiwuttho publicized his view that killing communists was on balance a merit-making practice in speeches and in print and defended his view against criticism on a number of occasions. The initial line of his argument was that anyone who poses a threat to the Thai nation, Buddhism, and monarchy personifies Mara (the Evil One),21 and so it is the duty of Thai Buddhists to kill that partially human being. Killing leftists, in this view, brings merit to the killer, as killing a fish for a monk’s alms bowl is a merit-making act, though it involves killing. He said, of killing leftists, in an interview with the magazine Jaturat,22 “Jaturat: Does killing leftists or communists result in demerit or not? Kittiwuttho: It is my view that we ought to do it. Thai, even though we are Buddhist, should do it, but it should not be regarded as killing persons, because whoever harms the nation, religion, and monarchy is not a whole person. That means we do not intend to kill persons but rather Mara. That is the duty of all Thai. Killing people for (the sake of) the nation, religion and monarchy is meritorious, like killing a fish to make curry to put in a monk’s bowl” (my translation).
Such a picture of the human and nonhuman is not unique to Kittiwuttho but has also circulated in the service of Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka and Burma (Bartholomeusz 2002; Obeyesekere 1990, 167–174; Tambiah 1992, 1, 86–87).23 The point in each case is that Buddhism and national politics entwine. Kittiwuttho offered, however, two sorts of clarification in response to criticism. The first concerns what counts as killing according to Buddhist doctrine, the second just what he pictures himself to advocate killing. On the first count, he said, “I still hold the opinion that killing communists is not demetorious. This is because for an act to be considered as killing and thus resulting in demerit it must fulfill the following conditions. First there must be an intention (cetana). Second, the animal must have life (pana). Third, one must know that the animal has life (panasannita). Fourth, one must intend to kill (vadhakacittan). Fifth, one must act in order to kill (upkano). Finally, the animal must die by that act (tenamaranan)” (cited in Somboon 1982, 152).
Kittiwuttho claimed that his comments in Jaturat met none of these conditions. He claimed, further, that when he said Thai should kill leftists and communists, he meant these as ideologies. “Communism is a complex compound of false consciousness, delusion, greed, jealousy, malevolence and anger. It is not a person or a living animal. Thus killing communism is killing ideology” (cited in Somboon 1982, 153). In 1977, he seemed to obstruct this backpedaling (that is, wishing to kill only an abstraction, an ideology, not living humans). In a speech commemorating the founding of the Buddhist order, Kittiwuttho told his audience of monks, “Let us take today as an auspicious moment to declare war on communists. Let us determine to kill all communists and clean the slate in Thailand. The Thai must kill communists. Anyone who wants to gain merit must kill communists. The one who kills them will acquire great merit” (Somboon 1982, 153).
Throughout these passages, Kittiwuttho’s central concern is whether or not killing leftists gains or loses merit, and he marshals Buddhist doctrine to claim that it gains merit. The initial passage from Jaturat suggests, however, that his dodge—he wishes only to exterminate an ideology—is not what he took to be at stake. If the communists on whom he rallies Buddhist Thai to declare war and eliminate completely (in order to gain merit) are like the fish he suggests killing for the curry you would put in a monk’s bowl (to gain merit), then in fact he advocates killing actual, living persons and not abstractions, just as he advocates giving actual, not abstract, curried fish to monks. Kittiwuttho called on Buddhism to justify large-scale murder but denies that the dead are, in fact, fully human.24 Against this backdrop Saneh writes,
Buddhism as a social reform movement, has its own dynamic attitude towards life and great innovative potential. On the other hand, Buddhism, as an institution, could be vulnerable … to a relapse into mere dogma, incapable of living up to new challenge, that is, the crisis of change. There will then be a danger in that Buddhism, too, would serve the status quo and the powers that be, instead of humankind, which is the central purpose of Buddhism. There would be a further danger in that it could even degenerate into becoming a coercive and oppressive instrument, instead of promoting Path towards human liberation, which is the ultimate goal Buddhism. If such is the case, Buddhism, like any other religions, would need its own transformation to be of true service to mankind. (Saneh 2002, 60)
This passage is not just an indictment of the sorts of theo-politics Kittiwuttho extolled but also takes a side in debates ongoing at the time (1979) that Saneh first drafted it. A distinctive feature of Buddhadasa and his followers’ teachings can be glossed as a focus on nirvana, rather than the stress on karma favored by the religious and political establishment. I have noted above that Saneh and Khunying Amphorn connected Buddhism and human rights in the pursuit of a vision of Buddhism departing from the popular emphasis on individual merit, and their primary view, which they share with Buddhadasa, is that the relevant Buddhist quest is the world here and now (on this emphasis in Buddhadasa’s writing, see Tambiah 1976, 411). In doctrinal terms, Buddhadasa opposed a vein of eternalism that he saw dominating Thai Buddhism (the picture Kittiwuttho promoted), in which there is an eternal soul that gains and loses merit (a view he criticized as Hinduism or Brahmanism), and argued instead for an immanentism that finds nirvana possible at any and every moment (Buddhadasa 1992, 51–52 passim; Tambiah 1976, 412). This is not to say that he saw nirvana as easily attainable, but he did see it to be the original condition of the mind and in principle available to any practitioner, not just long-practicing monks (Jackson 2003, 137).
The repercussions of Buddhadasa’s challenge to traditional Thai Buddhism extend beyond religious doctrine and practice to touch Buddhism’s legitimating role in Thailand’s political structure. As one of the three pillars of Thai politics (nation, religion, and monarchy), a
