Pibulsonggram's Cultural Mandates

I was somewhat surprised to find that little has been written in English on the web about the so-called Cultural Mandates, also known as the State Decrees (รัฐนิยม ratthaniyom), issued by Field Marshal Plaek Pibulsonggram between 1939 and 1942, during his first term as prime minister. So I figured one way to remedy this would be to start an English Wikipedia article.

These Cultural Mandates were a series of 12 edicts the government issued, utterly changing the face of the country. Though not everything stuck, I think it is hard to underestimate how much influence the mandates had on the development of modern Thailand. They were a remarkable--if questionable--feat of social engineering, though only part of the larger social engineering schemes of Chom Phon Po (จอมพล ป., or "Field Marshal P.").

Among the cultural reforms enacted by the Field Marshal:

• Changing the name of the country to Thailand, and temporarily eradicating the word 'Siam', including from the royal anthem, traditional titles, and even the names of businesses and organizations.
• Declaring a new Thai national anthem, still in use today.
• Playing the national anthem at 8:00 am and 6:00 pm every day.
• Playing the royal anthem (which used to be the national anthem) before all theatrical shows and requiring patrons to stand during it.
• Establishing Thai as the national language and forcing non-Thai ethnic groups to learn it.

When you read the mandates themselves the language is often weak -- Thais "should" do X or Y. But in reality these state mandates were backed up with negative incentives or threat of force. It was during these years of nation-building that the Thai state also outlawed Chinese instruction in schools, assessed extra taxes on Chinese-owned businesses, or founded state enterprises designed to compete with and run foreign businesses into the ground.

For example, the Thailand Tobacco Monopoly was founded in 1939 when the state began seizing private tobacco factories. Just months later Mandate 5 was issued, exhorting Thais to use only Thai products and government-run services.

So while it is easy today to see only the positive benefits of many of these mandates, or forget that the mandates ever happened, the actual history is much more complex. Many of Pibulsonggram's mandates, including his simplified Thai alphabet, were scrapped as soon as he was forced to resign (the first time) in 1944.

You can find the original mandates in Thai on the Royal Gazette website by searching the term รัฐนิยม. (The website works best in IE, sadly.) They are also linked directly in the references section of the Wikipedia article.

Etymologist 16: On the origin of สวัสดี sawatdi

You've seen it spelled sawatdi, sawatdee, sawasdee, and probably half a dozen other variations. To Thais, it's all just สวัสดี.

This modern greeting dates back to the mid-1930s. It is adapted from the Sanskrit สวสฺติ svasti, meaning 'blessing' or 'well-being'. It shares a root with swastika, from Sanskrit svastik 'auspicious thing', the name of the Hindu symbol co-opted by you-know-who right around the time sawatdi was catching on in Thailand.

Credited with its invention as a greeting is พระยาอุปกิตศิลปสาร Phraya Uppakit Silpasan (1879-1941, born นิ่ม กาญจนาชีวะ), who was a Thai language expert and professor at Chulalongkorn University in the 1930s. He also served on the dictionary committee of the Royal Institute.

As the story goes, Phraya Uppakit coined the greeting in the mid-1930s, as a replacement for a series of expressions coined by the Royal Institute that many felt were too foreign.

Indeed, the expressions sawatdi was meant to replace were translated directly from English: อรุณสวัสดิ์  /arun sawàt/ 'good morning', ทิวาสวัิสดิ์ /thíwaa sawàt/ 'good afternoon', สายัณห์สวัสดิ์ /sǎayan sawàt/ 'good evening', and ราตรีสวัสดิ์ /raatrii sawàt/ 'good night'. You'll still see อรุณสวัสดิ์ and ราตรีสวัสดิ์ as translations of 'good morning' and 'good night' in film subtitles and translated books, but the other two are virtually obsolete.

One reason the term feels "more Thai" than these other terms, which all involve the same Sanskrit word สวัสดิ์, is that its final syllable is ดี /dii/, which although etymologically unrelated to the Thai word for 'good', definitely creates a semantic connection in the mind. Using Google you can find instances of wordplay that illustrates this connection, where people swap out ดี, creating jocular expressions like สวัสไม่ดี สวัสร้าย สวัสเลว and สวัสแย่.

It is also interesting to note that the popular Thai greetings in wide use prior to these invented expressions are still in wide use today: greetings like ไปไหน 'where are you going?' or ไปไหนมา 'where are you coming from?' or กินข้าวหรือยัง 'have you eaten yet?'.

What this says to me is that for as widespread as สวัสดี sawatdi is used today, it's still an unnatural expression on some level, mostly limited to formal contexts and social ritual. (Thai people even prefer to answer the phone not with สวัสดี sawatdi but rather ฮัลโหล, from English 'hello?', which has recently resulted in the National Cultural Commission urging people to stick to the prescribed telephone greeting.)

According to Chula University legend, Phraya Uppakit introduced สวัสดี sawatdi to his students, and it quickly became popular throughout campus and spread from there. However, the widespread adoption of สวัสดี sawatdi probably did not happen quite so organically. It had a little help from Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram.

In 1943, eight months after simplifying the Thai script, Phibunsongkhram made สวัสดี the "official" Thai language greeting.

The following statement was issued by the กรมโฆษณาการ (Propaganda Department, now known as กรมประชาสัมพันธ์, Public Relations Department) on January 22, 1943 (original spelling retained):

"ด้วยพนะท่านนายกรัถมนตรี ได้พิจารนาเห็นว่า เพื่อเปนการส่งเสริมเกียรติแก่ตนและแก่ชาติ ให้สมกับที่เราได้รับความยกย่องว่า คนไทยเปนอารยะชน คำพูดจึงเปนสิ่งหนึ่งที่สแดงภูมิของจิตใจว่าสูงต่ำเพียงใด ฉะนั้นจึงมีคำสั่งให้กำชับ บันดาข้าราชการทุกคนกล่าวคำ "สวัสดี" ต่อกันไนโอกาสที่พบกันครั้งแรกของวัน เพื่อเป็นการผูกไมตรีต่อกัน และฝึกนิสัยไห้กล่าวแต่คำที่เปนมงคล ว่าอะไรว่าตามกัน กับขอไห้ข้าราชการช่วยแนะนำ แก่ผู้ที่อยู่ไนครอบครัวของตนไห้รู้จักกล่าวคำ "สวัสดี" เช่นเดียวกันด้วย"

My translation:

"His Excellency the Prime Minister has considered the matter and is of the opinion that in order to enhance the honor of ourselves and of the nation; in a manner fitting that the Thais be praised as a civilized people; and as speech reflects the status of one's mind; therefore, the order has been given to emphatically urge all public servants to utter the phrase sawatdi to one another when meeting for the first time of the day. Doing so will befriend one another, and instill the habit of speaking only auspicious words. In addition, public servants are requested to assist in advising those in their households to also use the phrase sawatdi."

It stands to reason, based on this directive, that sawatdi had not caught on in general use, or else there would be no need to effectively mandate its use, nor would there be any need to instruct public servants to tell their families to use it, either.

If anyone has further evidence on precisely when สวัสดี sawatdi began to be widely used, or on whether it was widely used before 1943, I would love to see it.