Articles

About Esarn

By Prof. David. M. Myers

There are abundant promotional materials to entice overseas visitors to Bangkok, Chiangmai, Pattaya, Samui and Phuket. We have also been exposed to scandalous features on sex-tourism, drug trafficking, child trade, slavery and prostitution. But we hear very little about the parched plains of Esarn, about the plight of the Esarn people, who speak Lao rather than Thai.

Pira Canning Sudham has become the international voice of these forgotten people largely due to his literary works, Tales of Thailand and Shadowed Country. In Esarn, the questions of grinding poverty, destruction of ecology, greed and ignorance are inextricably linked. Pira Canning Sudham has written one story called To Kill or Not to Kill in which he narrates how a professional gunman is hired to murder a schoolteacher who is idealistic and courageous enough to try to protect a dwindling forest reserve, teaching the village children that they are entitled to a better deal. In another story, An Impersonator, he exposes the selling of children into prostitution, a sordid reality that required a writing skill to make it palatable.

As Pira Canning Sudham shows, education for literacy and democracy is the key to overcoming this vile exploitation. But there is of course education and education. If education consists of nothing more than rote learning, which reinforces mindlessness, unthinking nationalism, subservience and absolute obedience to the authorities and the police force, it is worse than useless. But educators who encourage the children to question the authorities on various social issues including corruption and the selling of the young into prostitution and slavery in Bangkok’s factories are likely to be seen as a threat. Due to such threats, ten Esarn schoolteachers have been murdered by hired assassins.

As researchers, we humanists are morally useless if we focus only on the linguistics and the aesthetics of minority languages and traditional minority cultures. The larger issues are the politics of education, of literacy for the neglected and impoverished people, the human rights of the suppressed ethnic.

Following the heavy fighting with the insurgents in various parts of Esarn in the 1970s, the authorities have set up "forced listening" in villages by broadcasting, through loudspeakers installed on tall steel posts, official government news and messages by Radio Thailand based in Bangkok. As Pira Canning Sudham explains, this daily enforced listening has regrettable consequences for the cultural literacy and ethnic identity of the Esarn people. Broadcasts made in the Thai language are aimed at making the Lao-speaking Esarners feel that they are "Thai" and should be loyal to the Thai government rather than foment insurgencies and demand separatism. The monopoly of Radio Thailand has succeeded in diminishing the opportunities of Esarn villagers to listen to broadcasts by local radio stations in the Lao language, which they previously enjoyed. Less and less frequently the Esarners hear Esarn songs and music on the radio, and eventually they may be induced to forget their traditional culture and even their Lao language.

When one travels through Esarn, it is striking to see the steel posts strategically installed in villages to hold the loudspeakers. The enforced listening would not come as a surprise in a country that is ruled by despots, but in modern Thailand it is really a remarkable occurrence. In the Western democracies, if governments tried to impose such a blatant broadcast, the noise pollution alone would create an overwhelming outcry. But in Esarn, the voiceless inhabitants are afraid to speak up against the authorities.

It is clear that there are inextricable links between literacy, education, democracy and human rights. This could not be clearer than the case of the subjugated Esarners. It is in this context that the author would like to take readers on a journey to the hinterland of Thailand.

"I look at my life in this way," says Pira. "If I had not left my village at all, I would have become just another peasant, with a horde of children, going through the vicious circle of rural life in an Esarn village. If ignorance is bliss, I could have been a happier person. Like most villagers, I would believe that going through years of drought, scarcity and disease without medical treatment, without any relief is my destiny, my fate or karma for what I committed in my previous life. So in this life, I am to suffer for the deeds done. The acceptance of one’s fate helps make suffering in this life tolerable. It was in England from 1975 onward when I began leading a life of a writer that I had to look deep into my heart and soul for a cure, a way to repair my maimed mind. It became obvious to me then that during the formative years, I was gagged, blindfolded and suppressed, like the present-day Burmese, by the despotic regimes under which I lived for over 15 years, from 1958 when military rule under Field Marshal Sarit Dhanarat took off. Worse still, it was rote learning and authoritative teaching that became a mind-maiming apparatus. I was taught and trained to become utterly obedient, subservient, unthinking, fearing the authorities.

"James Joyce says in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man that when a child is born in Catholic Ireland, nets are flung to catch his soul. In my society, it is not the nets but the instrument to nip the mind in the bud or to stunt it at any rate so that one grows up physically while one’s mind remains undeveloped. How could a man, whose mind did not develop, creates literary work that would be worth reading? This question haunted me every time I pick up a pen. Fortunately the learning years in New Zealand, Australia and in England re-educated me, giving me a newly formed mind as well as a new pair of eyes. I cherished this phase of my life so much that I made Prem Surin, the protagonist of Shadowed Country, go through in lurid details what I underwent in these democratic countries so as to demonstrate the mental reformation and the process of overcoming a crippled mind.

"Now living among the people of Esarn on the land on which I was born in my home village, Napo, I cannot avoid seeing daily the silent sufferers. You may say that they don’t know any better! On the whole most Esarners are too inept to complain or to voice their grievances. It is their karma, remember? For centuries, they have been voiceless. Only when they are pushed to the extreme, suffering beyond endurance, do they enter the capital to look for help from the authorities. Fortunately their wistful gatherings in Bangkok are so far peaceful. Each time they return to their villages with some promises from the government that their troubles would be looked into. But, alas, the promises turn out to be empty, and ironically those governments do not last long either, so then the suffering poor from rural areas keep returning to Bangkok the following summer again and again. Now their plea for help in front of the Government House has become an annual event under the band name of the Plea from the Assembly of the Poor.

"I fear that one day, after so many failures to obtain effective assistance from the authorities, they might not walk into Bangkok empty handed. Then what shall we do? For now we pin our hope on the fact that the suffering mass in rural Thailand would soon be tired of their rallies for help in Bangkok year after year. These desperate people should succumb to the notion that nothing could be done to alleviate their plights. They should adhere firmly to their beliefs in karma, the inevitable retribution, so that they accept their lot in life and continue to suffer silently in their rural communities. The people in power may consider themselves blessed that the annual gathering of the suffering underclass at their doors are orderly and non-violent as opposed to those taking places in some other countries. Indeed we are fortunate when it has proven time and again that rote learning and feudal education system, that is mind maiming, work effectively on the cowered populace.

"Though I do not stand idly by while the desperate poor make their annual plea for help in Bangkok, the voice of my guardian angel comes to my ears: ‘Don’t lead them. Let them wake up and emerge due to their absolute desperation. Your role is a keen observer. Then write about them as you see them.’ I heed the voice not only because of the belief in the guardian angel, but it is also a case of staying alive, at least to finish Shadowed Country. I keep in mind that more than 100 teachers, the champions of the poor, labour leaders, conservationists and environmental activists have been brutally "liquidated." As a responsible writer, I am much concerned not only with urgent social issues but also with the plights of those who have been excruciatingly affected by the Moonmouth Dam in Ubol. It is difficult to blot out images of crouching old women and defenceless men and a pregnant woman being clobbered like animals by armed men so that the relocation of the villagers, who were in the way of the construction, could be made. Now the Moonmouth Dam has been proven to be a flop since it could not generate sufficient electricity as purported at the expense of human sufferings and ecological disaster while World Bank continues to rake in colossal returns from the loan. From such a disastrous development project, I too have made a return, definitely not in financial sense, but in a story entitled An Old Man and A Boy.

"Similarly the gunman for hire in To Kill or Not to Kill does not stray far from the fact that a group of villagers walked peacefully to Wapipratume District Office in Mahasarakam Province to air their grievances. Their rice fields and river made salty by brackish water from large-scale open salt mines owned by powerful politicians and influential investors. When their farmland became salty, they could not grow rice, and in Siawyai River, fish died. Many farmers had to sell their once arable fields at very low price and move away to find new land elsewhere. In front of the Wapipratume District Office, the suffering farmers were battered and arrested and thrown in jail. Yes, for their sake, I protested against such injustice in my own way.

"The majority of the poor people of Esarn remain meek, silent and subservient. Due to the acceptance of their fate, they tend to avoid making outcries or demand. We know this. Employers know this only too well. Thus it gives unscrupulous agricultural produce buyers, the middlemen, sweatshop slave drivers and ruthless factory owners an advantage over the penurious and the powerless. For this, Thailand’s Board of Investment can boast that the country is one of Asia’s cheapest production overheads with lenient environmental measures to boot in order to attract investment from abroad.

"Taking it upon myself to speak out on behalf of the battered and exploited ones, choices of tones and styles of writing are amply arrayed for me. In my books, particularly Shadowed Country, the current social conditions, the norms, the attitudes and the base on which the hierarchy rested are described along with social ills, corruption and injustice. By describing them in vivid details, I hope to bring to mind what should be corrected or changed for the better. When I wrote: There are too many thieves in low and high places, cunningly and shamelessly making use of their positions and power, without conscience but with great capacity for avarice. These highly avaricious men and women aim at accumulating wealth as quickly as possible for themselves and for their families, without caring for the good of the nation I hope that at least one or two of these broad home truths would make some Thai readers think. When I talk of the lack of conscience, I aim to make them ask themselves whether it is justifiable to say that conscience is what most Thais don’t have. Without conscience, one can bribe or take bribes, can be corruptible do wrongful deeds, without a sense of guilt. The corrupt may still claim that they have not done wrong. Then again it is up to me to make my writings acceptable even to lying and highly corrupt men. If not acceptable, then it would defeat the purpose. It cannot bring about change. It cannot change the way they conduct their lives; it cannot bring about certain degree of probity or ethic in their daily life. In that case I would fail as the champion of the downtrodden, the cheated, and the silent people.

"Why do I write the way I do? I was raised in poverty, suffering hunger, pain and abuse, with a fair share of happiness as well as sorrow. As a poor boy from Esarn, I was much despised and ill treated in Bangkok. In time I learned that a lot of Esarners receive similar treatment in Thailand’s large cities because many of us are illiterate, indigent and ready to accept any hard work at the lowest pay, without complaint, just like buffaloes. These experiences caused much pain in me. I wince when I think of them.

"One may compare oneself with an oyster that suffers from a coarse grain of sand or a sharp piece of foreign matter that strays inside it when it opens its shell. In order to lessen the pain, the oyster secretes a substance to coat the source of pain. After a long while the substance grows and eventually becomes a pearl. Pearl farmers use this knowledge to produce cultured pearls by keeping the oysters in the seabed until they grow to a suitable size, then bring the farmed oysters up and pry open their shells to insert pain-causing particles inside them. You can imagine the tortures the poor creatures have to endure for years before they can produce the pearls. The end results are my books, my pearls.

"When I write, there is a sense of relief. In living in Esarn, I draw my strength from the sights and sounds of the victims. What have been happening in Esarn and in Thailand as a whole cause me to counteract with writing. The suppression of wages and of agricultural produce at the grass root level, villagers losing their land and livelihood through forced relocation to give way to dam constructions and to eucalyptus plantations, the deforestation, illegal logging, the pollution of the air and rivers, the poverty and misery of the sufferers have been taunting me daily. But to pick up a knife or a gun is definitely not my way for I hope very much that the pen is still more powerful than any weapons available for use today.

We shall let Pira Canning Sudham’s People of Esarn speaks for itself.

Prof. David. M. Myers
University of Central Queensland, Australia