Countering royalism with constitutionalism The People’s Party’s visual culture after the Boworadet Rebellion

• Published in: South East Asia research Vol. 26; no. 3; pp. 235 - 255
• Main Author: Chotpradit, Thanavi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01-09-2018
• Subjects: Boworadet Rebellion; People’s Party; monument; Thailand; commemoration
• ISSN: 0967-828X; 2043-6874
• DOI: 10.1177/0967828X18792635

The Boworadet Rebellion in October 1933 brought brutality into the heart of Thailand’s politics. It was followed by a proliferation of commemorative practices focusing on the commoners who sacrificed their lives for the country. In the aftermath of the incident, the search for an appropriate language of loss involved the making of a new meaning of national sacrifice and what it was to be a good citizen. This article considers the nationalisation of death, as manifested in the commemorative visual forms of the crematorium for the 17 soldiers and police officers at Sanam Luang and the Safeguarding the Constitution Monument in Lak Si District. It concentrates on the appropriation of royal inheritance by the People’s Party and the transformation of phan ratthathammanun (a Book of the Constitution on an ornate double tray), which first appears in an anti-royalist context after the revolutionaries suppressed the Boworadet Rebellion. The presence of phan ratthathammanun in this context marks the separation of constitutionalism from royalism and establishes it as a stand-alone symbol of a supreme ideology worth dying for. This article analyses the visual culture of the period following the Boworadet Rebellion in relation to the formation of the Boworadet Rebellion war memory, the new ideology of constitutionalism and the new identity of the Thai people as citizens of the nation instead of subjects of the King.