Table of Contents
In the late eighteenth century, Father Vincentius Sangermano made the following remarks about the Karen in Burma:
It is worthy of observation that, although residing in the midst of the Burmese and Peguans, they not only retain their own language, but even their dress, houses, and everything else are distinguished from them; and what is more remarkable, they have a different religion. (Sangermano, quoted in Keyes [1979a:1]).
These observations are as true today of the Palokhi Karen in the Pa Pae hills as they were of the Karen amongst the Burmese and Mon of Burma in Sangermano’s time. As I hope to have shown, following the argument set out in the introductory chapter to this study, much if not all of what is distinctively “Karen” about the Palokhi Karen—despite the fact that they are to be found in a predominantly Northern Thai socio-economic milieu and, indeed, are dependent to a greater or lesser extent on a regional economy to meet their subsistence needs—may be found in their “different” religion. I also hope to have shown that, “even in their dress, houses, and everything else” there are features, the significance of which can only be understood by reference to their indigenous, non-Buddhist, non-Christian religion.
By way of comparison and contrast, however, let me turn briefly to a consideration of two rather different examples of what “being Karen” might mean. In terms of my argument and analysis, both examples may be regarded as “ideal types” representing possibly extreme developments, conditioned by historical circumstances, in the directions which the sociological relationship between religion and identity (at its most general) may take in the context of intergroup relations involving the Karen. Nevertheless, they stand as very real experiences—at least for some Karen communities. The two examples which I refer to are the Telakhon, a Karen syncretic Buddhist millenarian movement, and the Karen separatist movement in Burma which is predominantly composed of Christian Karen in its leadership, body of armed men and, to some extent, civilian supporters. The relevance and interest of these two movements, for the present discussion, lie in what may be gleaned about the relationship between social organisation, religion, and some form of Karen identity, and in the possible elements of an answer to the question which I posed at the beginning—in what way or ways are Buddhist, Christian, and “animist” Karen “Karen”?
The Telakhon movement has not been thoroughly documented, at least in its ethnographic details, but what is available in existing accounts is highly suggestive of the kinds of evidence which are relevant to the issues dealt with in this study in the case of the Palokhi Karen. There are only two accounts (Stern [1968] and Dodd [1962]) of the Telakhon which offer some details of this Karen Buddhist millenarian movement based on first-hand information.[1]
Stern’s account of the Telakhon in one Karen community is principally concerned with an explication of the phenomenon of millenarianism based on Buddhist derived beliefs about a Future Buddha, Arimetteya, in terms of the significance of a certain Karen myth, as well as a sociological explanation of the phenomenon in terms of a version of Aberle’s “relative deprivation” thesis.[2] The account of the Telakhon provided by Dodge is based on the same group of people. It is not altogether informative from an anthropological point of view but, as with Stern’s description (which was based on a visit to the Telakhon a few years after Dodge’s first visit), there are a few intriguing observations about social organisation and identification in the context of religious change.
In the earlier description of the Telakhon, Dodge (an American Baptist missionary based in Thailand) says that there were approximately 50 followers of Telasi, the self-proclaimed Ariya (that is, Arimetteya), at the village of Tee Maw near the Thai-Burmese border. Dodge also says, however, that there were reputedly 6,000 followers spread out in separate villages in Burma as well as Thailand. His overall impression of Tee Maw was that “it is essentially a Karen society, including Sgaw and Pwo” where the followers of Telasi “can wear Karen dress or else solid coloured shirts and longee” which most of the men wear, while “The women seem to wear typical Karen costumes all the time” (1962:i, 4).
The intriguing part of Dodge’s observations, however, concerns what appears to be an element of hierarchical differentiation at Tee Maw. He reports that Telasi had two subordinates, the “bukho” or spiritual head, and the “kokho” or secular head, as well as a “scribe” who was also prominent at his meetings with the head of the Telakhon. Equally intriguing is Dodge’s report that the head of the Telakhon made the suggestion that the mission of American Baptists establish a clinic and school in a valley about three days’ walk from Sangklaburi. The leader of the Telakhon claimed that if the mission did so, “a thousand or more Karen would move there”. Telasi, furthermore, offered to have the land cleared for them (1962:10). Judging from Dodge’s account, it would seem that this valley lay well away from Tee Maw itself. What is intriguing about this brief account of the conversation with Telasi is that the leader of the Telakhon seems either to have had some power of disposition over land situated well away from his headquarters at Tee Maw, or that he at least believed he did.
The significance of these snippets of information provided by Dodge is that generally the society was “essentially Karen” and that where the social organisation of the Telakhon is concerned there was some form of hierarchy as well as some notion of territorial control attaching to leadership of the Telakhon. Though Dodge’s descriptions are by no means conclusive, they contain elements which indicate some important differences in social organisation compared to that in Palokhi, nowithstanding the fact that Tee Maw is “essentially Karen” and the fact of Karen dress.
Stern’s account of the Telakhon some years later is more detailed and it points to a far greater elaboration of life in the Telakhon. It is not possible to say whether the elaboration lies in the development of the Telakhon over a few years, or whether it lies in Stern’s greater attention to detail; but the elaboration is significant.
The account of Telakhon organisation under the Ariya, provided by Stern, goes as follows:
Beneath him there is now a complex administration comprising a religious head (bu kho) and a secular head (kaw kho — both terms are given in Sgaw), each assisted by a board, a central executive committee and subordinate counterparts under the inferior yathe, as well as a panel of elders, drawn from all the faithful, to serve as advisors to the central executive committee. Together, they manage the affairs of the sect, supervising the three major festivals of the year, maintaining communication with the membership and correspondence with outsiders, and overseeing corporate business concerns, which derive income principally through a house tax on members and from free-will gifts. Two secular departments, those of education and defense, seem as yet largely inoperative. The executive committee also sits as a court in maintaining observance of a code of controlling sexual conduct with traditional Karen stringency, but also forbidding gambling, the use of intoxicants and narcotics, and acts which might foment internal discord; and further enjoining the raising of such animals as might be sacrificed to the spirits. To the conduct so regulated is added the encouragement of wearing Karen garb. (1968:315–6).
Stern comments later that,
The issues of change and conservation in customary behaviour are neatly exemplified in the Telakhon observance of the wearing of Karen garb, an act which may be taken as expressive at once of an ethnic continuity with the mythic past, when the conditions of the millenium were laid down, and of that reunited nation of the Karen to which they look forward. (1968:321).
The doctrinal considerations and macro-political aspects (that is, the relations between the Karen and the polities of Burma and Thailand in historical times) of the Telakhon have been much explored and discussed not only by Stern but others as well (Keyes [1977a]; Hinton [1979]; Lehman [1979]; Tambiah [1984:300–2]; but see also Wijeyewardene [in press]) and I shall not, therefore, consider them here. The micro-political features and the identification of religious change are, however, worth noting.
Despite what may be regarded as its “charismatic” basis, it is unequivocally clear that the social organisation of the Telakhon is not only “bureaucratic” in nature (also in Weber’s sense), but it displays political features. The bureaucratic aspect of the Telakhon is evident from Stern’s description as is the political which is contained in some notion of territorial control and defence. This is consistent with the politico-religious complex associated with beliefs about cakkavatti and Arimetteya. As Stern describes it, the Arimetteya is preceded by “the messianic figure of the cakkavatti, a universal monarch, who solely through the exercise of his justice and love for all living beings will conquer mankind and thus lay the foundation for the new order (dhamma) of the Future Buddha, Arimetteya” (1968:300). The two may sometimes be conflated as seems to be the case with the leader of the Telakhon.
It is, however, the creation of two offices or positions in the bureaucratic organisation of the Telakhon out of a Karen context that is striking, namely, the bu kho and the kau kho (Dodge’s “kokho” and Stern’s “kaw kho”) functioning under the Ariya Telasi who is not only a religious figure but presents some semblance of being a ruler of sorts. Kho of course means “head” in Sgaw Karen and kau “stream valley” or more broadly “domain”, as I have noted before. The etymon of bu is either Mon (pon, as Stern suggests) or Thai (bun), both ultimately deriving from the Pali punna, “merit”.[3] In Palokhi, as we have seen, the only “head” is the village headman, the zi kho, who functions essentially as an intermediary between the community and the Lord of the Water, Lord of the Land.
The administrative complex of the Telakhon (to which we might add its “corporate business concerns”) and these two “heads” are so radically different from the system of head-manship and village organisation which, as I have shown, are intimately linked to religion in Palokhi, that we may well be justified in saying that they represent very different social systems.
Wijeyewardene has argued, in his paper on “The Theravada Compact and the Karen” where he examines not only the Telakhon but other movements in Northern and North-eastern Thailand and similar contemporary developments in Thailand, that
… we need to look at the operation of Buddhism in society not so much as the operation of a single tendency or dichotomy, but as a number of sometimes opposed principles. The millenarian tendency … applied not only to individuals and communities who were “deprived”, but was also a factor in the activities of monarchs themselves. Charismatic figures may sometimes not be so much millenarian, but represent the manifestation of a point of view put forward by [Trevor] Ling — a Buddhist view of society which was concerned with creating a society in which salvation was possible. In its modern manifestation, I suggested that we have a sociological view of the role of Buddhism; and traditionally, what appear to be millenarian movements were attempts to define the socio-religious nature of the society. (Wijeyewardene, in press).
The Telakhon is quite evidently one such attempt to define, or redefine, the socio-religious nature of society, Dodge’s general impression notwithstanding.
Indeed, this redefinition was probably so successful at Tee Maw that it was necessary to “mark” it somehow as a “Karen” phenomenon. I would suggest that this is the import of the encouragement to wear Karen dress noted by Stern, and it is probably the use of Karen dress (and the use of Sgaw Karen) at Tee Maw which led Dodge into describing Tee Maw as an essentially “Karen” society. Even if Dodge was correct, when he first visited Tee Maw, it is clear from Stern’s account that Karen dress was not merely a matter of what could be worn, but what ought to be worn. It is almost as if the Telakhon was in danger of becoming (or being seen as) something else that necessitated the encouragement of the wearing of Karen dress. Dodge is quite explicit that the language spoken in the Telakhon was Sgaw Karen (1962:7), so the language was probably not entirely sufficient in itself to distinguish the identity of the movement if, as I argue, an additional possibly more conspicuous “marker” was required. Although Stern is essentially correct in seeing the “issues of change and conservation” in the wearing of Karen dress, these issues are not perhaps as neatly exemplified as he suggests.
The encouragement of Karen dress in the Telakhon, I suggest, was an attempt to assert an identity, a means of identifying socio-religious change in the form of the Telakhon as a “Karen” development because the cultural substance, as it were, of the community at Tee Maw had changed. It is possible also that the conscious references to the Karen myth, and its apparently indigenous millenarian content, which Stern discusses, were of the same order.[4] This is not to say, however, that socio-religious change in the form of the Telakhon necessarily meant an absolute hiatus in cultural continuity at Tee Maw, but rather that the socio-religious change was sufficient and significant enough to require a conscious attempt to identify the change. In terms of the argument presented at the beginning of this study, I would suggest that the cultural ideology of the Tee Maw Karen had undergone a transformation and that they cannot be regarded as being “Karen” in the same sense that the Palokhi Karen are “Karen”.
Similar considerations are contained in the Karen separatist movement, but the separatist movement is also extremely interesting for what it shows of how transformations in cultural ideologies, of the kind that I am interested in here, may be disguised by the manipulation of traditional Karen symbols and adductions of a mythical past rationalised in the form of a theory of racial origins. In principle, the issues are not dissimilar to those in the Telakhon.
[1] There are other Karen millenarian movements (see, for example, Keyes [1979b:20]; Hinton [1979:84–5]), but Stern’s account of the Telakhon in Kanchanaburi province provides the most comprehensive discussion of the subject.
[2] Stern’s application of this thesis is essentially political in its import, resting on an assumption that the Ariya (or telakhon) movement was a reaction to oppression by the Burmese. It is an analysis which has been criticised by Hinton on theoretical grounds and untested psychological assumptions (1979:91). While Hinton is, in my view, correct in his criticism, it is difficult to see how his alternative explanation that the phenomenon of “Karen prophets … groping towards pan-Karen solidarity” is similar to the efforts of the Karen separatist movement is any different on theoretical or empirical grounds from that of Stern’s. Sociological explanations of the type proposed by Hinton have, in their turn, been criticised by Wijyewardene (in press) for their “ring of Wagnerian metaphysics”(!). Though his focus is the “Theravada Compact and the Karen” Wijeyewardene, however, is concerned rather more with Buddhist millenialism as a particular application of “sociological Buddhism”, in Ling’s sense (1975), by those in Theravada Buddhist societies and polities who may be motivated by, amongst other things including historical conditions, the desire for power. He is very likely right in his assessment. While these discussions are extremely useful according to the kinds of sociological understandings that we may arrive at about Buddhism and, to some extent, about its manifestations among marginal groups (such as the Karen) in the context of the Theravada Buddhist states of Burma and Thailand, we still know very little about the details of life in Karen millenarian cults such as the Telakhon.
[3] For a discussion of the bu kho in recent times in a Pwo Karen community outside of a millenarian context, see Andersen (1976:269–74).
[4] I discuss a version of this later in the case of the Karen separatist movement (p. 452–3). In the case of the separatist movement, it is clear that the myth has become the foundation for nationalist Karen claims for a separate state. While I would agree with Stern’s analysis of the myth, I would nevertheless suggest that the myth, as it is adduced in the Telakhon, is an “article of faith” as it were, consciously wedded to the complex of millenarian ideas, rather than say a matter of belief to which little or no reflection is given.