Thailand’s junta feuds
with an influential Buddhist sect
Feb 23rd 2017 | PATHUM
THANI | The Economist
SOME people think he has
fled abroad. Others say he may have died. For more than a year the
authorities in Thailand have been trying to get hold of Phra
Dhammachayo, the reclusive former leader of a controversial
Buddhist sect who is wanted for questioning in a fraud case. On
February 16th a group of officers finally gained access to the vast
religious complex which his Dhammakaya movement maintains on the
outskirts of Bangkok. Instead of locating the septuagenarian
monk—often pictured in signature sunglasses—they found an empty bed
stuffed with pillows.
By February 22nd more than 4,000 police and
soldiers were lingering outside the Dhammakaya compound—waiting to
complete a full sweep of the massive site but apparently hindered
by monks and devotees who had blocked its dozen entrances. A
spokesman for the sect claimed that 30,000 people were still inside
the property, having ignored orders to leave; there have been
scuffles at its gates. Apiradee, a retired civil servant helping to
feed Dhammakaya followers who had gathered in support outside the
police cordon, said she has never seen anything like it.
Founded in the 1970s, the Dhammakaya movement
claims about 3m followers around the world. It is by far the most
influential temple in Thailand. It bears a loose resemblance to the
evangelical mega-churches that increasingly beguile the world’s
Christians. Dhammakaya’s mostly middle-class adherents complain
that older Buddhist temples have grown complacent and
materialistic. They insist, rather grandly, that the Bangkok
compound, with its vast stadium, is meant to become a kind of
Buddhist Vatican.
But Dhammakaya has fierce opponents both
within the Buddhist establishment and outside it. Critics denounce
it as a cult that peddles wacky theology, and warn that it misleads
wealthy urbanites into thinking that they can purchase religious
merit. (The most serious of the several allegations against Phra
Dhammachayo relates to a case in which an acolyte funded a donation
with cash embezzled from a credit union.) Thailand’s ruling junta
worries that the movement’s leaders are sympathetic to the cause of
Thaksin Shinawatra, a populist former prime minister toppled in
2006 whose lingering influence the generals and their backers are
determined to stamp out.
Last year the junta abandoned several attempts
to drag Phra Dhammachayo out for questioning, fearful of the
outrage that might follow were soldiers to be pictured manhandling
monks. The latest effort looks more concerted. It may not be a
coincidence that the operation began shortly after the installation
of a new Supreme Patriarch (Thai Buddhism’s most senior monk). That
job is usually filled according to a strict hierarchy but had been
held open for several years after conservative clergy refused to
endorse the expected successor—in part because of worries that he
was too close to Dhammakaya. The junta took the unusual step of
asking King Vajiralongkorn, who succeeded his father in December,
to solve that dispute; he anointed a less controversial
alternative, Somdet Phra Maha Muniwong, who hails from the smaller
and more orthodox of Thailand’s two main Buddhist
orders.
Monks at the Dhammakaya temple say that they
have not seen their former abbot for months. They say the real aim
of the raid is to shut the entire temple down. The generals may yet
decide to back away from the fight, as they have done previously.
They could perhaps claim that the searches they have already
conducted are enough to declare the operation complete. That might
look like a defeat, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that
the Dhammakaya movement is running out of powerful friends. With
the royal succession—which some had feared would be
tumultuous—safely behind it, Thailand’s conservative establishment
is reasserting itself, in religion as in politics.