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You have heard of monetary economics, development economics and
agricultural economics, but
 feminist economics? Not many people
know that this new area of study is fast acquiring worldwide
status as a separate discipline for research. The International
Association for Feminist Economics, a global network with
members in 50 countries (including both men and women -- Nobel
prize winning economist Amartya Sen, who is famous for his
path-breaking work on “missing females” in the Asian region, is
a member of IAFFE, as are several male academics and activists
from the developed as well as the developing world, who are
interested in gender equity) held its 16th annual
conference in Bangkok from June 29 to July 1, 2007, and this was
the first time that this annual conference was being organized
in the South Asian region.
Covering 50 theme-based concurrent and plenary sessions, the
conference discussed a variety of issues, particularly those
that are specific to the Asian region, like migration of labour
in search of better earnings in the west (as doctors, nurses,
domestic workers, etc) trafficking in women, and the effect of
trade liberalization on female labour participation. Several
delegates from Indian universities and NGOs presented papers, on
the correlation between mothers’ education levels and the
nutrition status of daughters, the problem of Muslim girls from
indigent families going to the Gulf region as brides for
affluent but aged Arab or Omani grooms (who can offer the girls’
families handsome money as bride price, because of their petro-dollar
wealth, reservations for women’s political participation, and
the problem of bigamy in Orissa. All of which was very
enlightening and educative (more information about iaffe and the
Bangkok conference, at
www.iaffe.org)
but what I wish to focus on here is a side aspect of the
three-day event.
At the end of the conference on Sunday July 1, the host country
took participants to Ayutthaya an hour’s drive away from the
Thai capital, and it was here that the Thai-northeast connection
got highlighted. Our tour guide, Siddhijay (from Siddhijaya, a
name with Indian roots, like the name of many Thai rulers, from
Rama the Great and King Trailokyanath and their successors over
the centuries) pointed out that Ayutthaya was the ancient
capital of the Thai kingdom (14th century) which was
raided and destroyed by conquerors from Burma (Myanmar as it is
now called) who plundered the golden wealth of the Buddhist
temples and carted them away.
The ruins of the royal palace and Buddhist temple still stand as
tourist attractions – and they look strikingly like the relics
at Shibsagar in Assam, with the same red brick facades and
circular architecture. The ambience is strikingly similar. The
more I heard descriptions about Ayutthaya, the more it became
clear that geo-political borders are all manmade and that the
socio-cultural boundaries between nations merge so beautifully
that humans, of whatever nationality, become just “people” with
differences outweighed by what they have in common.
The people of Assam are believed to be of Thai descent,
according to some -- the Ahom heritage is common to both
northeastern India and Thailand. Thai Ahoms are also believed to
have migrated to Java, Malaysia (Malaya as it was known
earlier).
Excavations at the hundreds of medieval Buddhist shrines or Wat
(Thai for temple) show many parallels between south Asian
culture and northeastern heritage. Ayutthaya, which served as
the ancient capital for four centuries, was itself named after
the Indian Ayodhya, birthplace of Lord Rama. It was King Ram the
First who moved the capital across the river, to Bangkok after
the Burmese invasion. One of the appellations used for Buddhist
monks is ‘Aranyavasi” which means those who dwell in the forest,
in Sanskrit. The official Thai name for Bangkok, a long,
166-phrase word that has got into the Guinness Book of Records
as the longest name of any city, includes the phrases ‘maha’,
‘rajdhani’ and ‘ratna’, which are all of Sanskrit origin.
In terms of scenery too, the Thai
interior could be anywhere from the northeastern interior, with
its lush greenery, emerald rice fields, bamboo artifacts, and
colourful wayside shrines draped with strings of jasmine and
marigold flowers (and to drive home the point further, Thailand
was in the midst of monsoon rains during my visit in June-July,
whereas we Indians think that the monsoon rains are a typical
feature only of India). The traditional Thai greeting,
consisting of hands folded together at chest level, with a
reverential bow from the waist down, is also a very ’Indian’
gesture resembling the ‘namaste’.
So what makes a
political-geographical border assign one side to northeastern
India or Myanmar, or Cambodia, and the other to Thailand –
except manmade demarcations? The typical Thai across the border
looks remarkably like an Assamese or Manipuri, in physical
characteristics (and sometimes even in name). And to drive home
the point, the conference delegates were even treated to a
musical-theatrical performance based on a story about Hanuman
from the Ramayana, which is a part of Thai dance heritage just
as much as the epic is part of Indian cultural heritage too.
I came away from Bangkok not only with my head full of gender
issues discussed at the conference but also mulling over the
continuity in cultural heritages across national borders – the
Chinese have something physically and culturally in common with
the Thais, the Thais share heritage with the Indian northeast,
which again has a lot in common with Bangladesh, Bhutan and
Nepal. Sadly, politics focuses on the differences, instead of
this shared commonality.
July 2007
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