ARI Working Paper Series
WPS 32 Origins of Malay Muslim “Separatism” in Southern Thailand
Author | : | Thanet APHORNSUVAN |
Publication Date | : | Oct / 2004 |
Publisher | : | Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore |
Keywords | : | religious and ethnic conflicts, nation building, Thai nationalism, history of modern Southern Thailand, history of modern Thai politics |
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The emergence of the concept of ‘separatism’ or ‘bang yak dindan’ (separating the land) in the 1940s was a result of the internal conflicts among major central political factions and parties as well as the conflict between the Bangkok government and the Malay Muslim political movement. Incidentally the Haji Sulong and Dusun Ynor Rebellions in 1948 in the Muslim South completed the imagined Thai community, which was based on the invented notion of a homogeneous Thai ethnic nation.