Nation, Religion, King

The Thai slogan, "Chat, Satsana, Phramahakasat" was created by Rama VI at the beginning of the 20th century.[1] It echoes La Nation, la Loi, le Roi (English: The Nation, the Law, the King) which was the national motto of France during the constitutional period of the French monarchy. After being educated at Sandhurst School during the rise of nationalism in Europe on the eve of World War I, the Thai King may have blended the modern Western concept of nationalism with the older indigenous symbols of kingship and Shangha to encourage loyalty to the nation.[2] During the 1930s Boworadet Rebellion, official propaganda modified the nationalist motto and believed that Nation, Religion, King and Constitution would be the four factors underpinning Siamese unity and independence.[3]

The earliest record of this slogan in Cambodia appears in the preface to the Cultural Committee's serial of world lists carried in the Khmer-language Kambuja Suryia in 1949, but most decisively, Khmer novelist Nhok Them popularized the triad with a book entitled Nation, Religion, King in 1950. Nhok Them had studied in Thailand from 1918 to 1930 at the time of King Rama VI, maybe explaining the translation of the notion, although he never refers it to Thailand in his work.[4]

From 1958 to 1963, Thai Army chief Sarit Thanarat suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament, and banned parties, using the motto Nation, Religion, King but adding, first and foremost, faithfulness to the government.[5] However, in the 1970s, the Thai extreme right-wing Buddhist and anti-communist Nawaphon organization saw itself as "the only group that [was] ready and able to defend the nation, the satsana, and the king."[6]

In 1984, in an attempt to explain this motto, David K. Wyatt referred to it as a "trinitarian mystery in which all three elements were inextricably bound together".[7]

The Cambodian Constitution of December 1993 integrated Nation, Religion, King as the official motto of the restored monarchy in its fourth article. It in fact matched the "three constants of post-Angkorian Cambodian political history, namely, the Buddhist monarchy, the Theravada Sangha (community of monks), and the village-based society of ethnic lowland Khmer".[2]

The Nation, Religion, King motto is often represented by the flags of Thailand and Cambodia.

In Cambodia, the motto is reflected in the order of the three national flags of Cambodia that must be raised in all public spaces as reminded in official government directives, with the national flag in the central most important position, than the Buddhist flag and finally the royal standard.[8]

More symbolically in Thailand, the colours of the flag of Thailand are said to stand for nation-religion-king, an unofficial motto of Thailand,[9] red for the land and people, white for religions and blue for the monarchy, the last having been the auspicious colour of Rama VI.