Renford Davies
Arguably one of the world’s wildest street parties, Thailand’s iconic Songkran water festival has achieved new heights of fame. In December, UNESCO announced that Songkran would henceforth be recognized as an event of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH).
Its recognition, according to UNESCO, underscores the cultural significance and enduring value of Songkran, promoting “community, cooperation, unity, and forgiveness.”
Celebrated from April 13 to 15 each year to mark the Thai New Year, Songkran’s rituals are known for the splashing or sprinkling of water – symbolizing a cleansing and purification process. Buddha images are gathered and washed, and it’s a time for paying respect to one’s elders, giving alms to monks, and appreciating traditional Thai food and music.
Thailand is not alone in celebrating with a water festival. Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia also take to throwing water – though the exuberance has been dampened in Myanmar since the 2021 coup and outbreak of conflict.
CROWDED VS DESERTED
The contrast between Thailand and Myanmar will be extreme in this “water-throwing season”. The Land of Smiles will see raucous celebration with millions on the streets – and millions of tourist dollars injected into the economy, whereas the streets of the Golden Land are likely to be deserted, with military-junta “street parties” poorly attended, as the population make clear their dislike of the post-coup status quo.
Thailand’s success and Myanmar’s failure to score the UNESCO badge of honour for this cultural heritage event or season that both countries share is an indicator of how differently the two countries have weathered military political interference. Both countries have experienced political instability – including coups and deadly street protests – but Thai juntas have tended to be business, tourism and media friendly, whereas Myanmar juntas have been heavy-handed with restrictions, as some tourists remember prior to 2010 when they were only able to obtain “Seven Day Visas”. Today, only a few Russian and Asian tourists venture into crisis-hit Myanmar.
So, what is the secret of Thailand’s success?
REGIONAL & WORLD FESTIVITIES
Thailand’s Songkran and the regional water festivals join a long list of distinguished ICH-recognized social practices, rituals, performing arts, and festive events around the world, such as Belgium’s Beer culture; Spain’s Festival of the Patios in Cordova; shadow puppetry in China; and even the whistled language in Turkey’s Çanakçi region.
The UNESCO recognition is a proud moment for Thailand and will contribute to elevating Songkran on the calendar of world tourism events.
The current Pheu Thai-led government has wasted no time in laying forth a plan to extend Songkran celebrations throughout the entire month of April. Called the ‘World Water Festival,’ the tourism campaign aims to transform Songkran into a global event and promote it as the country’s soft power. The festivities are expected to be rolled out gradually with the aim of boosting arrivals to 35 million foreign tourists over the year – generating significant revenue.
UNESCO’s recognition of Songkran may surprise some people, given the festival’s evolution over the last two decades, with wild water fights and unabashed revelry, seeming a far cry from the more conservative, traditional family values that lie in its roots.
Tracing Songkran’s beginnings is challenging, but it is believed to have its origins in a Hindu spring festival that marked the arrival of the new harvest season in ancient India. Called the Makara Sankranti festival, it celebrated the sun’s entrance into the water sign Aquarius, marking a new astrological period.
Undoubtedly, the ‘Indianization’ of Southeast Asia played a crucial part in bringing the festival to Thailand. This influence was transmitted through various means, with maritime trade playing a major role.
From the beginning of the second century C.E., trade from India and Sri Lanka moved into the region via the isthmus of the Malay Peninsula, spreading along the coast of the Gulf of Siam, and then through maritime trade routes across the gulf to southern parts of Vietnam.
KHMER EMPIRE
There is evidence that the festival was later adopted by the Khmer Empire, which ruled vast regions of Southeast Asia. Like the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, and Egypt, the Khmer Empire was a society of rich and complex rituals involving elements of what could be described as paganism – the worship of natural elements, including the sun and water.
The city of Angkor itself – heart of the Khmer Empire – incorporated elements of sun and water worship in the architectural alignment of its temples and man-made baray reservoirs. People of the Khmer Empire bathed under the sun in the belief that it cleansed the soul of bad karma. They called it “Sangkran” or “Songkran,” derived from the ancient Sanskrit language, and the word “saṃkrānti,” meaning “astrological passage.”
Over several centuries, from the 13th century onwards, the primarily Hindu Khmer Empire began its transition to Buddhism. The focus of the festival shifted towards merit-making, with people presenting offerings of food and prayers to monks and temples throughout the region. The element of ‘making merit,’ which Thais call ‘tam bun,’ remains a key part of the Songkran festival today.
The earliest evidence of Songkran in Royal Family Law appeared during the reign of King Baromatrailokkanat in the 15th century, during the Ayutthaya Kingdom, the precursor state to modern Thailand. Processions full of pomp and ritual were led by the king to the temple, where he would offer symbolic gifts to Buddha, followed by a ritual ‘Washing of the Buddha.’
No record of water splashing and revelry has been documented from the Ayutthaya period, and as journalist and cultural scholar Sujit Wongthet has pointed out, even as recently as King Rama III (1824-1851), a poem about Songkran from that period makes no mention of people splashing each other with water.
WILDER ANTICS
Some scholars speculate that the origins of water splashing began in 1889, when King Chulalongkorn moved the Thai New Year to April 1; however, it is more likely that this is an attempt by Thailand’s more conservative elements to give the festival’s contemporary water-splashing antics more respectability.
In fact, Sujit, who has also criticized Thailand for its excessive materialism and what he calls the Americanization of Thai culture, suggests that the festival’s water fights are a modern development, stating, “The water fights were encouraged and adopted in modern times to promote tourism.”
This is perhaps the most likely explanation. Over the last three decades, Thailand has campaigned hard to promote tourism in the country. In the late 1990s, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) launched its highly successful ‘Amazing Thailand’ tourism campaign, showcasing the country’s diverse attractions.
Thailand has sought to leverage everything from their tasty food to the flurry of punches and kicks in the popular spectacle of Muay Thai boxing – the latter a contrast to Myanmar’s martial art called Lethwei, which has a low profile internationally.
While the Amazing Thailand campaign did not specifically promote Songkran, as one of the country’s most important festivals, it was highlighted as an important cultural event “embodying the spirit of Thai hospitality, fun, and community.”
DISCOVER THAINESS
In its more recent campaign ‘Discover Thainess,’ launched by the TAT in 2015, visitors were encouraged to “immerse themselves in authentic Thai experiences”, including participating in cultural activities like Songkran, visiting historical sights, enjoying Thai cuisine, and interacting with local communities.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism accounted for 11 percent of the kingdom’s GDP, a significantly large percentage of its industrial output. Thailand’s innovative and relentless tourism campaigns, promoted by the government and pushed by a powerful tourism industry lobby, have been very successful in positioning Thailand as the region’s tourism gateway, while elevating events like Songkran to heights of success that its regional neighbours could only dream of.
Sujit Wongthet’s claims of excessive materialism are therefore, perhaps not such a far stretch from the truth. While the Thai government has on the one hand promoted family values and community in its tourism campaigns, it has not discouraged the wilder side of Songkran, with its brazen water fights, wild street parties, and alcohol-fuelled road safety issues.
STREET CELEBRATIONS
The epicentre of these Songkran street celebrations could be considered some of Bangkok’s key tourist areas. Khao San Road is perhaps the most well-known. In the 1980s and early 90s, Khao San was a sleepy little street, with a few cheap hostels and guesthouses, but by the beginning of the new millennium, the street and surrounding Banglampu district, was fast becoming a bohemian tourist destination of chic restaurants, boutique hotels, and chain stores, drawing in significant revenue from tourism, as well as from the young Thai middle-class, looking to escape Thai society’s conventional, conservative norms, and expectations.
Many local and international corporations like Coca-Cola and Pepsi now get in on the Songkran act, holding branded music events and other forms of commercial entertainment. Throughout Thailand and even in some parts of the region, the new commercial Songkran formula has been eagerly adopted, but can Thailand truly claim Songkran as a Thai cultural event? Does Thailand deserve the UNESCO crown for Songkran, as a social practice of intangible cultural significance, exclusive to Thai culture?
For most visitors to Thailand, the assumption is that Songkran is indeed a Thai cultural phenomenon, but that is a misconception. Songkran is part of a shared Buddhist culture that is celebrated throughout the region. In countries like Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka, where Theravada Buddhism is predominant, the Buddhist calendar and the Songkran new year festival have been celebrated for centuries.
In Myanmar it is known as Thingyan; in Cambodia, they call it ‘Khmer New Year,’ or Choul Chnam Thmey. In Laos, it’s Pi Mai – also meaning ‘new year.’ In fact, the festival is also known by its ancient name, Songkran, in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
DAMPENED IN MYANMAR
Political and economic stability have, of course, played an important role in enabling Thailand to promote the Songkran festival so effectively. Regionally, political upheaval has dampened celebrations, particularly in Myanmar, where the Thingyan new year festival has become a casualty of the military junta’s repression of its people.
Following the military coup in February 2021, the Thingyan water festival was a muted affair in many cities as people boycotted the holiday celebrations in an act of defiance against the junta regime’s murderous repression. Instead of celebrating, the Thingyan festival was marked with protests against the military’s unjustified power grab. However, the peaceful gatherings were not spared, with the military regime turning the water festival’s holiday into a bloodbath of violence – opening fire on protesters in several locations.
Last year, Thingyan again took place amidst the backdrop of the military regime’s campaign of widespread violence. The festival is usually a time of renewal and an opportunity to reflect on the values of peace and prosperity, but in the last several years, the military junta has shown just how much disdain they have for the peace and prosperity of the Myanmar people.
It is likely Thingyan celebrations will be muted for a fourth year running this year, as the junta has ominously named the end of the holiday, as the beginning of its official military conscription drive – forcing thousands of youths to undergo military training, and serve in the junta’s Armed Forces against rebel forces, who since the beginning of Operation 1027 led by the Three Brotherhood Alliance reinvigorated the resistance, liberating many towns and cities from the junta in the north.
TRADITIONAL CELEBRATION
As is the case in Thailand and Myanmar, the water festival celebrations in Laos and Cambodia mark traditional New Year’s Day in the Buddhist calendar. Like their neighbours, the rituals and traditions in the two countries are similar: A time of family gatherings, paying respect to elders, and visiting temples to make merit.
Cambodia, once the centre of the powerful Khmer Empire, continues to face unique economic and social challenges compounded by the failure of successive governments, since the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Under Pol Pot, traditional festivals like the Khmer New Year were severely suppressed. The regime sought to eradicate cultural and religious practices, considered to be remnants of a decadent past – a threat to their radical ideology. Buddhist temples and shrines were destroyed, and anyone caught participating in traditional festivities could face harsh punishment.
While this tragic past has had a lasting effect on the Cambodian people, Songkran has become a much-anticipated holiday in this rural country, with traditional rituals involving the family and merit making taking place at local temples. In the capital, Phnom Penh, and larger cities, the water fights mimic those in Thailand, although more subdued – reflecting the more conservative nature of a people, still stepping cautiously out of a not-too-distant past of repression and tragedy.
Laos has perhaps been the most successful of its mainland neighbours in finding a balance between traditional social practices and rituals, and the Americanized party culture of the West that has taken over Songkran’s street celebrations in Thailand, and to a smaller extent, Cambodia.
Ironically, Laos’ one-party communist state, which dominates all aspects of politics and harshly restricts civil liberties, has shielded the country from direct western influence. As a result, Laos has found a unique niche in the tourism industry – marketing itself as a boutique destination of historical and cultural interest. Its cultural events – like Songkran – are a charming showcase of tradition: Street markets, local cuisine, crafts, and traditional temple processions, costumes, and dance – all conjure up the delicate aesthetics of The Orient in a past age of spiritualism and worship.
UNESCO CRITERIA
There are what UNESCO describes as “five broad domains” under which Intangible Cultural Heritage is “manifested.” Thailand falls into the third domain, covering “social practices, rituals, and events.” UNESCO describes this domain as “habitual activities that structure the lives of communities and groups and are shared by and relevant to many of their members.”
It is not publicly known how UNESCO arrived at selecting Thailand as the champion of Songkran, but its decision may appear to be somewhat of a distortion of the event’s shared cultural and historical significance in the region.
In the face of ASEAN’s historical failure to unite the region, and condemn human rights atrocities, war crimes, and even a genocide perpetrated by one of its own members, some might have considered it would have been refreshing to see UNESCO award the Intangible Cultural Heritage flag to the Southeast Asian region – not just to Thailand. After all, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia celebrate and honor their water festival culture.
Its decision is, after all, based on Songkran’s ability to promote “community, cooperation, unity, and forgiveness,” – qualities that are lacking in the region’s slow progress towards civil liberties and prosperity for all its people.
At the end of the day – putting the UNESCO award to Thailand aside – much of the Southeast Asian region will take time out to celebrate this water festival season and welcome a dousing with water in what is turning out to be a particularly hot “hot season”.
Originally published as Water festival recognized by UNESCO in Mizzima Weekly.
