The Wat and Thewalai: Toward New Paradigms of Interpreting the Thai Hindu Tradition

The question of how Hindu communities have emerged and flourished in countries as far apart as Canada and Cambodia has been extensively studied by scholars in numerous disciplines that includes religious studies, global history, and the sociology of migration. Covering expansive geographic and historical terrains, the populations, and traditions that these studies address are frequently subsumed within umbrella terms like Hindu Diaspora, Global Hinduism, or Transnational Hinduism. A proliferation of conference panels and edited volumes have met the challenge of studying these diverse case studies from disparate places consisting of Hindu minorities which may otherwise have very little in common. Yet, as the theme of our panel suggests, does the act of assimilating varied expressions of Hindu-ness within the overarching rubric of the Hindu diaspora erase the fruits of effort to understand the cultural nuances and complex institutional dynamics which distinguish Hindu traditions worldwide? Drawing on the work of scholars such as Tracy Pintchman and Knut Jacobsen, this paper (and panel more broadly) pushes us to undertake a more serious investigation of Hindu traditions outside the Anglosphere which, considering the role of the English language as a primary vehicle for transnationally communicating notions of “Hindu identity, discourse, and politics” (Jacobsen 2023), has dominated the subfield of Global Hinduism.

My contribution to this panel is derived from an ongoing project located in Thailand. Despite having been a Buddhist country for a very long time, a number of scholars have recognized the crucial role played by beliefs and practices that we today categorize as Hindu in determining key dimensions of mainstream Thai religion (Jackson 2020; Ferguson and Ayuttacorn 2021; McGovern 2021). Drawing upon this fieldwork, this presentation introduces ethnographic vignettes from two temples in the Bangkok neighborhoods of Chachoengsao and Ramintra. In the last decade, Chachoengsao has acquired a new epithet: National Ganesha City. Indeed, its skyline has expanded to include three mammoth statues of the Hindu god Ganesha that are enshrined in three, independent temples. The oldest of the three temples, Wat Samān Rattanāram, possesses a flashy, pink-colored Ganesha statue that is represented in a lying-down posture. Founded in the late-nineteenth century, Wat Samān is a Buddhist temple that is staffed by monks initiated into the Dhammayut fraternity, the royally-sponsored, and conservative faction of Thai Buddhism’s two principal monastic orders. Following the Great Asian financial crisis (1997), the temple had fallen upon tough economic times. At the same time, its abbot reported a dream in which he was visited by Ganesha who, in the abbot’s words, expressed a desire to help Chachoengsao’s residents redirect themselves toward becoming better Buddhists. Thus, the abbot solicited a local engineer to design a Ganesha statue. Because the temple had limited funds, the project had to be completed within a single rainy season.  Although the engineer consented, he was doubtful of his capacity to construct the statue within the allotted time, given that heavy rainfall could hinder any progress. Wondrously, the rains only fell after sunset during that season, leaving the daytime dry and conducive to a time-efficient construction schedule. As news of this miracle spread through the country, Wat Samān’s activities have yielded profitable returns. Today, Wat Samān retains its primary identity as a Buddhist wāt and monastery which houses dozens of monks and novices. However, it also has a separate Ganesha-based theme park located within its land that contains hundreds of statues featuring unique representations of Ganesha and other Thai, Indian, and Chinese divinities.

The second site that my presentation examines represents an emerging genre of Hindu-influenced Bangkokian religious organizations—the Thewalai (a Thai rendering of the Sanskrit devālaya) that, unlike the Buddhist wats described in the previous paragraphs, are more focused on introducing common Thai citizens to South Asian modes of worshipping deities like Ganesha, Kartikeya, Shiva, and the various manifestations of Shakti. Among the dozens of Thai thewalais, Thewalai Khanetinsuan in the Bangkok suburb of Ramintra has distinguished itself because of the persistent efforts of its founder—P’Bon—to establish close relationships with elite temples in North India. P’Bon received significant international attention because of a Ganesh Chaturthi puja that he organized in 2015 which featured a large gathering of Thai devotees who, while offering a ladoo-cake to a designer-made Ganesh murti during an aarti ritual, were joyously singing “Happy Birthday to you.”  As short clips of P’Bon’s event were shared on various social media platforms, they also drew the notice of Mumbai-based TV channels who were wonderstruck by images of Thai Buddhists demonstrating such profound feelings of affection for an Indian god. In the following year, Thewalai Khanetinsuan representatives were invited by organizers of Mumbai’s autumnal Ganesh Chaturthi to serve as Thai emissaries to Maharashtra’s largest public Hindu celebration. P’Bon continues to make annual trips to Maharashtra during the months of August and September where he designs special Thai-style pandals for Ganesha worship. Additionally, he has built close ties with important Indian Hindu sites such as Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak Mandir and Pune’s Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganesh temple. In fact, the main trustee at the latter institution has donated a specially sculpted replica of the Dagdusheth murti which P’Bon plans to inaugurate in the early months of summer 2024. Once this murti is opened for public darshan, Thewalai Khanetinsuan’s administrators claim that it will be the first Ganesh icon in Thailand to be blessed by Brahmin priests at one of the Maharastra’s wealthiest temples. Considering his strong commitment to Indian Hindu temples, it may be tempting to believe P’Bon has adopted Hinduism as his primary religion. Yet, when asked to answer questions regarding his identities, P’Bon replies: “I am a Thai Buddhist who loves the Mahadeva and Lord Ganesha.”

Using these case studies, I explore the following question: what are the different ways in which Bangkok residents, several of whom self-identify as Buddhist, engage with monuments, icons, and religious practices associated tremendously popular figures in the Indian-Hindu divine pantheon like Ganesha? My presentation argues that the dyadic schema of Indianization and Indian immigration provides an insufficient explanation for the pervasiveness of Hindu themes in contemporary Thai religion. To arrive at a more nuanced, and emically-resonant perspective which considers the many layers of Thai Hindu traditions, I turn toward the testimonies of community insiders and offer a place-based paradigm centering commonalities and differences between the two principal kinds of Thai sites wherein we encounter examples of Hindu-ness: the wat and the Thewalai.