ABSTRACT
The fall of the revolutionary regime in 1947 led to the formation of neo-royalism and royalist democracy. This chapter analyses the reincarnation of the image of King Prajadhipok in the Royal Constitution Granting Ceremony as a demonstrative sign of the return of the monarchy in politics. It argues that the combination of the King’s iconic image from the ceremony in 1932 and the passage from the King’s abdication letter written in 1935 in the Royal Statue of King Prajadhipok (unveiled in 1981) has constituted a new memory about the origins of Thai democracy. The article explores how this statue, together with other forms of narrative telling and memory making, re-constructed a new discourse on Thailand’s political transformation towards democracy. As a symbol of neo-royalism that combines democracy with anti-communism, the Royal Statue of King Prajadhipok recasts the 1932 Revolution as ‘early ripened, early rotted’ for King Prajadhipok to become the Father of Thai Democracy.
