Lycée Sisowath, noted:
In Khmer, the word for ‘study’ —
riensouth
— is made up of
rien,
which means literally to ‘learn by heart’, and
south,
’the sutras’. So ‘to study’ means ‘to learn by heart and recite’. Where is the spirit of criticism? Where is there any analysis, any synthesis? . . . Cambodia’s art is extraordinary, its literature is rich and abundant. So the absence of critical faculties does not mean that [Khmers] are incapable or inadequate. But in certain areas, it holds them back.
In Khmer tradition, asking questions was discouraged: young people — and subordinates in general — were expected to listen and obey. Samphân remarked that when foreign teachers tried to force the students to think for themselves, many were unable to follow and lost interest in their studies.
With Siphan’s encouragement, Sâr’s work improved. The following year he began preparing for the
dipiôme,
the examination which, in those days, marked the completion of junior middle school.’
*
Meanwhile the defeat of Japan and Germany had opened the way for the return of the French. In October 1945, British troops entered Phnom Penh, ostensibly to disarm the Japanese garrison. A few days later the Prime Minister Son Ngoc Thanh was arrested and packed off to exile in France, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment, later commuted to house arrest. The following January, the Cambodian and French governments signed a
Modus Vivendi,
which provided for the resumption of French rule but also acknowledged Cambodian autonomy, leaving the door ajar for further discussion of the country’s political status.
For the French this was a holding operation, designed to stabilise relations while Paris gradually regained full control. Cambodians saw it very differently. The Japanese occupation had undermined French legitimacy. Independence might have been disallowed, but it was now on the agenda. Not for tomorrow, perhaps, but surely for the day, or the week, or the year after. The principle was not in doubt. All that was uncertain was the timing.
Another factor was at work too. Throughout Cambodian history, politics had been the preserve of the palace. Now, for the first time since the 1860s, a commoner had thrown down the gauntlet to the King. Son Ngoc Thanh’s few months in power had given him a claim to leadership which Sihanouk found hard to counter. Even Sâr, whose interest in politics at that time was virtually non-existent, saw Thanh as an heroic figure, for whom arrest and trial by the French had been a consecration. After his arrest, his close followers fled to Vietnam and Thailand where they linked up with clandestine anti-French movements. The most important of these were the Khmer Issarak (literally, Khmer Freedom Fighters, or Khmer Masters), a group founded in Bangkok in 1940 by Bunchan Mol’s uncle, Pok Khun. The Issarak were manipulated and partly financed by the Thai government, which encouraged them to harass French outposts as a means of pressing Thai claims to Cambodia’s western provinces. During the Vichy period, they were quiescent. But with the war now over and the French demanding the return of Battambang and other Thai-held areas, the Issarak exploded back into life.
In the early morning of April 7 1946, a Sunday, a group of about fifty men, armed with old-fashioned muskets and a couple of machine-guns, attacked the Grand Hotel in Siem Reap, where most of the French officer corps was staying. According to Bunchan Mol, who took part, other, smaller groups tried unsuccessfully to liberate prisoners from the town jail and to attack the houses of government officials. After six hours they were driven off, leaving behind seven French dead and taking with them a quantity of arms. The survivors held out for a week in the ruins of Angkor Wat before retreating to the Dangrek Mountains, a traditional refuge of bandits along the Thai border to the north.
Smaller-scale attacks continued,
In Khmer, the word for ‘study’ —
riensouth
— is made up of
rien,
which means literally to ‘learn by heart’, and
south,
’the sutras’. So ‘to study’ means ‘to learn by heart and recite’. Where is the spirit of criticism? Where is there any analysis, any synthesis? . . . Cambodia’s art is extraordinary, its literature is rich and abundant. So the absence of critical faculties does not mean that [Khmers] are incapable or inadequate. But in certain areas, it holds them back.
In Khmer tradition, asking questions was discouraged: young people — and subordinates in general — were expected to listen and obey. Samphân remarked that when foreign teachers tried to force the students to think for themselves, many were unable to follow and lost interest in their studies.
With Siphan’s encouragement, Sâr’s work improved. The following year he began preparing for the
dipiôme,
the examination which, in those days, marked the completion of junior middle school.’
*
Meanwhile the defeat of Japan and Germany had opened the way for the return of the French. In October 1945, British troops entered Phnom Penh, ostensibly to disarm the Japanese garrison. A few days later the Prime Minister Son Ngoc Thanh was arrested and packed off to exile in France, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment, later commuted to house arrest. The following January, the Cambodian and French governments signed a
Modus Vivendi,
which provided for the resumption of French rule but also acknowledged Cambodian autonomy, leaving the door ajar for further discussion of the country’s political status.
For the French this was a holding operation, designed to stabilise relations while Paris gradually regained full control. Cambodians saw it very differently. The Japanese occupation had undermined French legitimacy. Independence might have been disallowed, but it was now on the agenda. Not for tomorrow, perhaps, but surely for the day, or the week, or the year after. The principle was not in doubt. All that was uncertain was the timing.
Another factor was at work too. Throughout Cambodian history, politics had been the preserve of the palace. Now, for the first time since the 1860s, a commoner had thrown down the gauntlet to the King. Son Ngoc Thanh’s few months in power had given him a claim to leadership which Sihanouk found hard to counter. Even Sâr, whose interest in politics at that time was virtually non-existent, saw Thanh as an heroic figure, for whom arrest and trial by the French had been a consecration. After his arrest, his close followers fled to Vietnam and Thailand where they linked up with clandestine anti-French movements. The most important of these were the Khmer Issarak (literally, Khmer Freedom Fighters, or Khmer Masters), a group founded in Bangkok in 1940 by Bunchan Mol’s uncle, Pok Khun. The Issarak were manipulated and partly financed by the Thai government, which encouraged them to harass French outposts as a means of pressing Thai claims to Cambodia’s western provinces. During the Vichy period, they were quiescent. But with the war now over and the French demanding the return of Battambang and other Thai-held areas, the Issarak exploded back into life.
In the early morning of April 7 1946, a Sunday, a group of about fifty men, armed with old-fashioned muskets and a couple of machine-guns, attacked the Grand Hotel in Siem Reap, where most of the French officer corps was staying. According to Bunchan Mol, who took part, other, smaller groups tried unsuccessfully to liberate prisoners from the town jail and to attack the houses of government officials. After six hours they were driven off, leaving behind seven French dead and taking with them a quantity of arms. The survivors held out for a week in the ruins of Angkor Wat before retreating to the Dangrek Mountains, a traditional refuge of bandits along the Thai border to the north.
Smaller-scale attacks continued,
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