Plan to legalise nuns' status

Bill will recognise them as female priests

Sanitsuda Ekachai

Plans are afoot to legalise the status of Buddhist nuns who have long ex perienced religious discrimination in Thailand. But many are still sceptical of its feasibility.

Nun Kanittha Wichiencharoen, former women rights advocate and social worker, said she is proposing a bill which would give legal recognition to nuns as Buddhist clerics as well as financial support for their education and other development.

She said Deputy Education Minister Chaowarin Latthasaksiri has promised to give full support for the proposed bill which will recognise nuns as female priests.

At present, the head-shaven, white-robed nuns have ambiguous status and suffer a negative image as temple servants or escapists.

It is hoped that formal recognition and state assistance would provide structural support for religiously inclined women to choose nunhood as well as give them necessary assistance to develop themselves.

Buddhist experts and the nun community, however, disagree with her moves.

The proposed bill is actually designed after the 1962 Monks Bill which is dictatorial and hierarchical, thus violating the Buddha's guidelines on democratic, participatory self-governing.

Many monks are unhappy with the bill but the clergy council which enjoys absolute power entrusted by the bill refused to amend it.

"Why copy what has proved a failure?" asked respected thinker Prawase Wasi.

The feudal administration has weakened the 300,000-strong monk community, making them unable to adjust themselves to modern challenges, he said.

Prof Dr Prawase advised nuns to keep their organisational flexibility and to strengthen themselves through networking instead of being paralysed by hierarchical control.

Nun Arun Pet-urai, secretary of the Thai Buddhist Nuns Institute, said the nuns' community welcomes formal recognition but they need much more time and discussion to make sure that the secular does not violate the Buddha's original regulations.

She said most in the nuns' community disagree with Nun Khunying Kanittha's drafted bill.

Nun Khunying Kanittha and the nuns' community will meet tomorrow and Tuesday at the Sathira Dhammastan to iron out their differences.

But Santisuk Soponsiri, another Buddhist expert, said he saw zero possibility that the proposed bill would materialise.

Such a legislative move, he said, is set to face fierce opposition from monks.

The lowest level of clerics, which are novices, must subscribe to a minimum of 10 precepts. Nuns, meanwhile, practise only eight precepts, making them illegible to be clerics as demanded by the drafted bill.