Bangkok, Thailand - Thousands of Buddhist monks and their followers marched Monday around Thailand's parliament building and launched a mass fast to pressure legislators to designate Buddhism as the national religion in Thailand's new constitution.
Twelve monks have been fasting for the past week outside parliament in a thus far unsuccessful bid to secure national religion status in the constitution now being drafted.
"At noon, a thousand others joined the 12 monks in a fast to force the National Assembly to include Buddhism as the national religion," General Thongchai Kuasakul - president of the Buddhist Network of Thailand, the group pushing for the status - said Monday.
Articles concerning religion in a draft of the new constitution were scheduled to be debated by the National Assembly Monday.
More than 90 per cent of Thailand's population of 65 million people profess to be Buddhists, but the religion was never granted national religion status under the past 18 constitutions written since the country abolished the absolute monarchy in 1932.
Many academics and experts on Buddhism have opposed the movement to nationalize Buddhism in the next charter on the grounds that it would further aggravate problems in the majority-Muslim southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, where more than 2,100 people have died over the past three and a half years in an increasingly violent struggle for autonomy or independence.
"It will only add salt to the wounds," said Sulak Sivaraksa, a renowned Buddhist scholar and social critic.
Sulak opined that the movement to nationalize Buddhism is being driven by two separate groups with very different motives.
"The sincere ones feel that Buddhism is being more and more marginalized in Thai society and feel national religion status will stop the trend," Sulak said. "But there are others who just want to exploit the situation."
Worshippers at Thammagaiya Wat, a popular and immensely wealthy Buddhist temple in the central province of Pathum Thani, are among the chief supporters of the movement to nationalize Buddhism, but the movement has also taken on political overtones.
The temple was a keen supporter of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a military coup on September 19 and remains in exile.
Thaksin, a billionaire businessman who now faces several pending corruption charges, is frequently blamed for being behind the protests and other efforts to undermine the stability of the coup-installed government that is currently in power and threw out the previous constitution.