Commentary/ Rajeev Srinivasan

Requiescat in pace, Cambodia?

I have always wanted to visit the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia. I tried several years ago to contact their representative at the United Nations (as they did not have an embassy in the US). I was told, rather grimly, that the country was in a state of war, and therefore no tourists would be allowed. Alas, the country is still at war. The coup d'etat last week by Hun Sen means further misery for this anguished nation. I will not get to Angkor Wat any time soon.

That is a shame. Southeast Asia is my favourite travel destination; I have enjoyed going to Java, Bali, Thailand, and so forth both because of the natural beauty and because of the associations with India. Rabindranath Tagore once said that he found Indonesia, for example, interesting, because he saw India all around?. One feels almost at home because it all seems quite familiar.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visits to Borobudur and Prambanan, for example, in central Java. These are Buddhist and Hindu monuments dating back about a thousand years. Borobudur is the largest structure in the Southern Hemisphere, a huge mountain of sculpture that depicts the various levels of the Buddhist universe. Prambanan, lesser-known, is a complex of three temples, to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. On full-moon nights, they host a Ramayana ballet there.

Cambodia in particular is poignant because it is home to some of the grandest Hindu monuments in the world. Some even say Angkor Wat is the world's largest Hindu temple, although it is probably more accurate to say it is the world's largest example of the synthesis of Hindu and Buddhist artistic traditions. There is a seamless mixture of Hindu deities and Buddhist sculptures in this fantastic monument which is under constant attack from the surrounding jungle.

Angkor Wat is one of the world's greatest examples of what man has built in the name of God. Much like the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, or the Madurai Meenakshi temple, and dating back to approximately the same time frame. It never ceases to amaze me how religion can inspire men to build these wonderful and lasting testaments of their faith.

The Indian influences date back several centuries to the time when almost all of Southeast Asia, as far east as Vietnam, was culturally affiliated with India. The Cholas under Rajendra Chola and Rajaraja Chola in the twelfth century C E established a maritime empire by defeating the Srivijaya kingdom of Indonesia. Other historical links include one between the Chalukyas and Bali. Even today, the classical art of much of Southeast Asia is recognisably Indian-influenced.

The Khmers of what is now Cambodia --I wonder if this is the Khamboja mentioned in the Mahabharata -- established empires in Southeast Asia that lived in constant tension with the Siamese and the Annamese. However, from about 1300 C E they had been at peace. Therefore, the recent history of unending conflict is especially tragic; and alas, the Americans have not exactly covered themselves in glory in this saga.

In the early 1970s, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon ordered up an intense bombardment of Cambodia, suspecting it (probably rightly) of being part of the supply chain for North Vietnamese troops. The net result, unfortunately, was severe hardship and alienation of the public, which enabled the shadowy Khmer Rouge to come to power in 1975.

The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan, pursued an extreme form of utopian Maoist peasant dogma, which believed that anybody who was an 'intellectual' -- roughly meaning anybody who was literate -- was an enemy of the State. They were to be liquidated, and so they were, in large prison camps. The killers kept detailed and painstaking records of the 'confessions' and the life stories of those they murdered. These accounts are now coming to light, and they are absolutely chilling.

In the three years 1975 to 1978, the Khmer Rouge practised perhaps the worst instance of genocide this century. They killed about 600,000 people outright, and another 1.2 million died as a result of their forced evacuation from the cities. The Cambodian Holocaust almost destroyed all artistic and technical skills, in addition to killing about 20% of the population.

Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia has been well documented in The Killing Fields. I once saw this film dubbed in a language I didn't understand; the visuals were absolutely horrifying. A documentary film recently chronicled the painstaking revival of the Royal Cambodian Ballet -- out of its 220 members, only eight survived the purges. And then there are all those photographs of pyramids made of human skulls in interrogation centres/prison camps.

The Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown when Vietnam invaded Cambodia, and installed the Hun Sen government. With UN-sponsored elections, a sort of normalcy was returning to Cambodia, and once again tourists were returning to Angkor. The mercurial King Norodom Sihanouk and his son Prince Norodom Ranariddh were part of the ruling coalition, along with Hun Sen.

Just weeks ago, the Khmer Rouge finally appeared to be on the run. Pol Pot was rumoured to be on the verge of being captured. But alas, it was not to be, and Hun Sen has taken control. It is not clear that Pol Pot can be brought to trial for crimes against humanity very soon, and the terrible legacy of the Khmer Rouge brought to rest.

Cambodian refugees, like their more famous Vietnamese counterparts, the Boat People, have made their way to the US, thanks to American policies that support refugee immigration. The Tenderloin District of San Francisco, a bleak downtown ghetto, now houses quite a few of them; I understand the old mill towns of Massachusetts also has sizeable Cambodian populations, as do some farming communities such as Stockton in California.

In the meantime, the looting and pillage of the antiquities at Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Bayon continue apace. The distinctive, square jawed heads of Khmer sculptures are found aplenty, I am told, in the international black market in antiquities. And the Khmer Rouge did use some of the temples for target practice as well.

There have been efforts to preserve the monuments there against the encroachment of the jungle, and to restore them to their former glory. Indian experts, under UNESCO auspices, were doing the restoration work, although there were complaints from the French (the former colonial power) that inappropriate and harmful methods were in use.

A few tourists did make the rather dangerous trek to Siem Riep province, where the temples are located, in the last few years, as there was relative calm in the area. My intrepid friend Sandra Cook actually made it to Angkor Wat, but she told me it was a tense experience, as there was constant gunfire in the distance fighting continuing between the government and the Khmer Rouge.

I do hope that one of these days Cambodia will cease to be a plaything for various foreign powers -- the French, the Americans, the Vietnamese, and so on -- and that the Bharata Natyam-like Cambodian ballet will once again be performed in Phnom Penh on a regular basis. And then maybe I will finally get to visit Angkor Wat.

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