Worshipping Independence in Contemporary Cambodia

Napakadol Kittisenee (Spirit in Education Movement)

David Chandler (1983) has posed the moving question: If Cambodia had long been in the period of, in Marxist terminology, mystification, what did the independence gained from French Protectorate in 1953 really mean to Khmer society? With this regard, the paper aims to investigate the meaning of building and re-building of the more tangible manifestation of independence-independence monuments-as the sacra of independence worshipped in contemporary Cambodia.

By looking at the monuments as the sacred images of success in societal liberation or salvation, the author further explores in-depth by asking: What does the ‘independence’ look like iconographically? What is the ‘merit’ of building and re-building those monuments? How do the monuments activate ‘the sense of being independent’? How does contemporary Cambodia accommodate the independence monuments? And most importantly, how did the independence monuments survive from the suppressive Khmer Rouge regime? Ethnographic and historic approaches are employed to decode these politico-religious monuments.