Bunga Pari and Bunga Tani: Racial Consciousness and Motherland’s Gratitude

Abstract

       This paper aims to study the theme of racial consciousness and gratitude towards motherland in Win Leowarin’s two novels; Bunga Pari and Bunga Tani. This study is to show that these two aspects are essential and interrelated. Persons with strong racial consciousness is not regarded lacking gratitude to the motherland. In the same manner, those persons must not sacrifice their racial identities and roots in order to proof their loyalty to their homeland. Considering the mutual significance of both racial consciousness and gratitude towards motherland is possibly attributed to the sense of patriotism and acceptance of the “nation-state” in modern Thai society. Analyzing these two novels, which are contextualized and looked at his writing’s style, I have come to the conclusion that Win Leowarin aims at using his novels as a tool to establish the ideology of “patriotism” of all races or ethnicities, and especially of the Malay Muslims, which are the main characters in these two novels.