Word: sihanouk
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Uncle Nehru. Watching from afar, India's Prime Minister Nehru praised Sihanouk ("a young man with a wise head") and became his long-distance adviser and mentor. Last month, after a state visit to the Philippines, young Sihanouk began expressing views like those of Nehru. Angry at some heavy-handed "advising"' he had been subjected to in Manila, he charged the Philippines with participating in a U.S. plot to ensnare him into the SEATO pact (see above) and protested bitterly that while the U.S. had given the Philippines heavy farm machinery and hospitals, all Cambodia...
Prompted by Nehru, Sihanouk next visited Red China's Premier Chou En-lai in Peking. Up to that moment Cambodia (the most serene of the three states that once made up French Indo-China) had been one of the few remaining countries in Southeast Asia where overseas Chinese, controlling most of the country's transport, banking and merchandising, appeared to retain a basic sympathy with Nationalist China. Said Sihanouk, stepping out of the plane on his return from Peking three weeks ago: "There are two Chinas, but the only China to which Cambodians go is Communist China." Almost...
...Peking Sihanouk had seen high government leaders riding bicycles. Forthwith he ordered his own ministers to supply their own transportation and decided that they must work with their hands once every month in a village, "to get closer to the little people." He issued a general communique: "Don't bow any more or kneel in the dust when you meet me . . . Don't call me Highness or Prince, call me Honorable Comrade." Sihanouk called his new policy the Pancha Shila, or the five principles of purification. He borrowed the words from Nehru, but Sihanouk's five principles...
Shifting Crown. The new Sihanouk role was that of kingmaker. In a ceremony of dazzling Oriental splendor last week he crowned his own father King of Cambodia. Long Sihanouk's close adviser, elderly (60), diabetic Suramarit and his statuesque wife Kossaman are members of the Khmer dynasty which goes back before recorded history, but neither was in the direct line of royal descent in 1941 when the French bent the legitimacy to make young Sihanouk King. Sihanouk, who deeply respects his parents, saw that the coronation got the full Oriental treatment, with dragon dancers, marching mandarins, hundreds of warriors...
...Sihanouk himself performed the ceremony, placing the golden crown on his father's head, while 62 Buddhist monks in bright saffron robes chanted ancient prayers, and a high priest placed a fig leaf behind Suramarit's ear, symbol of long life and wisdom. A few minutes earlier Sihanouk had himself made Premier again, and delivered a little speech accusing the U.S. of wishing to take over and enlarge the Cambodian army. Said a Frenchman, amused by the U.S. predicament, "When he was King, we used to say le Roi est fou [the King is mad]." Last week...