The country's many modern hotels boast traditional design blended with modern convenience. Tourists by the planeload are lured to Thailand precisely because the nation and its people know very well how to sell their "Thai-ness.'' The famous smile, the bow, the orchids, the Buddha and other accoutrements of the culture are on display to make outsiders feel they have seen something exotic and genuine while enjoying five-star luxury and air-conditioned shopping.

Indeed Thailand is home to perhaps the most successful self-marketing campaign in recent times, turning itself from a backpackers' backwater to a mainstream resort haven at warp speed.

But a recent political row hints at deeper currents in Thai efforts to come to grips with the world.

When a TV report raised the possibility that a centuries-old golden crown on display at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco had probably been looted from an ancient temple, the government of populist prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was recently granted a second term with a thumping majority, seized on the affair.

Thaksin, his aides said, was incensed. He wanted to buy back the crown from the thieving Americans.

The crown, part of an exhibition entitled "The Kingdom of Siam, The Art of Central Thailand 1350-1800,'' is on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art which bought it in a Sotheby's auction in 1982.

Made of pure gold, weighing five kilograms and standing 19 centimeters tall, the crown has become the latest football in Thailand's identity crisis. Academics dispute the details, and a committee is now examining it all, but the crown is believed to have belonged to King Borom Rajathiraj II and dates back to 1424 during the Ayuthaya Dynasty.

The public has taken to the crown controversy in a big way. What is the crown doing in an American museum? And how can Thais hold their heads high when such an icon of Thai history is in the hands of foreigners?

Forrest McGill, chief curator of the San Francisco museum and a specialist in Thai art, told reporters the whole thing was a puzzle to him.

He said the Philadelphia crown, which may have been stolen by somebody at some time, had been in the public realm for years.

"I don't see what the big deal is. I don't see why it's coming up now,'' he told the San Francisco Chronicle. Furthermore, McGill said, there is no definitive proof that the crown came from the crypt that was looted in 1957.

Ownership of the crown is traced back only to 1965, when Jay Leff, a collector of non-Western art, bought it from a New York antiquities dealer named JJ Klejman, who has since died.

In a written statement, Philadelphia Art Museum director Anne d'Harnon-court said, "We take the issue of provenance very seriously and would be ready to explore any questions about the history of the object with the appropriate Thai officials.''

Experts and bureaucrats are now preparing a claim for the crown's retrieval. Visitor numbers have doubled at the Chao Samphraya National Museum in the ancient city of Ayuthaya where gold ornaments similar to those visiting San Francisco are on permanent display.

Kavi Chongkittavorn, the Assistant Group Editor of The Nation newspaper said the matter is pure politics. "Thaksin wants this brought up because he wants to raise the level of Thai nationalism,'' says Kavi. "It is really a way to get back at negative foreign reports, like the recent US State Department report criticizing human rights violations in Thailand.''

Ironically, the theft of the crown is said to have been carried out by a gang of 21 Thais. One of them, 78-year old Li Kasemsang, has lamented to the press about how his life has never been the same since.

His message is clear: Don't mess with traditional Thai-ness or your life will be misery. The assumption is that we all know what Thai-ness really is - the primacy of social calm and order in a patriarchal, hierarchical society in which people display cool hearts, gratitude and public diffidence. The crown saga has given the powers-that-be a fresh opportunity to assert these sacred notions of Thai tradition by defining an outside enemy and exposing the rich royal roots of Thai society.

"Mr Thaksin won't miss such an opportunity,'' said government critic Senator Kraisak Choonhavan.

"But nationalism here has at times become ultra-nationalism and almost racist, allowing radio hosts to come out with hate programs.''

Local right-wing radio shows have railed against Americans for daring to hold on to the crown.

Curiously, nowhere has there been any suggestion that Thais might welcome the exposure of glorious Thai history and art through an exhibition reaching the international community.

Instead, the crown - similar to a famous stone lintel from the ruins of the Phanom Rung temple in 1988 - has become a symbol of national pride.

"To me the interesting thing is that there has been absolutely no focus in any of the news reports on the actual exhibit [in San Francisco], which of course should be seen as a great boon to the image of Thailand,'' notes Dr William Klausner, an anthropologist who has lived in Thailand for 50 years.

"The only focus is on nationalistic posturing and this fits in well with - indeed is part and parcel of - the Thai approach to the conflict in southern Thailand.

"This nationalistic posturing always comes forth at periods of crisis, and certainly the south has generated crisis.

"The posturing very quickly segues into xenophobia and takes people's minds off daily problems, the southern issues and so on.''

The whipping-up of nationalist fer-vor is hardly unique to the Thai government. It has proven an effective political strategy almost anywhere when a ruling elite wants to control notions of nation-hood in the face of popular challenge.

The ongoing Greek-British argument over the Elgin Marbles, which have been housed in the British Museum for 150 years but are now an object of claims that they are stolen property, is one example.

Even humble New Zealand has had its upsets over the presence of Maori heads in a London museum.

But academics and analysts see Thaksin's deliberate stoking of an identity crisis in somewhat sinister terms.

Although the tsunami helped everyone forget it for a while, people are being killed almost every day in the four southern provinces of Thailand where a Yawi-speaking Muslim majority feels marginalized and ignored by the nation-state of Thailand as epitomized by ancient crowns and Buddhist temple lintels.

At the other end of the country, manifold hill-tribe people are in a daily battle for identity papers, work and homes.

The nationalistic strategy appeals to nine-tenths of the populace, those who fit traditional notions of Buddhist Thai-ness, but ignores the other tenth, notes Klausner. Increasingly, the narrow definition of Thai-ness is incurring high costs abroad too. Malaysia has become incensed in recent months by the Thaksin government's allegations of southern Muslim insurgents being supported by Malaysia.

Just before the recent Thai election, Thaksin and his foreign ministry broke diplomatic norms by revealing Malaysia's arrest of an alleged southern Thai insurgent, insisting Thailand would seek extradition of the suspect. Malaysia rejected the interference in its judicial affairs.

More dramatically, the Tak Bai massacre on October 25 last year, in which 78 southern Thai Muslims were suffocated to death thanks to the Thai army's brutal carelessness, has enraged Southeast Asian Muslims.

Malaysia, which will host the next meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference later this year, is now considering granting observer status to representatives of the southern Thai insurgents, a slap in the face for Bangkok.

"Nationalism is a double-edged sword,'' Klausner warns. He is not alone in his concerns.

Recent calls by Thaksin's education minister Adisai Bodharamik for yet more national anthem singing and more flag-waving in the nation's schools has upset commentators such as the award-winning writer Sanitsuda Ekachai.

"Tough patriotic talk is common when we feel threatened. In fear we often retreat deeper into our shell of prejudice instead of confronting reality,'' she wrote in December in the Bangkok Post.

At issue whenever a saga over national identity is created, is just what modern Thai-ness consists of and, more crucially, who has the right to define it. Powerful governments like to set the tone. Yet in today's Thailand, they do so against a backdrop of activism across a range of non-government org-anizations, the growth of civil society, struggles by journalists to insist on a free press and demands in business for a fair rule of law.

"The reality is that old Siam was a cultural crossroads,'' Sanitsuda says. "People from all sorts of places and cultural backgrounds came to meet and settle here, sharing their knowledge, technologies and beliefs so they intermingled and enriched one another. This process is much older than the Sukothai kingdom we are made to believe was the first Thai kingdom. The purity of the Thai race is, quite simply, a myth.''

She links the stoking of nationalist fervor directly to the fascism of earlier dictatorships in Thailand: "Since the fascist Pibul regime [in the 1930s], we have been systematically brainwashed to believe the nationalist myth that ours is an homogenous land of a pure and superior race. Consequently we feel within our rights to treat anyone different from ourselves - be they Muslims or hill-tribe - as second-class citizens, even though they are entitled to this homeland as much as we are.''

What makes the posturing yet more puzzling is that Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia not to have been formally colonized. Some aca-demics wonder if a national struggle to overthrow a colonial yoke might not have forged a more secure notion of Thai-ness. Instead, Thai maneuvering and appeasement preserved its formal independence throughout centuries of foreign incursion.

But promoting a mythical Thai-ness through struggles with the Other - such as America's art museums - is an easy way to keep the masses under control.

"For the majority of Thai people, their psyche is rooted in the traditional value system and that value system is very user-friendly to people in power. It involves a respect for authority, an aversion to confrontation, a deference to elders, sacrifice of individualism and much more. Those values are ones which validate those in power,'' Klausner says.

More fascinating to many observers of modern Thailand is the extent to which the traditional, gracious, charming ever-smiling Thai, fixed on order and stability, is now changing under the impact of globalization and grass-roots activism.

"Pressures from emerging values are increasing. In China, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, even in Burma, these pressures cannot be sealed off.

"Unfortunately, those involved in this struggle tend to see it as a zero-sum game,'' Klausner says.

He proposes an active accommodation between old and new, whereby the best bits of traditional culture can be combined with the growing modern interest in equality, justice, freedom of expression and emotional involvement.

"The injunction to maintain a cool heart and avoid confrontation would have to be modulated,'' Klausner says, in order to encourage real debate and opposing viewpoints.

Emotional distance would become less valued, and active engagement in social issues would no longer be negative but instead a necessary element in a functioning democracy.

"Also, karma would no longer be interpreted as a justification for the continued unaccountable control by those in power or as approval and acceptance by the disadvantaged of their being exploited,'' he argues.

The struggle between old and new notions of Thai-ness is played out in Bangkok every day.

In front of parliament, a semi-per-manent camp of rural protesters from the Assembly of the Poor receives visits from politicians and journalists. This path-breaking group was formed a decade ago to protest against disruption caused by rampant economic development, especially the Pak Mun Dam. It began when an elderly broom-maker refused to go along with her village elder's embrace of the new dam, bucking centuries of deference to authority.

Author Philip Cornwel-Smith notes that in modern Thailand's "collision of values, delicate Thai-ness has taken on a harder, commodified edge.'' Traditional wood carvings turn out to be cast in resin. Garland offerings are moulded plastic. Traditional offerings to temple monks are bought pre-packaged in the supermarket.

The clash of values is found in Cornwel-Smith's new book Very Thai, a romp through everyday Thai pop culture that looks at the artifacts of modern Thailand. He looks at commonplace sights such as a 7-11 convenience store next to a Thai temple. Only in close focus does it become clear that the store's distinctive orange, green and red stripe matches the roof design of your average temple.

Looking around a Bangkok street on any day, where sidewalk computer vendors jostle with sacred flower sellers, it's hard to see what defenders of Thai culture feel they have to be afraid of. Thais have managed to retain distinctive cultural behavior patterns regardless of the pressures of global-ization. If the old and new merge to create a new synthesis of Thai-ness, asks the book, what's the problem?

Instead of creating a fear and loathing of incursions into Thai's mythologized past, epitomized by the saga over a golden crown whose loss nobody noticed for 22 years, modern Thailand offers much more flux and diversity.

"In one dizzying spasm, Thailand is experiencing the forces that took a century to transform the West. In few places in time do so many subcultures exist simultaneously,'' Cornwel-Smith says.

Thailand's recently created Ministry of Culture tries to police the notion of Thai-ness. This is the ministry which tried to prevent women from wearing strappy tops during Songkran, the annual water festival.

At other times, ideas of Thai-ness were used to suggest that communists are non-Thai, just as Muslim activists are now seen as non-Thai.

As the Thai persona undergoes a facelift, "it appears that today, the idea that Thailand is a uniform and homogenous community is flawed and is itself affecting national security,'' Pravit says.

The best way out, he and other intellectuals say, is to embrace change in order to hone a more inclusive idea of what being Thai is all about.