Multiplying Buddhist Missions—Singapore, Bangkok, Penang
This chapter discusses the activities of the Irish Buddhist monk and anti-colonial activist U Dhammaloka in Siam (today’s Thailand), the Straits Settlements, and Federated Malay States (today’s Singapore and Malaysia) in 1903–5. It discusses his alliance with the saopha (ruler) of the Shan state of Kentung on the Burmese borders, his foundation of a bilingual school at Wat Ban Thawai in Bangkok, his finding a Chinese patron in Singapore, founding of a Buddhist school and mission there and involvement with multiethnic networks, his work in Penang, and his time in India. The chapter also discusses the plebeian cosmopolitanism which he both embodied and drew on: an everyday cooperation across supposedly fixed ethnic and racial barriers that characterized both mundane labour and Buddhist revival movements in this period.