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1 Introduction
Theravada Buddhism in colonial contexts
Thomas Borchert
The experiences of Theravada Buddhist communities within colonialism have never been fully visible to us. Scholars have long assumed that European colonialism played an important role in the development of modern forms of Buddhism, Theravada and otherwise. Indeed in one important narrative, colonialism provided a shock that led to massive changes that manifested in both anti-colonial movements, and in national Buddhisms of the post-colonial states of South and Southeast Asia. This narrative tells part of the story in some parts of Asia, but it is limited. It does not show how Buddhists sometimes resisted, sometimes worked with, and even sometimes ignored the efforts of the colonial masters. It does not show how Buddhist agendas might overlap with colonial agendas, though sometimes only partially. It does not show regional patterns or influences. And it does not show us how Theravada Buddhist communities saw themselves, sometimes as Buddhists, sometimes as Theravada Buddhists, and sometimes as ethnic and/or nationalist subjects. Scholars have long known that Theravada Buddhism and colonialism have a complicated history, though these complexities tend to get lost, either in the generalities of speaking about Buddhism and colonialism in the singular, or in the specificities of particular nation-state and colony experiences. It is our hope here that this volume begins to make visible the ways that Buddhists experienced and lived through colonialism were and are multiple.
Colonial enterprises in Theravada worlds
Colonialism in Southeast Asia has taken place over the course of several hundred years. European colonialism of the Theravada world began in the early sixteenth century, when Portuguese ships came to the island we now refer to as Sri Lanka.1 Over the course of the next 400 years, through several different waves of imperial movements, European states established direct political control over the vast majority of Asia. Indeed, by the early twentieth century, the only significant Asian polities that were not under direct control of European polities were China, Japan and Siam (now Thailand). Moreover, these are generally considered as semi-colonized by European powers and the United States, in part because of the “unequal treaties” that colonizers forced these countries to sign, and in part because many internal decisions were driven by defensive moves against the European forces (as Ratanaporn shows here). As is well known, most of the Theravada world was a part of the British empire, particularly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the period during which most of this volume focuses on (the prevalence of British colonialism is reflected in the fact that six of the ten chapters in this volume are about Theravada communities that were a part of the British empire). British colonialism of Theravada communities began with their seizing control of the coast of Sri Lanka in the late eighteenth century, several decades after the East India Company first established control of the state of Bengal. It was not until 1815, however, that the last king of Kandy abdicated in favor of British control. At approximately the same time, the British defeated Bagyidaw in the first Anglo-Burmese War (1825), taking control of Lower Burma (Upper Burma would maintain its independence until 1885). In both cases, the British asserted that they would not be involved in the management of the sangha (though as several of the chapters here demonstrate, this was not always straight forward, and in any case the British tended to follow this policy when it suited their interests). The British were simultaneously also taking charge of other parts of Southeast Asia that have not been so commonly associated with Theravada Buddhism, namely establishing Singapore (1819) and establishing control of the Malaysian Peninsula over the course of several decades (finalized in 1824 with the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of that year). While these places have been more commonly seen as Chinese and Muslim, Theravada Buddhism came to both places through the labor and immigration policies established by the colonial government over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see Zhang and Samuels in this volume).
There were other colonial regimes in addition to the British. The French came to the region somewhat later, seizing control of Cambodia and Laos and incorporating them into French Indochina along with Vietnam in the late nineteenth century (1884 and 1893, respectively). As a part of this same process, the French-Anglo Treaty of 1896 established the borders of the middle Mekong region, which largely mirror contemporary national boundaries. The politics of empire between these two European powers precipitated internal colonial formations as well. On the one hand, the 1896 treaty established a region known as Sipsongpanna as the southern border of Yunnan Province. While Sipsongpanna, a Tai region where Theravada Buddhism had been common for centuries, had long had tributary relations with China it had also had similar relations with Burmese kingdoms as well as occasionally Lanna (now Northern Thailand). The 1896 treaty formally deeded Sipsongpanna to the Qing, thus obscuring the colonization of Sipsongpanna by Chinese states. Moreover, as Ratanaporn discusses in this volume, British and French actions encouraged the Bangkok-based Chakri dynasty to engage in centralizing policies that led to the internal colonization of Lanna into Siam.
This recitation of dates, treaties, and regimes can be misleading. These are signposts and not necessarily conditions, and they can obscure the incompleteness of colonialism within the polities of Southeast Asia, both those that we normally associate with Theravada Buddhism and those that we do not, such as Singapore, Malaysia, India, and China. For example, just to look at the last example, while Sipsongpanna was formally made a part of the Qing empire (in the eyes of the international community in 1896), the region continued under its own political and cultural system well into the middle of the twentieth century. Indeed, the region’s semi-independent state, which persisted through the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Republic, only ended with the entrance of the People’s Liberation Army into the capitol of Jing Hong in 1953. While the contexts are very different, this case is reflective of comments made by Stephen Berkwitz about the colonial situation of Sri Lanka under the Portuguese during the life of a sixteenth century Sinhala poet:
Although there was a colonial presence in Sri Lanka throughout Alagiyavanna’s entire life [the second half of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries], the strength of this presence varied considerably. As such, there is no single, straightforward ‘colonial context’ that could be used to explain Alagiyavanna’s works. Such a fact reminds us that colonialism is not a singular phenomenon that impacts local culture in a coherent or uniform manner.2
There are several points to take from this. First, although it might seem obvious, when thinking about colonialism and Theravada Buddhism more broadly, it is necessary to recognize that there were several different colonial regimes that varied across Theravada communities throughout Asia. In this volume, for example, there are chapters that discuss British and French colonies, as well as Chinese colonialism and the semi-colonized conditions in Thailand. Different colonial regimes conceptualized the relationship between the center and the periphery in different ways, particularly with regard to the management of religious communities. While the actual political interactions varied on the ground, the British regimes tended to understand a broad distance between the colonizer and the colonized. At the other end of the spectrum, Thai and Chinese states saw the peripheries such as Lanna or Sipsongpanna as very much a part of the nation-state (and so would almost assuredly resist the designation of colonialism). The French tended to be between these, recognizing the civilizational superiority of the metropole, and yet understanding the colonial possessions as being fundamentally part of this. These differences manifested themselves more specifically in the management of religious institutions. Less obviously, different colonies with the same colonial master did not always have the same experiences of colonialism. For example, in Sri Lanka and Burma, the relationship between the sangha (the Buddhist community, but especially monks and novices) and the colonial government was marked, in the long run, by significant conflicts over the management of the sangha, and disagreements over responsibility for the sustaining of Buddhism.3 However, in Singapore and Malaysia, the conditions were quite different. Instead of the British replacing a local Buddhist king, the British were involved in importing Buddhism into the region, through its labor policies. As both Samuels (Malaysia) and Zhang (Singapore) show here, this meant that while there were conflicts between Theravada Buddhists and colonial governments, the relationship had aspects of a partnership (for example in opposing Communists in Cold War yet still colonial Malaysia) and productive rather than oppressive (as in the interactions between Mahayana and Theravada monks in colonial Singapore).
This unevenness of colonialism could be experienced even within a single colony. It is again worth stressing that colonialism of Theravada communities of Southeast Asia was not a singular event, but a series of polices and processes that were imposed upon the people of the region. There is perhaps a tendency to over emphasize the dates that started colonial regimes (as the discussion above does), but the treaties that marked the beginning of colonial regimes did not immediately produce changes in the societies under discussion here. As Owen et al. note, “The process of colonization, like other transnational ones that have affected Southeast Asia (Indianization, Islamization and modernization come to mind), was uneven, fragmented and contested, and its long-run effects varied in scope and intensity from place to place.”4 Obvious examples of this unevenness include the fact that the national space that we now refer to as Myanmar was not immediately colonized, but only over the course of three different wars between 1825 and 1885. Moreover, the policies of the colonial state in Burma varied across time and place, even as they ostensibly were allowing internal management of the sangha. As Kirichenko shows when discussing changes to the position of thathanabaing (the leader of the sangha in Burma), the consequences of colonization into the administration of the sangha, as well as the religious lives of the people, varied over time, indeed reverberating across decades. Similarly, in Sipsongpanna, a tributary relationship at the end of the nineteenth century led to a century long incorporation as an internal colony of the People’s Republic, but as my chapter argues, it was only in the Reform era beginning in the early 1980s that the sangha becomes somewhat centralized. In other words, colonization of Theravada communities is not just a political event, but a long-term process.
Within these processes, it should be unsurprising that Theravada Buddhists responded to colonial projects of governance in a variety of ways. While it is probably a mistake to assume that colonial subjects ever fully recognized the legitimacy of colonial rule, it is equally a mistake to assume that all Theravada Buddhists suffered as a result of colonialism (of whichever community). Although there was certainly domination and resistance to this domination, as the chapters in this volume make clear, there was also working with, appropriation and simply ignoring colonial “masters.” Colonial governing projects opened up opportunities for locals (through education,5 through governing projects, through the intensification of the interactions across the Indian Ocean,6 and colonialism had the effect (whether intended or not) of creating new elites within Southeast Asian societies.7 This is perhaps most obvious in a place like Singapore, where the city itself was the product of colonialism, but it could also be seen in figures like Dr. Beni Madheb Barua who was an Indian scholar of Indian Philosophy, and a professor in a university system that was the product of colonial policies (see Surendran this volume), or the young monks of Lanna at the end of the nineteenth century, who entered into the Dhammayut-Nikaya and served as missionaries of the Bangkok government in their efforts to neutralize the independence of northern Thai monks.8 There has perhaps been a tendency to see figures like these who worked within colonial structures in negative ways, as pawns of the colonial regime, or as weak figures. However, recent work by Anne Blackburn and Alicia Turner has made it clear that Theravada Buddhists who were colonial subjects were actors who could function on several planes—they worked within local logics and agendas, but they could also speak to, with and against colonial projects.9 Thomas DuBois has noted that “Rather than domination, the use of neologisms [such as “religion”] by native actors demonstrated an adaptation of nationalist movements to use the ideological weapons of the Europeans against them.”10 Indeed, as Kirichenko’s chapter on the thathanabaing in this volume persuasively demonstrates, monks or other Buddhist actors that look weak are sometimes in fact effectively using and appropriating colonial governance to their own ends. I am not suggesting here that all actions should be reread as resistance to colonialism. But rather that we should recognize that Theravada Buddhists lived in a complicated world with multiple agendas (only some of which were overtly and obviously Buddhist) and imperfect information and enforcement. We can assume I think that most actors sought to maximize what they saw as the good, or at least their good, but it is not always clear to us what that might have been (or indeed might be). The authors of The Emergence of Southeast Asia highlight the tendency to see colonialism as a “logical, almost inevitable proce...
