Irish-born monk U Dhammaloka spoke in colonial Burma in the early 1900s

When the Irish-born monk U Dhammaloka spoke in colonial Burma in the early 1900s, he didn’t hold back, as historian Lawrence Cox explains. He laid bare what empire looked like to ordinary people: religion as a tool of conquest, military power as its enforcer, and alcohol as the poison that followed. His words cut through the polite masks of colonial “civilization” and named the machinery for what it was—control through the Bible, the gun, and the bottle.

Listen: https://insightmyanmar.org/complete-shows/2025/4/30/episode-342-an-irish-bhikkhu-in-burma 

This wasn’t abstract theory. Burmese Buddhists were watching Western Christian missionaries arrive with scripture in hand, backed by the authority of empire. They saw cannons pointed at their pagodas. They watched communities hollowed out by liquor and opium. Dhammaloka’s fierce critique connected those dots, showing how colonial power worked on the soul, the body, and the community all at once.

And how people responded! Crowds gathered in their thousands to hear this shaven headed, barefoot Irishman in robes call out injustice in their own land. His message resonated not just because he was foreign, but because he was willing to break ranks—crossing racial, religious, and cultural lines to side with those on the receiving end of empire.

The Bible. The Gatling gun. The whiskey bottle. More than a century later, the formula is recognizable. Ideology, violence, and exploitation still often travel together. Dhammaloka’s voice reminds us to question the stories we’re told, to recognize the weapons—spiritual or material—that come disguised as progress.