ABSTRACT
Postcolonial studies argues that, unlike the earlier nationalists who understood themselves and their values as completely antithetical to colonialism, nationalist discourse and the postcolonial state never escaped the grip of colonial power. European Buddhist converts, and particularly working class and beachcomber monks, defied the categories and assumptions that defined Victorian colonial propriety. Leela Gandhi argues that certain figures in these movements, all on the fringes of Victorian reform movements, were able to build real solidarity between Asians and Europeans and to offer a critique of colonialism that stepped outside the logic of colonial power. U Dhammaloka offers a sophisticated critique of British colonialism in its religious, cultural and material modes, like that which Leela Gandhi has identified as a politics of friendship. The theme of the Bible, the bottle and the knife resonated in Dhammaloka's sermons and written work because it was an easy and concrete means of encapsulating the whole problem of colonialism.
