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Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: 'White Buddhist' Statue of Theosophist Henry Steel Olcott, Colombo (c. 1970s)
Description: Jessica Albrecht busts the founding myths of 19th century Buddhist revivalism, through a Statue of Colonel Henry Steel Olcott at Fort Railway Station in Sri Lanka, the former British colony of Ceylon.
Known as the 'White Buddhist', US Colonel Henry Steel Olcott is celebrated for sparking Sri Lanka's Buddhist revival movement in 1880s. Golden statues scatter across the island in tribute to the co-founder of the Theosophical Society, the source of religious and educational reform and resistance to British colonial rule in Ceylon.
But these statues also pose complex post-colonial questions, like whether Olcott's book...