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Podcast: Insight Myanmar
Episode: In the Name of the Sāsana
Description: Episode #503: Alicia Turner shows that Burmese Buddhists were not passive subjects of British colonialism, but active agents who reimagined Buddhist responsibility, authority, and identity through the concept of the sāsana, the Buddha’s dispensation. Rather than treating colonialism as a simple rupture imposed from outside, her work reveals how Buddhists in Burma drew on their own religious frameworks to interpret crisis, decline, and moral obligation. In doing so, Turner challenges scholarly approaches that privilege nationalism, modernity, or so-called “Protestant Buddhism,” arguing that these lenses often miss how Burmese Buddhists understood and defended their tradition from within. Turner...