Maynooth University Faculty of Social Sciences

Newstalk have broadcast a dramatised documentary about the life of U Dhammaloka (Laurence Carroll), an Irish-born hobo, Buddhist monk and decolonial activist who hit the world headlines in the early twentieth century. Produced and presented by Noel Sweeney and funded by Coimisiún na Mean, the documentary covers Dhammaloka’s journey from migrant worker to Buddhist celebrity, his dramatic challenge to empire in Rangoon’s Shwedagon pagoda, his trial for sedition and final disappearance – and the parallels to today’s multi-ethnic pro-democracy revolution in Myanmar.
U Dhammaloka’s life as one of the first western Buddhist monks and a powerful opponent of colonialism, which he analysed as “the Bible, the whiskey bottle and the Gatling gun”, was the subject of a ten-year research project by Laurence Cox (Maynooth Sociology), Alicia Turner (York University Toronto) and Brian Bocking (UCC) funded among others by an IRC Advanced Grant, a Canadian SSHRC grant and the Dhammakaya Foundation and collaborating with scholars across Asia. Their Oxford University Press monograph The Irish Buddhist: the Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the British Empire has been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal and the research presented around the world from Princeton to Kyoto.
The 47-minute documentary tells the story through interviews, dramatic reenactments and factual storytelling. It can be heard on https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/newstalk-documentary/laurence-carrolls-mindful-anarchy-u-dhammaloka-the-irish-buddhist-of-rangoon