This article examines colonial secularism in Burma through a history of the built environment of Rangoon. The creation of the colonial city in the 1850s as an ordered grid of ethnic neighbourhoods and established religions served as a pedagogy of the secular, teaching its population to internalise religious difference. And yet, against this secular vision in brick and pavement there were exceptional spaces that enacted alternative visions. The Thayettaw monastic complex began as home for the diverse displaced ethnic monasteries of the pre-colonial town, but it soon defied the boundaries of colonial rule. Its practice of Buddhism became a mechanism for mobility, interaction, and interconnection.
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Abstract 26 An urban colonial pedagogy of the secular 29 The new secular city 34 The messiness of the mango grove 41 Defying boundaries and difference 42 Thayettaw and its porous boundaries 44 Defying and defining categories 45 Entanglements and conclusions 47
