Blasphemous Burmese days!

Native spiritualism is something that we readers of colonial texts have come to expect. We see elements of it in Passage, in HD, in Lord Jim. So no surprises to see it in Burmese days--Burmese beaters conduct a sacrificial rite prior to the hunt, Ma Kin is deeply concerned about acquiring merit. What does interest me is what seems to be a not-so-subtle subversion of the usual native worship of native gods to a textual worship of White culture.
For starters, the terms “most holy god” and “the holy one” pop up routinely when the Burmese servants address White men. The European Club is referred to first as “the spiritual citadel”, and later as “that holy of holies”. The murder of a White man (Maxwell) is “a sacrilege”. Really, it is almost impossible to miss the religious (pun intended of course) spiritualization of Whiteness.
In the event that we did, however, the text certainly seems to take further steps to reiterate the point—mainly by eroding the position of prescribed native and European religion. U Po Kyin’s methods of acquiring merit turn Buddhism into something like a commercial enterprise where money is everything—purchasing a pagoda/salvation is akin to purchasing just another commodity. The pre-hunt sacrificial rite I mentioned earlier is attended to by Burmese with “serious, bored faces, like men in church”, implying with that single quote the spiritual apathy in both the ‘natives’ and the White Christians. In fact, the church service that takes place later in the book is described as “the great social event of their lives.” So. The sacred space of religion has become nothing more than a mating or match-making ground. Where is the reverence for the divine? It appears to be lost. Subsumed, I suppose, by the worship of Whiteness, or that “most holy god”.