At midnight on May 31, 1981, the Jaffna Public Library, the crucible of Tamil literature and heritage, was set ablaze by Sri Lankan security forces and state-sponsored mobs. The burning has since been marked by Eelam Tamils as an act of genocide.
Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” – Heinrich Heine – a German poet, writer and literary critic.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the burning down of Jaffna library on 31st May 1981 by the Sinhala mob brought down from the South of Sri Lanka by senior ministers of the Sri Lankan state.
Over 95,000 unique and irreplaceable Tamil palm leaves (ola), manuscripts, parchments, books, magazines and newspapers, housed within an impressive building inspired by ancient Dravidian architecture, were destroyed during the burning. Some texts that were kept in the library, such as the Yalpanam Vaipavamalai (a history of Jaffna), were literally irreplaceable, being the only copies in existence. It was one of the largest libraries in Asia.
The destruction took place under the rule of the UNP at a time when District Development Council elections were underway, and two notorious Sinhala chauvinist cabinet ministers – Cyril Mathew and Gamini Dissanayake – were in Jaffna. Earlier on in the day, three Sinhalese police officers were killed during a rally by the TULF (Tamil United Liberation Front).
The burning continued unchecked for two nights.
Homes and shops across Jaffna town were also set alight by the mob, including the TULF headquarters and the offices of the Eelanadu newspaper.
Virginia Leary wrote in Ethnic Conflict and Violence in Sri Lanka – Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists, July/August 1981, that “the destruction of the Jaffna Public Library was the incident, which appeared to cause the most distress to the people of Jaffna.”
This is a key event in the history of the Sri Lankan state’s genocide against Tamils, as the library was attacked in an aggressive act of biblioclasm, the deliberate destruction of books. By intentionally burning one of the oldest and respected collection of ancient Tamil manuscripts in the whole of south Asia, Sri lankan state deprived Tamils of their immeasurable treasure of cultural heritage.
This was intentional as there was no provocation in the area in which the library stood. The Jaffna district Police Headquarters was in the vicinity of the library when this occurred which shows intent as they were led by former ministers Gamini Thissanayake and Cyril Matthew. These are evidence that the burning of Jaffna Library was an intentional act of cultural genocide as the Sri Lankan government purposefully wanted to erase parts of Tamil history.
70 years of acts of genocide against Tamils calls for the need of justice through an international judicial mechanism and a process to protect the Tamils in the North-East of Sri Lanka.