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“A city’s public library is the eye of the city by which the citizens are able to behold the realness of their heritage, and behold the still greater greatness of their future.”
- K. Nesiah (Education and Human Rights in Sri Lanka)
On the 2nd of June every year, Tamils all over the world wake-up with sorrow and grief - over an event that took place twenty-one years ago. It started with the citizens of Jaffna waking up, that many years ago on this fateful morning, to an absolute horror.
On the night of 1st June 1981, the splendid Jaffna public library, housing 97,000 rare books and manuscripts, was burned to the ground. The shock experienced by the men, women and children of Jaffna that morning is indescribable. That day all Tamils lost a piece of themselves. It was the most magnificent piece of architecture (leave aside the treasure it contained) ever created in Thamileelam.
This act of arson was carried out, not by a bunch of nameless hooligans, but by a posse of two hundred officers of the Sri Lankan police force, taken to Jaffna by two senior Sri Lankan Cabinet Ministers (Cyril Mathew and Gamini Dissanayake, both self-professed Sinhala supremacists), ostensibly to oversee an election.
These two Sinhala Cabinet Ministers, who watched the library burn from the verandah of the nearby Jaffna Rest House, subsequently claimed that it was an ‘unfortunate incident’, where a ‘few’ policemen ‘got drunk’ and went on a ‘looting spree’, all on their own. This ‘justification’ has been echoed, and re-echoed, by many Sinhala leaders and the Sinhala media.
Let us look back.
Even in isolation of the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of other raids on Tamils and their properties in the island, this was certainly not the work of ‘drunken-looters’. Looters looking for merchandise don’t burn libraries, even when they are drunk. They do scorch shops and homes after pillaging them, which they did the previous night in the Jaffna bazaar. But, on that night of June first of 1981, they surely weren’t looking to steal books. They were going about decisively and purposefully to wipe out the most treasured cultural possession of the Eelam Tamils – the Jaffna Public Library. And, more importantly, they were under the direct supervision of two Sinhala cabinet ministers of the Sri Lanka government, who had traveled all the way from Colombo to be there.
For Tamils this is only an example, albeit the most glaring, in the grand scheme of genocide in Sri Lanka. Living in a country that constitutionally displays a penchant for Nazi style mono-ethnicity and ethnic purity (in a flag, an official language, and a state religion) for the last fifty years, and having lived through multiple state-sponsored pogroms to eradicate the identity of all others (the Non-Sinhala-Buddhists), there can be no doubt that this was an act of genocide.
Cultural destruction is an integral part of genocide, and literary-works of the target groups is prime game. The practice of ‘book-burning’[i] by the Nazis in the early thirties, as a prelude to the holocaust, is well documented. Frequent public street-side burning of books by the Nazis, primarily those of Jewish writers, such as Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, eventually led to the attack on the Berlin library on 10 May 1933. On this fateful day in 1933, under orders from Doctor Goebbels (Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment!), Nazi gangs raided the Berlin library and burned truckloads of books. Unlike their Sri Lankan counterparts, however, they didn’t burn the building!
Burning of books (or a library full of books) is not the only similarity between the Sinhala government(s) and that of the Nazis.
Dr. Joseph Goebbels
The resemblance of the Nuremburg Laws[ii] (1935), which defined the requirements for citizenship in the Third Reich, to that of the Sri Lankan Citizenship Acts of 1948 and 1949 is truly remarkable. The anti-Tamil pogroms of 1956, 1958, 1961, 1977-1979, 1981, and 1983 are exact replicas of the Kristallnacht of 9-10 November 1938.
The pogrom of 1983 especially, where the killing of 13 Sinhala soldiers by the LTTE was blamed as the trigger for the pogrom, has an uncanny resemblance to the events preceding Kristallnacht. Goebbels blamed the assassination of the third Secretary of the German embassy in Paris (Ernst Vom Rath) by an aggrieved Jew as the catalyst. Like President Jayewardene he too claimed the events to be “spontaneous outbursts.”[iii]
Evidently, governments engaged in genocide act similarly. The resemblance is even closer when the groups involved claim an Aryan ancestry!
Gamini Dissanayake
Even if one were to ignore all of these, and just look at the library-burning as an isolated rare event, the subsequent conduct of the Sri Lankan government(s) on this matter leaves no doubt about real Sinhala chauvinist objectives of this act.
First and foremost, no judicial inquiry was ever held into this dastardly act. The racist nature of the atrocity (Sinhala police officers burning down an important Tamil institution) is such that, an inquiry should have been held, at least for the sake of appearances. Basic human decency demands at least this. The Sri Lankan government couldn’t care less.
Given the fact that the policemen taken to Jaffna from Colombo committed the act (the two cabinet ministers attested to this), conducting an inquiry and establishing culpability would have been relatively easy. Punishing the offenders would have not only served to deter similar events that occurred subsequently, but also would have created a tremendous goodwill to counter the deteriorating Sinhala -Tamil relationship.
Secondly, that this omission was deliberate, and not an error in judgment by the Sinhala government, was shown by ensuing events. Nadesan Satyendra, writing on the eleventh anniversary of the library burning (1992) recounted:
“And when the Tamil leader of the opposition sought to bring a motion of no confidence against the Sinhala Ministers who had been present in Jaffna on those fateful days, the ruling Sinhala political party pre empted the move by bringing a motion of no confidence on the Leader of the Opposition! It was reportedly the first and only time that a motion of no confidence had been moved by a ruling party, on the leader of the opposition in any parliament, anywhere in the world. A point of order raised against the no confidence motion was overruled by the Speaker.”
The Sinhala government then went on to change the rules so that a Tamil could never be even a leader of the opposition in a Sri Lankan parliament!
Thirdly, the periodic public promises to rebuild the library were never kept. Tamils understand that these promises as simple lip service meant for international consumption, with no intent to ever recompense. Why would they? – After all, the initial act itself was premeditated and intentional.
A delegation of the Movement for Inter Racial Justice and Equality, which visited Jaffna soon after the library was burnt, said:
‘If the Delegation were asked which act of destruction had the greatest impact on the people of Jaffna, the answer would be the savage attack on this monument to the learning and culture and the desire for learning and culture of the people of Jaffna... There is no doubt that the destruction of the Library will leave bitter memories behind for many years.’
- Report of the Movement for Inter Racial Justice and Equality [1981]
The Jaffna library was an institution built lovingly by the citizens of Jaffna and well-wishers, with no government assistance whatsoever.
V. S. Thuriarajah, an architect, recounted in a 1996 letter to the Sinhala controlled Ceylon Daily News:
“In 1933, a well-wisher named K. M. Chellappah, out of his desire to share knowledge with others was conducting a free library in his house. Appreciating the idea of Mr. Chellappah, some lovers of learning got together, formed a committee and met on June 9, 1934 to establish a Library. Isaac Thambiah, who was the High Court judge of Jaffna at that time, was elected chairman and K. M. Chellappah was elected secretary.
Due to the effort of this committee, on August 1, 1934, a library was opened in a small rented room on Hospital Road, Jaffna, in front of the electrical station. At inception, this library had only 844 books and about 30 newspapers and magazines, yet it was patronized by all citizens, young and old, with yearning for knowledge. The library grew a large number of books and more space was needed. In January 1935, it was shifted to a rented building on Main Street, Jaffna. In 1936, the present municipal building and Town Hall was built (it was razed to the ground). This library was shifted to a building near the Town Hall.
At that time the membership fee was only Rs. 3/-. With this subscription, lending of books started. The popularity of the library was such that there was a demand for a permanent building with all modern facilities.
A conference was held under the chairmanship of the first Mayor of Jaffna Sam Sabapathy, to find ways and means of collecting funds to build a new library. It was decided to conduct a carnival, music and dance recitals by Indian artistes, sale of lottery tickets etc. Large sums beyond the expectation of the organisers, was collected. A library committee was formed in 1953, Rev. Fr. Long, who was the rector of St. Patrick's College at that time, was also a member in this committee (it should be noted here that Fr. Long died of a heart attack [in Australia] when he heard of the burning of the library).
Statute of Fr. Long
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The contribution made by Fr. Long was so great that his statue was erected in front of the library by the public. The library committee invited a leading specialist in library science, Prof. S. R. Ranganathan from Delhi, to advise on the formation of the library to international standard. It also invited K. S. Narasimman, who was at that time the architect to the Madras government, an authority in Dravidian architecture.
A master plan was drawn and the front wing was to be built as stage one and the rear wing to be built later as stage two. The foundation was laid for stage on March 29 1953, in the presence of several educationists and well wishers, not only from Jaffna, but from all over the island and from India.
The first stage of the building was completed and on October 11, 1959, the building was ceremonially opened by the then mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappah. A children's section was opened on November 03, 1967. Asia Foundation donated books worth Rs. 9,500/-. At that time this amount was a large sum.
An auditorium was opened in the first floor in 1971 for the purpose of holding lectures, seminars, literary and cultural performances. Valuable books and centuries-old ola manuscripts were collected from the time of Mr. Chellappah in 1933.
There were about 97,000 valuable books, old newspapers and magazines up to the torching of the library on June 01, 1981.”
The government of Sri Lanka, which gets involved in building Buddhist monuments, temples and convention centers, never contributed even a penny.
Tamils may have been willing to forgive and forget in 1981, which we doubt. They certainly will not in the year 2001.
http://yarlphoenix.blogspot.com/
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[PDF]
Destroying a Symbol: Checkered History of Sri Lanka’s Jaffna ...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTMLthe destruction (by the Sinhalese) of the Jaffna Public Library, ... think of the Jaffna Library as a national library even though a Tamil nation had not ...www.ifla.org/IV/ifla72/papers/119-Knuth-en.pdf - Similar pages - Note this
[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 May 2008, 15:51 GMT]
A 49-minute documentary, titled Burning Memories, featuring the story and the memories of the Jaffna Library, which was burnt down by the Sri Lankan Police in June 01, 1981, has been produced by an audio visual journalist, S. Someetharan. The tri-lingual documentary is scheduled to be released in May by the Nikari, the producers and distributors of the film.
The burning of the library, widely regarded by the Tamils as an act of cultural vandalism, was a deliberate destruction of 97,000 books, considered as the best collection of Tamil literature in Asia, including many irreplaceable manuscripts.
The documentary authored in Tamil, English and French, contains a unique collection of memories in the form of photographs, video footage, paper clippings, speeches, interviews and musical compositions.
The 'Nikari' producers described the mission behind the documentary as an effort to transcend the memories of a unique cultural asset into the newer generations.
Contact details and further information on the release of the documentary will be provided later, according to the distributors.
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Two decades after the burning down of the Jaffna library in Sri Lanka
By Vilani Peris
30 May 2001
When the Taliban regime in Afghanistan announced and then carried out the destruction of the massive stone Buddha statues at Bamiyan, the action justifiably provoked outrage around the world. In Sri Lanka, however, the reaction in ruling circles and among the Buddhist hierarchy was mixed with a good deal of rank hypocrisy.
For decades the political establishment in Colombo has promoted the chauvinist view that Sri Lanka is a Buddhist and Sinhalese country in which Tamils and other minorities must take second place. The deliberate stirring up of communal sentiment by successive governments led to the imposition of discriminatory measures against Tamils, anti-Tamil pogroms and in 1983 to the ongoing war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
When the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan statues, political figures competed with each other to express their disgust at what was taking place. The Buddhist clergy took to the streets in protest and promised to build replicas in Sri Lanka. Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake, known for his Sinhala chauvinist views and links to the clergy, rapidly headed for Pakistan to see what could be done to save the statues.
There was a complete silence in the Colombo media, however, over the parallels in Sri Lanka to the Taliban's cultural vandalism—notably to the destruction of the Jaffna Library in 1981. It is only now, two decades after the library was burnt to the ground, that a replacement building is finally being built in the centre of Jaffna town, 400km north of Colombo. Construction has begun and, according to the engineers in charge, the building should be completed by December.
Nothing, however, can be done about the thousands of priceless Tamil books, manuscripts and ola [dried palm] leaf documents that went up in flames in 1981. Jaffna has been an important Tamil cultural centre for centuries. Some books such as Yalpanam Vaipavama —a history of Jaffna—were literally irreplaceable, as the library contained the only existing copy.
The library, which was inaugurated in 1841 and then moved to a more majestic building in 1950, had one of the finest collections in South Asia and was known throughout the world. It was popular among intellectuals, teachers and students—both Sinhalese and Tamil—and was used extensively by ordinary working people. Its destruction, two years before the outbreak of the country's civil war, was an outrage aimed against the cultural heritage of the country's Tamil minority and deliberately calculated to inflame communal sentiment.
A group of racist thugs, instigated by the United National Party (UNP) government, carried out the arson. Eyewitnesses at the time reported that uniformed police accompanied by the gang, brought from the south of the island. They arrived by truck in the dead of the night of May 31, 1981 and set fire to the library buildings.
The fire provoked widespread anger in Jaffna setting off three days of mayhem. Four Tamils were taken from their homes by police and killed. Sinhalese thugs also set fire to the head office of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) in Jaffna and then looted about 100 Tamil-owned houses and shops before setting them ablaze as well.
The house belonging to TULF parliamentarian, V. Yogeswaran was destroyed. The offices and press of the Tamil language newspaper, Ealanadu, were burnt to the ground. Thugs also defaced or demolished a number of statues of Tamil cultural and religious figures erected at road junctions in the town. The rampage only came to a halt after elections for the District Development Council (DDC) was completed on June 4.
The immediate pretext for the destruction of the library was the killing of two police constables at a TULF election meeting in Jaffna on May 31. No one ever claimed responsibility for the deaths, which took place in a climate of provocation and intimidation whipped up by pro-UNP gangs sent to Jaffna for the election. Police and thugs attacked TULF supporters at the meeting and later that night burnt the library.
A campaign of thuggeryThe campaign of harassment and thuggery that followed was aimed at intimidating voters and providing a cover for the systematic stuffing of the ballot box to ensure the election of at least some UNP candidates. The UNP established the system of District Development Councils in 1980 in an attempt to placate the demands of Tamils for democratic rights. While the TULF leaders supported the DDC, younger Tamils opposed the charade. As hostility began to grow, the UNP government resorted to more ruthless methods to ensure the outcome of the vote.
Throughout the leadup to the election, the government maintained a media blackout on the crimes being perpetrated in Jaffna by its thugs. On June 3, the presidential office issued a statement insisting that even through Jaffna was under emergency rule, the election would go ahead. In an effort to make the Tamil minority the scapegoat for its own thuggery, prime minister R. Premadasa announced in parliament that a commission would be appointed to probe the deaths of the policemen and a UNP candidate. No official inquiry was held into the destruction of the library.
On the same day, two senior UNP ministers—Gamini Dissanayaka, a close political associate of President J.R. Jayawardena, and Cyril Mathew—arrived in Jaffna with more thugs to direct operations. They were widely accused of ballot rigging to such an extent that in some areas there were more ballots than voters. Their arrival coincided with the arrest of TULF leader A. Amirthalingam. On election day police detained three more leaders—Navaratnam, Dharmaratnam and Sivasithambaram. Despite these actions the UNP could muster only 23,302 votes while the TULF received 263,269 votes wining all DDC seats.
The UNP government, like the previous Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)-led coalition, relied on stirring up Sinhala chauvinism to shore up its own base amid growing discontent caused by a deteriorating economy and its own turn to open market reforms. Its ability to do so depended above all on the betrayal of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, which in 1964 had abandoned the perspective of socialist internationalism and joined the SLFP government of Sirimo Bandaranaike. In 1972, as part of the SLFP coalition, LSSP minister Colvin R. de Silva was responsible for entrenching Buddhism as the state religion and a Sinhala-only language policy in the constitution. When the UNP won office in a landslide in 1977 as a result of widespread opposition to the coalition's policies, it further inflamed communal sentiment.
Cyril Mathew, one of the two ministers dispatched to Jaffna immediately after the burning of the library, was notorious for his anti-Tamil racism. He was the author of a book entitled Sinhalese! Rise to Protect Buddhism and a series of his inflammatory speeches made in 1979 were collected together in a pamphlet Who is the Tiger, which was passed from hand to hand.
Other writings indicate the character of the political climate being created by Colombo politicians and the media. A vicious pamphlet entitled The Diabolical Conspiracy published in 1980 accused Tamil teachers of giving high marks to Tamil students thus allowing them to enter university in preference to Sinhalese students. This is “a burning question... exploding within the hearts of Sinhala students, parents and teachers,” it stated. Another document denounced Tamil plantation workers warning “we see that Sinhala culture, Buddhism and the up-country villagers will all vanish.” It went on to attack Tamil traders, declaring that “the wholesale and retail trade... is now completely in the hands of Indian nationals.”
It was in this atmosphere that the UNP, with the backing of sections of the Buddhist clergy, unleashed groups of Sinhala thugs to physically attack Tamils, their homes and shops not only in the north and east of the island but also in the plantation districts in the central hills. The burning of the Jaffna Library marked a turning point in the process that led to the eruption of war.
The present Peoples Alliance government belatedly announced the decision to rebuild the library in 1998 amid growing demands from the major powers and sections of big business in Sri Lanka for a negotiated end to the war. At a meeting held to establish a temporary library, then PA Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera said: “The present government considers the destruction of the former library by forces of chauvinism and misguided politics as an evil act.”
Neither then nor now, however, did the PA government seek to identify either the “forces of chauvinism” or the character of their “misguided politics”. To do so would raise too many questions about the role of the SLFP and its other allies in the Peoples Alliance in promoting the chauvinist politics that lay behind the burning of the Jaffna library and other outrages against the Tamil minority that led to the outbreak of war.