Remembering, May 31,1981 Jaffna library burned to Tamils' dismay

If May 10, 1933 is recognized in history for the Aryan Nazi book burning campaign in Germany, its equivalent happened on May 31-June 1, 1981 in Jaffna. The white-skinned Aryan Nazis burnt over 25,000 books in 1933, which they deemed ‘un-German.’ The brown-skinned Aryan Nazi sympathizers of Sri Lanka burnt a library full of 97,000 books and manuscripts in 1981, to destroy what they perceived as the records of the Tamil culture on the island.

To collectively remember the vandalism perpetrated by the unruly, anti-cultural mobs in Sri Lanka in the targeted (1) June 1981 burning of the Jaffna Public Library, (2) July1983 burning of books and documents of prominent Tamil elites in Colombo, and (3) 1984 burning of libraries of Hartley College, Point Pedro and a civil community center in Valvettiturai, as a bibliophile, I post below a 1,030 word essay by Lance Morrow, that appeared in Time magazine in May 2, 1988.

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/remembering-may-31-1981-jaffna-library-burned-tamils-dismay