Sri Lanka — Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy

Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah · University of Chicago Press, 1986

tlte-cite:jaffna-1981-tambiah-1986

Editorial gloss

Tambiah's landmark comparative sociological study by a Harvard anthropologist places the 1981 Jaffna pogrom and library burning within a systematic typology of ethno-nationalist violence in Sri Lanka. Chapter coverage of the DDC election context, the role of the UNP government, and the symbolic targeting of Tamil intellectual institutions makes this one of the most-cited academic analyses of the event. Tambiah frames the violence as a deliberate dismantling of Tamil civic and cultural infrastructure.

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case suppression
jaffna library 1981
cultural destruction

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