There are some names history celebrates, and there are some names history deliberately buries. In Sri Lanka’s political memory, Alfred Duraiyappa is constantly presented as a “victim of Tiger violence,” a Sinhala State friendly Tamil politician whose assassination in 1975 is repeatedly weaponised by Colombo as a murder of a Tamil moderate. But the story that the Sri Lankan state, its media, and its textbooks refuse to tell is that Duraiyappa’s hands were stained with Tamil blood long before anyone fired a gun at him.
One of those stains belongs to a child. His name was Kesavarajan. He was a 15 year old boy from Sulipuram, a Victoria College student. A teenager with books, not weapons. A boy who loved his mother tongue, who like thousands of Tamils, was swept up in the excitement surrounding the International Tamil Research Conference of 1974. This conference was not merely an academic gathering; it was a celebration of identity.
Jaffna was decorated street to street. Tamil scholars from across the globe arrived. It was a moment of collective pride, history, culture, and language. For young Tamils, it was a rare moment when the world came to them to honour the Tamil language.
But that pride, that celebration, and that joy came with a price. Kesavarajan paid for it with his life.
In the early 1970s, Jaffna lived under an atmosphere of fear manufactured deliberately by the Sinhala Buddhist government. Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s regime had turned Tamil areas into laboratories of repression. Illegal arrests, custodial torture, disappearances, intimidation, censorship, and routine violence had become normal events in Tamil life. The police acted brutally with confidence because they knew they had political approval from Colombo and local protection in Jaffna. And in Jaffna, that political protection had a name: Duraiappah, the Mayor of Jaffna.
Colombo likes to remember Duraiappah as a “moderate Tamil,” one of their “good Tamils". What they never include in that narrative is that Duraiyappa was a collaborator whose tenure as Mayor coincided with some of the worst and most visible police assaults on Tamil civilians. They don’t mention that the police operated openly, freely, and fearlessly under his watch, because they knew they would be shielded. They don’t mention that children died because the state felt safe murdering them.
The International Tamil Research Conference massacre occurred on the final day of the conference, January 10, 1974, in Jaffna. A massive public meeting of more than 50,000 people had gathered to celebrate Tamil scholarship. Then the police arrived. Under the direction of ASP Chandrasekara, and acting on political orders of Mayor Duraiappah, police forces drove into the crowd firing tear gas, beating people with batons, and even shooting down overhead electric wires. The wires fell into the crowd, electrocuting people instantly. Stampedes followed. Panic was everywhere. Nobody fought, nobody resisted, nobody expected violence at a cultural event celebrating Tamil literature. Yet 9 to 11 unarmed civilians were killed in a matter of minutes. Among them was 15-year-old Kesavarajan.
He was not a militant. He was not a criminal. He was not even old enough to vote. His only crime was being Tamil, living in Jaffna, and having love for his mother tongue. He walked into a conference celebrating language, history, and scholarship. He left as a corpse because the Sri Lankan police chose to kill peaceful attendees with confidence and impunity, protected by the Prime Minister in Colombo and by her loyal Mayor in Jaffna.
We often speak of the war, the militants, the insurgency, the assassinations, and the battles of later years. But we forget those who died in silence, before a single insurgent group existed, before one Tamil ever lifted a gun in retaliation. Kesavarajan’s death is not just a moment in time, it is political memory. It is proof. It is evidence that Tamil youth were targets long before militancy, long before Tigers, long before 1975.
Today, Colombo glorifies and celebrates Duraiappah. They talk endlessly about his assassination, holding it up as a moral wound against the idea of reconciliation. But they never mention the blood that spilled on his watch. They never mention the cultural event turned into a massacre. They never mention Tamil children like Kesavarajan whose lives ended because Sinhala state structures acted with total confidence that there would be no consequence.
History, however, has another duty: to record, to remind, to refuse erasure. Kesavarajan did not die by accident. He did not die in crossfire. He did not die in war. He died because a system was built to break Tamil youth early through fear, detention, humiliation, and death. He died because the state wanted to send a message: even celebration would be met with violence.
The murder of Kesavarajan is proof that Tamil children were casualties of Sinhala state brutality long before militancy entered the story. And whenever Sri Lanka mourns Alfred Duraiyappa, remind them that he was not a hero, not a moderate, but a collaborator responsible for Tamil blood.
-mrpaluvets
07/12/25
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