Tellingly, one of the first major buildings to be rebuilt after the 2002 ceasefire was Jaffna's Public Library. The earlier library was burnt down by pro-government mobs (some say forces) in July 1981, a destruction deemed a cultural attack by many Tamils – few acts were more significant in the build-up to civil war.
In its reconstruction, architects kept true to the elegant original neo-Mughal design. Today it’s a bright spacious place that's very actively used by Jaffna's citizens.
Jaffna residents had long considered their city to be one of Asia’s finest intellectual capitals, and the library was an important Tamil cultural centre and historic institution (it was inaugurated in 1841). The world-renowned collection included more than 90,000 volumes, including irreplaceable Tamil documents such as the one surviving copy of Yalpanam Vaipavama, a history of Jaffna. All of this went up in flames.
There's a statue of Saraswati – Hinduism’s goddess of knowledge – out front.
