In July 1983, Sri Lanka’s capital of Colombo erupted in anti-Tamil pogroms effectively sanctioned by the state. The violence followed the deaths of 13 Sinhalese Sri Lankan Army soldiers at the hands of Tamil militants in the city of Jaffna. The night after the ambush, mobs from the country’s Sinhalese majority targeted and attacked Tamils—members of the country’s largest ethnic minority group—in Colombo. Tamils were murdered or displaced, Tamil houses and offices burned. The violence raged for days before then-President J.R. Jayewardene said anything. The death toll is estimated to have been in the thousands, although no official number was ever announced. What happened in Colombo echoed all over the country, and many Tamils fled, some leaving Sri Lanka forever. Although ethnic tensions preceded this event, known as Black July, by decades, it is often considered the beginning of the Sri Lankan civil war.
Black July lives on through communal memory, of course, but also in photographs. A famous picture by photojournalist Chandragupta Amarasinghe shows a naked Tamil man cowering on a bench while several laughing young Sinhalese men swing their feet in his direction. One is preparing to kick him. Over the years, this image has arguably circulated more than any other depiction of the violence—undeniable proof of the cruelty of those days. How does such evidence pass into fiction? In Shehan Karunatilaka’s novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, which won the 2022 Booker Prize, the photograph (or one strikingly like it) is taken by the eponymous character, who describes it as the “naked boy surrounded by dancing devils.” Rather than publishing it, Maali has tucked it away in a box—along with a number of other politically explosive shots—in anticipation of the day when harm might befall him, just as it has so many other Sri Lankan journalists.
