A few months ago, on the 26th anniversary of Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam’s assassination, I publicly released NEELAN: UNSILENCED, a non-profit documentary examining the life and legacy of the constitutional scholar. The film features interviews with Dr. Tiruchelvam’s political colleagues, family members, and friends.

Most recently, I was interviewed by a group of young graduate students of Sri Lankan Tamil origin at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs about the documentary. During the conversation, one of the students posed a question I had never been asked before: Why choose Dr. Tiruchelvam instead of any other Sri Lankan Tamil to make a documentary about?

In answering the student, I explained that Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam was the most important Tamil figure to come out of Sri Lanka in the second half of the 20th century and that Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam is the Martin Luther King Jr of Sri Lanka. I emphasized:

“Dr. Tiruchelvam is the Martin Luther King Jr of Sri Lanka – and this isn’t hyperbole. There are significant similarities between the ideologies of Neelan Tiruchelvam and Martin Luther King Jr. Both men spoke out against militarism and advocated for peaceful coexistence among their nation’s diverse communities. And both Dr. King and Dr. Tiruchelvam were killed by their own countrymen for that very reason.

Both Dr. King and Neelan Tiruchelvam sought to work with their respective national governments to improve the welfare of their own communities. In the case of Dr. King, he worked with US President Lyndon B. Johnson to usher in the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act — both of which tremendously advanced the rights of black Americans. Dr. Tiruchelvam worked with the Sri Lankan government under President Chandrika Kumaratunga to help formulate the boldest and most progressive constitutional reform proposals in the nation’s history to date—and the proposals sought to give the Tamil minority community significant regional autonomy and political power under a united Sri Lanka.”

I also emphasized Dr. Tiruchelvam’s lifelong commitment to pluralism, democracy, and institution-building:

“Dr. Tiruchelvam, like Dr. King, was a firm proponent of ethnic pluralism, coexistence, and in the early 1980s, Dr. Tiruchelvam actually created institutions in Sri Lanka – the International Centre for Ethnic Studies and the Law & Society Trust. These institutions still exist in Sri Lanka today and they were focused on producing scholarly research and dialogue on democracy, the rights of minority communities, coexistence, feminism, constitutional reform in diverse societies.

Dr. Tiruchelvam also helped pioneer democratic election monitoring in the Global South – in countries like Chile, Bangladesh, and South Africa because, like Dr. King, Neelan Tiruchelvam believed that democracy is the foundation that is required for any meaningful progressive reforms to emerge that can give rights and protections to the various communities in a society.

Furthermore, in addition to pursuing constitutional reform in Sri Lanka, Dr. Tiruchelvam also engaged in constitutional reform initiatives, with a dedicated focus on protecting the rights of minorities in other countries, such as his involvement in contributing to the draft constitution of the newly independent state of Kazakhstan after the fall of the Soviet Union.

So, for these reasons, I would argue Dr. Tiruchelvam, in addition to being the Martin Luther King Jr of Sri Lanka, was the best Sri Lankan Tamil person to do a documentary about.”

I concluded by highlighting a final, difficult parallel between the two leaders:

“One final parallel I should mention is that both Dr. King and Neelan Tiruchelvam, due to their willingness to work with their respective governments to advance the rights of their own people, were maligned as traitors by the most reactionary elements of their own communities.

In the case of Dr. King, he was maligned as a traitor (specifically an Uncle Tom) by black people like Malcolm X, and, in the case of Dr. Tiruchelvam, he was maligned as a traitor by extreme Tamil supporters of Prabhakaran.”

Sri Lanka, with its unresolved ethnic, political, and constitutional grievances, is more in need of embodying the vision of the Martin Luther King Jr of Sri Lanka now than ever before. The full documentary on the life and legacy of Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam can be watched for free on its website by clicking this link.