The Lost Generation: When Sri Lanka’s Universities Became a Battleground

Young Sri Lankans entered university seeking education and opportunity. During periods of political violence, campuses also became arenas for mobilisation, intimidation, closures and confrontation with the state.

21 October 2026 • Lanka Witness Evidence Desk

The JVP historically drew support from educated but frustrated young people, including university students. During the late-1980s insurgency, political violence and counter-insurgency spread through a society already marked by unemployment, inequality and deep distrust of institutions.

Students were not one political bloc

It would be wrong to describe an entire generation of university students as insurgents. Some joined radical political movements; some resisted them; many simply tried to continue their studies. Coercion, fear and political pressure narrowed the space for independent student life.

Equally, the state’s response cannot be erased. Counter-insurgency operations were associated with widespread disappearances, extrajudicial killings and impunity. Young people could become victims of insurgent violence, state violence, or both.

The responsibility of political movements

Political parties have every right to organise students peacefully. The democratic line is crossed when recruitment becomes coercion, dissent is punished, education is deliberately paralysed or violence is treated as legitimate political discipline.

Why this history matters now

Sri Lanka’s universities should be places where competing political ideas can be argued without fear. Remembering the past is therefore not an attack on present-day students or parties. It is a safeguard against repeating a period when young lives and educational opportunity were consumed by political conflict.

Lanka Witness assessment: Sri Lanka owes its students a history that neither romanticises insurgency nor excuses state repression. The lesson is simple: no political cause should require a generation to surrender education, independent thought or life itself.