Rajani Thiranagama (née Rajasingham) (23 February 1954 – 21 September 1989) was a Sri Lankan Tamil human rights activist and feminist who was assassinated by the LTTE cadres after she had criticised them for their atrocities.
Inspired by her elder sister Nirmala, then a member of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Rajani became involved with the LTTE by administering care to those wounded in action.
She also maintained her links with LTTE by joining its London Committee to educate human rights groups and other international organisations about the atrocities occurring in Sri Lanka.
While continuing to write and publish scientific papers, she also became implicated in grassroots organisations fighting for women's rights and against the discrimination of Britain's black people[4] and became involved in the international campaigns of other liberation groups.
Having witnessed the evidence of human rights violations by the IPKF and the LTTE, Rajani co-authored a book, The Broken Palmyra.
[6] A few weeks after the publication of her book The Broken Palmyra, on 21 September 1989, Rajani was shot and killed at Thirunelvely, Jaffna in front of her house by a gunman while cycling back from work.
[13] Rajani is also acknowledged as being the inspiration for the character Anjali Acca in the novel Brotherless Night by the author V. V. Ganeshananthan, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2024.
[14] Embracing feminism and a belief in human rights, Rajani felt that women in particular were the primary casualties of war: Men in battle garb, whether they come with swords or guns, on a horse or in armored cars, the price of conquest seems heightened by the violation of women,One day some gun will silence me and it will not be held by an outsider but by the son born in the womb of this very society, from a woman with whom my history is sharedwrote Rajani in 1989, a few months before she was killed.