History
The name of the village suggests that at some point in its history it had a fortress in its midst. But rule by various colonial powers since 1621 has erased all evidence of a fort. The village became prominent during the British colonial period in Sri Lanka as it was chosen as location for one of the nine protestant missions to be established within the small Jaffna peninsula (hardly 15 by 40 miles). The move by the seminary to study Saiva scriptures led to an important social transformation amongst the local Tamils because it began a process that led to a Saiva revivalism led by Arumuka Navalar. Eventually the seminary was renamed Jaffna college and became a secular institution in 1867. The village also played an important role in the current Sri Lankan civil war as the place where the Tamil United Liberation Front party came up with the Vaddukoddai Resolution in 1976 that articulated the view that minority Sri Lankan Tamils needed separation from rest of Sri Lanka to resolve their political problems.
Read more about this topic: Vaddukoddai
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