Nandana Marasinghe : a fallen bird !

I haven’t seen Nandana Marasinghe. But I have heard & read about him. He seems to be a real man with a lot of admirable qualities. He was with dreams of a nice and equal society in Sri Lanka. Difference between all other people who see dreams & Nandana was significant. He worked hard to make those dreams realities. He was an artist, musician, poet, humanitarian , visionary, rebel, great husband and a great father.

He is a founder member of JVP. In 1971, he fought to make a better change in Sri Lankan society. He is also the creator of famous “Vimukthi Gee” concert. He was more in to love humanity & mankind while fighting for a better world..Such straightforward and broad attitudes towards the revolution was quite strange for a party like JVP, I believe now. When it comes to the second (lost) revolution in 1989, Nandana was doing his social duties independently (he left JVP!), but very firmly. So JVP killed him. He was so pathetically shot at Anuradhapura pola, in October 1987. Old JVP members knew how many times Nandana had saved Wijeweera’s life in 71! “Vimukthi Gee” is still being sung by JVP without knowing that they killed the person who wrote!

Some people believe this killing lead to another killing of a giant figure in Sri Lankan politics & Sinhala cinema; that’s Wijaya Kumaranatunga. Since Wijaya was a close friend of Nandana, he had delivered a quite aggressive speech at Nandana’s funeral pointing fingers to JVP. In fact, JVP decided to get rid of Wijaya too, without any delay.

When I entered the University in 1996, there were JVP supporters with a lot of theories about two lost revolutions. I was very much keen on these political activities. Sadly, most of them didn’t know about people like Nandana. The poem (by famous Rathna Sri) attached below was written about Nanda Marasinghe on the wallpaper called “Prabathaya” in the “Open Canteen” which I happen to do the editing. You can still see this wallpaper hanging on the “Open Canteen” of Colombo University.


It is so surprising to talk about the general knowledge of the students. At that time there was a student leader whose surname too was Marasinghe & they have thought this poem is about him..! What other things could I say.. as far as I know Rathna Sri is not a joker but a very respectable poet!!

At Nandana’s funeral Wijaya has openly questioned “What kind of revolution one can do by killing such people…”

Not Nandana, Nor Wijaya is in our society today!

I think our society is greatly suffering from lack of ideal people.. We still have leaders and artists in our society, but still there is lot of room for real people with real human touch & better sensitivity!