15 Facts About Nagalingam Shanmugathasan

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan was a trade unionist and Maoist revolutionary leader in Sri Lanka.

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan was the General Secretary of the Ceylon Communist Party.

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan began studying history at the University College Colombo in 1938, where he first came into contact with communist ideas and met supporters of the Communist Party of Great Britain who had returned from studying at Cambridge University.

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan gained notoriety among the students after this action and in 1940 won in the student election to become General Secretary of the University Union Society.

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan became the head of the Ceylon Trade Union Federation and led several strikes, including the general strike of 1947, the Hartal of 1953, and a transport strike in 1955.

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan married with Parameswari, the widow wife of veteran Communist leader Hon.

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan visited China twice during the Cultural Revolution and was important enough to have addressed thousands of Red Guards.

In 1971 Nagalingam Shanmugathasan was imprisoned for one year during a crackdown on revolutionaries following the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna rebellion.

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan was targeted by the government for his espousal of armed revolution for political change and for being identified as one of the political mentors of Rohana Wijeweera, the founding leader of the JVP.

In 1973, Nagalingam Shanmugathasan's party was estimated by the US State Department to have approximately 500 to 800 cadre, and possessed "the ability to control the Ceylon Trade Union Federation and the Ceylon Plantation Workers' Union with a combined membership of some 110,000".

In 1976, after the death of Mao Zedong and the defeat of the Gang of Four and the revolutionary pro-Mao forces in China, Nagalingam Shanmugathasan sided with the pro-Mao forces internationally.

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan played an important role in the foundation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, which he hailed as a "milestone in the history of the international communist movement".

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan was one of few national level politicians of Sri Lankan Tamil origin.

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan did not accept the Tamil Nationalism and the decision of the Tamils self-determination till 1983, when the Civil War broke out.

Nagalingam Shanmugathasan died of natural causes on 8 February 1993 in England, where he had gone for medical treatment near the end of his life.