NM at 110

Tuesday, 30 June 2015

This year marked the 110th birth anniversary of Nanayakkarapathirage Martin Perera, better known as Dr. N.M. Perera; Leader of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, popular labour leader, one-time Mayor of Colombo, outstanding Parliamentarian, Marxist, intellectual, sportsman, sometime film actor and above all a man whose life and contribution to our political evolution is commemorated with respect even today, nearly four decades after his death.

The life and career of N.M. Perera, that young student from far-away Ceylon, surely made his teachers proud!

It will be difficult for those born after independence to adequately comprehend the full meaning of being a colony; of a people on whom another had imposed. A ruler may impose his will on the ruled, a neighbouring tribe may hold sway for a time, but here was a very distant culture, an alien people whose ideas and ways were different altogether, an incongruous imposition.

NM at 110 by Thavam Ratna