Nagalingam Shanmugathasan

He was the General Secretary of the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist)[2][3] Shanmugathasan hailed from a family of modest means in the town of Manipay in Jaffna District.

In 1939 he and two fellow students were suspended, but soon reinstated, from the university for distributing anti-imperialist flyers after the outbreak of World War II.

In the meantime, he was organising a group of Communists among the students that opposed both British imperialism and the Trotskyists of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party.

[14] In 1971 Shanmugathasan was imprisoned for one year during a crackdown on revolutionaries following the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People's Liberation Front)[12] rebellion.

Sri Lankan former President Maithripala Sirisena commenced his political career under Shanmugathasan in the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist).

[16] S. K. Senthivel the General Secretary of the New-Democratic Marxist-Leninist Party has started his full time political career under Shanmugathasan in 1964 and worked closely with him till 1978.

[21] His last public appearance was at the first press conference of the International Emergency Committee to Defend the Life of Dr Abimael Guzmán in London.