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OPINION • CULTURE • HISTORYThe Songs We Remember — and the History We Should Not Forget
As audiences celebrate the music of an earlier generation, Vijaya Kumaratunga and Premakeerthi de Alwis deserve more than sentimental remembrance.
A film can bring back memories. A familiar song can take an audience back decades, stir emotions and remind people of artists whose voices became part of Sri Lankan life.
But nostalgia should not erase history.
As audiences celebrate the music and personalities of an earlier generation, two names deserve more than sentimental remembrance: Vijaya Kumaratunga and Premakeerthi de Alwis.
Both were major figures in Sri Lankan cultural life. Both were killed during one of the darkest periods in the country’s modern history.
Vijaya Kumaratunga
Vijaya Kumaratunga, the hugely popular actor, singer and politician, was assassinated outside his home in February 1988. Responsibility for his murder has remained politically contested for decades. The JVP and its armed wing were widely blamed, while later investigations and political allegations also raised questions about figures associated with the government of the period.
One particularly significant voice is that of Vijaya’s widow, former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. In February 2023, she publicly stated that she considered herself a victim of the JVP and said the organisation had killed her husband.
Premakeerthi de Alwis
Premakeerthi de Alwis, one of Sri Lanka’s most loved broadcasters and lyricists, was abducted and murdered in July 1989.
His killing also carries a complicated history. A JVP member was found guilty of Premakeerthi’s murder by the Colombo High Court in 1992 and spent around 18 years in prison. Yet Premakeerthi’s widow, Nirmala de Alwis, later publicly disputed the claim that the JVP was responsible and alleged that others were behind the killing.
Why it matters
Those contradictions are precisely why history should not be reduced to convenient political slogans.
Sri Lanka’s violent years cannot be rewritten depending on which party is in government, which film is showing, or which political movement someone supports today.
People are entitled to enjoy the songs. They are entitled to admire the artists and become emotional when those memories return.
But remembering the music should also mean remembering the people behind it — and asking what happened to them.
A country that remembers only the songs, while forgetting the violence surrounding the people who created them, remembers only half its history.