He
was referred to as Nismi, although the name was Nishmi. Some may have
used ‘sh’ instead of ’s’ but few, if any, knew his full name. Sirajudin
Mohamed Nishmi. We don’t know how he spelled the name. Maybe it was
‘Nizmi.’
Anyway, he was an engineering student at the University of Peradeniya in the turbulent late-eighties. He was more than that. Or less, depending on your political and ideological persuasions. A student leader. That cannot be disputed.
Nishmi, by most accounts, is one of thousands ‘disappeared’ during the bheeshanaya. How it happened, where it happened and when it happened, we might never know. His story hasn’t been written either, although there are various accounts of that time which refer to his involvement.
He was the voice of what was at the time called the Action Committee of the university. This was a time when formal student councils didn’t exist or rather were not allowed to exist. Batches of all faculties ‘elected’ representatives. There were no formal elections. Someone would propose and someone else would second and that was all. Organised groups, such as students who were JVPers, would make sure that their ‘people’ by and large became batch-representatives and thereafter faculty-representatives. The Action Committees would decide for the general student body. These decisions, it was pretty clear, came ‘from the top,’ i.e. in alignment with the political interests of the party.
I don’t know if Nishmi was actually a member of the JVP student organisation, the Socialist Students Union. He bossed, in time, the Action Committee. This was sometime in 1987 or 1988. He was in the Engineering Faculty, as mentioned, and I was in the Arts Faculty. He was JVP and I was not. He was in the Action Committee, I was not. He was a student boss, I was just a student, just another recipient of boss-decisions.
Nishmi’s moment probably came after the then Convenor of the Inter University Student, Ranjithan Gunaratnam, ‘moved’ to the higher echelons of the party. That probably coincided with a long period of detention along with dozens of student activists in May 1987. Nishmi was charismatic. He was an excellent orator.
This became clear to me in December 1986 when he was one of two students, the other being Rev Athureliye Rathana Thero, who addressed students in the midst of a token boycott of lectures to commemorate the killing of a student at Peradeniya in 1976. It was the ‘Weerasooriya Commemoration,’ at which Prof Desmond Mallikaarachchi also spoke. All three were top notch speakers, Desmond of course being the one with greater substance and by quite a margin too. Nishmi was less fire than Rev Rathana Thero, but he touched hearts.
Two years later, then the universities reopened after several months, the Action Committee immediately declared a boycott and the entire student body at Peradeniya was asked to attend a meeting at the Medical Faculty. I can’t remember how long it lasted, but the meeting was moved to the gymnasium. That’s where I first witnessed Nishmi’s ability to sway an audience.
After several months at home, students were not too keen on boycotting lectures. National politics obviously bled into the universities, but the general feeling was one of getting the exams over with and moving out. Nishmi changed all that. He spoke for two hours. Off the cuff. He was logical. He made sense. Of course this doesn’t mean that his analysis was spotless. He inserted ‘facts’ that were useful and left out those which would compromise his ‘line.’
At the end of it, someone came up with a ‘declaration’. It was read out and approved by a show of hands. A forest of hands, actually. I was in a corner. I know I didn’t raise my hand. I know that Dhammika Amarakoon who was standing next to me didn’t either. We were not noticed. We didn’t count. From then onwards it was ‘everyone for the student movement,’ never mind that ‘student movement’ was nothing but a front for the JVP. Those who didn’t go along, went home. Those who remained but objected went silent.
That year, 1987, and the following one too, stretched. The universities were either closed or when open lectures were boycotted. I didn’t see Nishmi much, except at the WUS canteen or thereabouts because the room occupied (probably illegally) by the Action Committee was nearby. But one day he did make the long climb up to Marcus Fernando Hall. I was surprised that he knew me and even more surprised that he had come to speak with me.
We were playing cricket. He knew I was an English medium student. He started talking about ‘The English Medium,’ and I cut him off, explaining that I just happened to be studying in English and that I didn’t really identify with the political leanings of that particular segment of students. Then he cut me off, saying that this was not what he was talking about.
Nishmi simply said that ‘we’ (I think he meant ‘the student movement’ but was generous enough, at least in his mind, to include me) should get the English medium students involved in student politics. We spoke briefly. He needed to mobilise students. Recruitment was probably second-nature to him. It was not my thing. But I was struck by his persistence and his charm. Nishmi had a winning smile; more winning than his rhetoric.
Nishmi got lost in a revolution that was lost before it began, at least according to my analysis. The defeat of the JVP didn’t make me sad. The victory of the most tyrannical regime we have known since Independence didn’t make me happy either. I just thought of those who were killed for no reason at all. Many were innocent. Nishmi was not, at least not to the extent that the party he belonged to was not. I like to think that his intentions were honourable, but I have no way of telling.
All I know is that I was sad, even though I did not know the details of his fate. There were others like that. Is it because he was known and I had the opportunity to speak a few words with him? I don’t know. But he was among the better men in our student days.
A friend who too belonged to the party told me that he had once met someone who looked like Nishmi. That person had Nishmi’s signature half-grin, he said. He had merely tapped my friend and said ‘Malayaa..’ Acknowledgment, and nothing more.
What happened to Nishmi? Maybe he is still alive, using a different name, doing things very different from those that were bread and butter for his activist avatar. Time can change a lot of things. Maybe I might be less inclined to be positive about Nishmi, who can tell? I give him the benefit of the doubt.
He comes to mind off and on. And I wonder what went wrong. That time, those people, myself, the circumstances; we cannot bring it all back and do it right. But we are in this time. We could do better. Nishmi would, I tell myself.
Anyway, he was an engineering student at the University of Peradeniya in the turbulent late-eighties. He was more than that. Or less, depending on your political and ideological persuasions. A student leader. That cannot be disputed.
Nishmi, by most accounts, is one of thousands ‘disappeared’ during the bheeshanaya. How it happened, where it happened and when it happened, we might never know. His story hasn’t been written either, although there are various accounts of that time which refer to his involvement.
He was the voice of what was at the time called the Action Committee of the university. This was a time when formal student councils didn’t exist or rather were not allowed to exist. Batches of all faculties ‘elected’ representatives. There were no formal elections. Someone would propose and someone else would second and that was all. Organised groups, such as students who were JVPers, would make sure that their ‘people’ by and large became batch-representatives and thereafter faculty-representatives. The Action Committees would decide for the general student body. These decisions, it was pretty clear, came ‘from the top,’ i.e. in alignment with the political interests of the party.
I don’t know if Nishmi was actually a member of the JVP student organisation, the Socialist Students Union. He bossed, in time, the Action Committee. This was sometime in 1987 or 1988. He was in the Engineering Faculty, as mentioned, and I was in the Arts Faculty. He was JVP and I was not. He was in the Action Committee, I was not. He was a student boss, I was just a student, just another recipient of boss-decisions.
Nishmi’s moment probably came after the then Convenor of the Inter University Student, Ranjithan Gunaratnam, ‘moved’ to the higher echelons of the party. That probably coincided with a long period of detention along with dozens of student activists in May 1987. Nishmi was charismatic. He was an excellent orator.
This became clear to me in December 1986 when he was one of two students, the other being Rev Athureliye Rathana Thero, who addressed students in the midst of a token boycott of lectures to commemorate the killing of a student at Peradeniya in 1976. It was the ‘Weerasooriya Commemoration,’ at which Prof Desmond Mallikaarachchi also spoke. All three were top notch speakers, Desmond of course being the one with greater substance and by quite a margin too. Nishmi was less fire than Rev Rathana Thero, but he touched hearts.
Two years later, then the universities reopened after several months, the Action Committee immediately declared a boycott and the entire student body at Peradeniya was asked to attend a meeting at the Medical Faculty. I can’t remember how long it lasted, but the meeting was moved to the gymnasium. That’s where I first witnessed Nishmi’s ability to sway an audience.
After several months at home, students were not too keen on boycotting lectures. National politics obviously bled into the universities, but the general feeling was one of getting the exams over with and moving out. Nishmi changed all that. He spoke for two hours. Off the cuff. He was logical. He made sense. Of course this doesn’t mean that his analysis was spotless. He inserted ‘facts’ that were useful and left out those which would compromise his ‘line.’
At the end of it, someone came up with a ‘declaration’. It was read out and approved by a show of hands. A forest of hands, actually. I was in a corner. I know I didn’t raise my hand. I know that Dhammika Amarakoon who was standing next to me didn’t either. We were not noticed. We didn’t count. From then onwards it was ‘everyone for the student movement,’ never mind that ‘student movement’ was nothing but a front for the JVP. Those who didn’t go along, went home. Those who remained but objected went silent.
That year, 1987, and the following one too, stretched. The universities were either closed or when open lectures were boycotted. I didn’t see Nishmi much, except at the WUS canteen or thereabouts because the room occupied (probably illegally) by the Action Committee was nearby. But one day he did make the long climb up to Marcus Fernando Hall. I was surprised that he knew me and even more surprised that he had come to speak with me.
We were playing cricket. He knew I was an English medium student. He started talking about ‘The English Medium,’ and I cut him off, explaining that I just happened to be studying in English and that I didn’t really identify with the political leanings of that particular segment of students. Then he cut me off, saying that this was not what he was talking about.
Nishmi simply said that ‘we’ (I think he meant ‘the student movement’ but was generous enough, at least in his mind, to include me) should get the English medium students involved in student politics. We spoke briefly. He needed to mobilise students. Recruitment was probably second-nature to him. It was not my thing. But I was struck by his persistence and his charm. Nishmi had a winning smile; more winning than his rhetoric.
Nishmi got lost in a revolution that was lost before it began, at least according to my analysis. The defeat of the JVP didn’t make me sad. The victory of the most tyrannical regime we have known since Independence didn’t make me happy either. I just thought of those who were killed for no reason at all. Many were innocent. Nishmi was not, at least not to the extent that the party he belonged to was not. I like to think that his intentions were honourable, but I have no way of telling.
All I know is that I was sad, even though I did not know the details of his fate. There were others like that. Is it because he was known and I had the opportunity to speak a few words with him? I don’t know. But he was among the better men in our student days.
A friend who too belonged to the party told me that he had once met someone who looked like Nishmi. That person had Nishmi’s signature half-grin, he said. He had merely tapped my friend and said ‘Malayaa..’ Acknowledgment, and nothing more.
What happened to Nishmi? Maybe he is still alive, using a different name, doing things very different from those that were bread and butter for his activist avatar. Time can change a lot of things. Maybe I might be less inclined to be positive about Nishmi, who can tell? I give him the benefit of the doubt.
He comes to mind off and on. And I wonder what went wrong. That time, those people, myself, the circumstances; we cannot bring it all back and do it right. But we are in this time. We could do better. Nishmi would, I tell myself.
This article was first published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday.'
Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindadocs@gmail.com
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