Iconic Sri Lankan singer Nanda Malini, whose voice travelled with generations of Sinhalese through the island’s political and social upheavals of the 1970s and 1980s, passed away in Nawala, near Colombo, on Thursday. She was 82.
The Sri Lankan government announced three days of mourning beginning Friday (August 21, 2026) to pay respects to one of the country’s most celebrated artistes, who was born in 1943 in British Ceylon. As a young and aspiring artiste, Malini travelled to India to study music at the Bhatkhande College of Hindustani Music in Lucknow, local media reported.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake called Malini ”a true musical legend of our time”. “Her timeless music inspired generations of Sri Lankans, young and old alike. Her remarkable legacy will live on in the hearts of millions,” he said in a social media post.
Addressing the Parliament on Friday (August 21, 2026), Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya said Malini’s career is “not only a chapter in Sri Lankan music, but also a living expression of the country’s social movements and human emotions.” Reflecting a widely shared sentiment about Malini’s music, PM Amarasuriya said in her condolence message: “Going beyond themes of love and separation, she gave voice to the suffering, fears, hopes, and struggles of ordinary people, making her songs resonate as the voice of society itself.”
In a post on social media, former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga described Malini as a “glorious voice”, and a “fearless and principled artiste who used music as a weapon against social injustice.”
‘Politically conscious artiste’
Noted filmmaker Prasanna Vithanage described Malini as a “politically conscious” artiste, whose voice and music shaped the sensibilities of Sinhalese people for well over five decades. “For many of us, her songs bring back memories of not just our childhood, parents, first love, and marriage, but also the social unrest this country has witnessed. She is, in that sense, an integral part of our collective memory and psyche,” he told The Hindu. “No other singer has that sort of place.”
Pointing to Malini’s upbringing in a working-class Sinhalese home and her sympathy for left politics, Vithanage said her songs spoke to the disillusionment of Sinhalese youth amid sharp class inequalities and called for an equal society where everyone lived in dignity.
On criticism that some of her music in the early 1980s espoused an ethno-nationalistic spirit, in a country that was being torn apart by ethnic tensions between its Sinhalese and Tamil people, Vithanage said, “there are contradictions in her work.”
Malini’s long career, remarkable body of work, and the choices that shaped them reveal not only how Sri Lanka’s political landscape evolved over time, but also the many strands of nationalist and progressive politics that coexisted during those years of tumult.
Having entered the film industry under the guidance of renowned musician and composer W.D. Amaradeva, she went on to win many prestigious awards for her songs. One of her best-known film songs from 1965, Me Sinhala Apage Ratai (This is our Sinhala country), is often cited by critics as reflecting a Sinhala chauvinistic spirit that was prevalent in the southern parts of the island. In a 2017 interview with The Hindu, renowned Sri Lankan feminist scholar and historian Kumari Jayawardena termed the song “fascist” and said it was effectively a paraphrasing of the German song ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’.
Shaped by her language, working-class home, and the post-Independence political context in Sri Lanka’s Sinhala-majority south, Malini’s music, set to the lyrics of poet and her long-time collaborator Sunil Ariyaratne, was also widely known for its sympathy and the hope it offered to Sinhala youth, especially around watershed political moments such as the insurgency in 1971 led by the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna [JVP], — the party that is now in power — the party’s second armed insurrection in the late 1980s, and the rise of Tamil militancy in the north and east against a majoritarian state, leading to a civil war. Her Pawana [gentle breeze] concert series in the late 1980s reflected dissent against state repression and enforced disappearances, while calling for social justice.
As an artiste, Malini was quite aware of the criticism of her songs, including from the late Marxist literary critic Sucharitha Gamlath, according to Mr. Vithanage. “She deals with this criticism honestly. In an interview in 1985 with the Sinhala magazine Vinivida [‘piercing through’], she says the point put forth by her comrades and friends, including Gamlath, made her introspect. She says it made her correct herself. She never sang jingoistic numbers after that,” he said. In fact, in her 1985 music cassette Hemanthayedi [in winter], she sang about love and a life of dignity. The album included a song for “Sihala Dravida Muslim Kalyāṇa Mithruni”, invoking a multi-ethnic call, Vithanage pointed out. All the same, many of her ardent fans were troubled by her notable silence during the Mahinda Rajapaksa period [2005-2015], when the armed forces crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in a bloody war that claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives.
During the people’s uprising in 2022, along Colombo’s seafront, Malini, then in her late 70s, was seen among the crowd. Dressed in a white saree, she would wade through people, partaking in the spirit of protest, and occasionally belting out a few lines through a handheld loudspeaker, to roaring applause.
Published – August 21, 2026 01:43 pm IST
