by Ana Pararajasingham, Countercurrents, September
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan
While promoting the Netflix film Best of the Best, Canadian Tamil actress Maitreyi Ramakrishnan spoke openly about her Tamil identity and her family’s history. “I love who I am as a Tamil Eelam woman,” she said on Hasan Minhaj’s podcast.
Her words provoked an extraordinary reaction.
Metaphorically speaking, they opened a can of worms. The reaction exposed not just the ugly side of Sinhala nationalist outrage, but its twin: an appalling ignorance. It is an ignorance of what this nationalism has brought forth—the uprooting of almost a third of a people whose ancestral homeland lies in the North and East of the island: Tamil Eelam.
Utterly blind to what such uprooting does to a people, the chauvinists were incensed when a child of refugees articulated a simple truth: she could not identify with the country that had driven her parents out.
Most tellingly, the outrage was underpinned by another sentiment. By articulating who she was, Maitreyi had denied the chauvinists the means to appropriate the achievements of the diaspora while erasing the circumstances that created it. Ramakrishnan had pre-empted such attempts at appropriation.
That explains much of the outrage and anger.
But what exactly was the offence?
Ramakrishnan was not announcing a political programme, demanding the redrawing of borders or resurrecting an armed struggle. She was describing herself. Yet the mere assertion of an Eelam Tamil identity was apparently sufficient to touch a raw nerve.
That reaction is revealing.
The word Eelam long predates the modern conflict. Its usage can be traced to ancient Tamil literature, including references in the Sangam corpus some two millennia ago. In contemporary Sri Lankan political discourse, however, it has become so closely associated with the armed struggle for Tamil Eelam that its older historical and cultural meanings are frequently eclipsed.
More significantly, the hostility towards Ramakrishnan appears to reflect an assumption that the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009 somehow settled not only a territorial and military contest, but also the question of Tamil identity. The armed movement had been destroyed; the territory was once again under the uncontested authority of the Sri Lankan state; therefore, it seemed to follow, the overarching identity of Sri Lankan should prevail.
But armies can conquer territory. They cannot conquer memory.
Nor can military victory determine how people who were persecuted, displaced or driven abroad—and their children—must understand themselves.
This is where the reaction to Ramakrishnan displays a profound ignorance of the psychology and sociology of displacement. A people can be driven from their homeland without the homeland being driven from them. Indeed, forced displacement frequently intensifies attachment to language, culture, memory and collective identity. What parents lose physically can become something their children preserve emotionally.
My own experience researching and writing about 34 uprooted Tamils from the diaspora revealed this truth profoundly. Your roots matter, and attempts to appropriate your identity and achievements will be challenged.
To expect the descendants of refugees to embrace the national identity of the state from which their parents fled is not merely historically naïve; it is morally reprehensible. It asks the displaced to remember where they came from while conveniently forgetting why they left.
The experience of Uma Kumaran provides an especially revealing example.
When Kumaran was elected to the British Parliament in July 2024, sections of the Sri Lankan media were quick to celebrate her achievement. Lanka News Web proclaimed: “Uma Kumaran of Sri Lankan Origin Elected to British Parliament in Historic Milestone.” Her parents, however, were described as having “relocated to London during the 1980s amidst civil unrest.”
Relocated.
Few words could better illustrate the sanitisation of displacement. Kumaran’s parents did not simply decide that London offered better prospects and move there. As Kumaran herself subsequently told the British Parliament, they were Tamil refugees.
In her maiden speech on 5 September 2024, she put the matter with remarkable clarity: “I was born here but by fate. I am the daughter of Tamil refugees and the child of a community that knows what it is like to endure prejudice and persecution.” Speaking of her parents, she explained that they had “fled for their lives”.
The difference between “relocated” and “fled for their lives” is not semantic. It contains an entire history.
And therein lies the disturbing paradox.
When Tamils flee Sri Lanka, the circumstances of their departure can be minimised as “civil unrest”. When their children succeed abroad, however, Sri Lanka can rediscover them as people of “Sri Lankan origin” and present their achievements as something in which the country may take pride.
The persecution is forgotten; the achievement is claimed.
The refugee disappears; the successful “Sri Lankan” reappears.
This is why Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Uma Kumaran belong in the same conversation.
One is attacked because she asserts an identity that some believe should have disappeared with the military defeat of the LTTE. The other is embraced as “Sri Lankan” after achieving distinction in Britain, even though she herself reminds the world that she was born there because her Tamil parents had fled persecution.
Both cases expose the same inclination: not just an unwillingness to confront the consequences of uprooting, but a desire to appropriate its achievements.
Its immorality lies in its self-serving hypocrisy.
Ana Pararajasingham is the author of Uprooted and an independent researcher and writer with a longstanding interest in justice, displacement, and identity—issues that have shaped both his personal journey and professional work. His previous works include: Sri Lanka: A Victor’s Peace published in 2019.
He served as Director of Programmes at the Centre for Just Peace and Democracy (CJPD), a Switzerland-based action research centre, from 2007 to 2009.
A strong proponent of multiculturalism, Ana advocates for it as the most viable path forward for multiethnic societies seeking lasting peace, inclusion, and cohesion.