Muttiah Muralitharan Biopic Controversy

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Who is Muttiah Muralitharan?

Muralitharan is a former Sri Lankan cricketer. (1992-2011)
He is one of the most successful bowlers in international cricket and the first and only one to take 800 wickets in Test matches.
Works as a coach now.

Muralitharan is an ‘Indian-Origin Tamil’.
His grandfather came from India to work in the tea plantations of Sri Lanka in 1920s.
Murali was born and brought up in Kandy, Sri Lanka
His wife is from Chennai.

Many in Tamil Nadu were irked over Vijay Sethupathi’s decision to enact the life of Muttiah Muralitharan
Tamil nationalist sympathisers in the world of film and politics in Tamil Nadu publicly expressed their wish that Sethupathi should not act in the biopicas they believe Muralitharan, part of the minority Tamil community, was a ‘traitor’ to the cause of Sri Lankan Tamils.

The Sri Lankan government has been accused of conducting a genocide against the minority Tamil population during the Eelam wars.
The Tamil nationalists have questioned his conduct and accused him of staying silent during the war (especially last stages), which left lakhs of civilians dead, and ended with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.

The main reason for anger against him stemmed from Muralitharan’s association with Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is now Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister, and his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is the President.
In 2009, Mahinda Rajapaksa was the President and Gotabaya was the Defence Minister – and both were accused of gross human right violations in the final stages of the war.
During 2019 Elections, Muralitharan had praised President Gotabaya Rajapaksa as an efficient administrator, and taken umbrage at Tamil Nadu politicians for interfering in the affairs of the Sri Lankan Tamils

“There have been many allegations levelled against me that I supported genocide. For instance, when I made a statement in 2019 that 2009 was the best year of my life, it was misconstrued that I was celebrating the genocide of Eelam Tamils. As someone who has constantly spent his life in a conflict-zone, the end of the war in 2009, was a welcome change. I was happy that there were no deaths on both sides in those ten years. I have never supported genocide, and I never will. As a minority community living in Sinhalese-majority Sri Lanka, Tamils battled low self- esteem. My parents considered themselves as second-class citizens and it was only natural that I too followed suit. After I succeeded in cricket, I wanted fellow Tamils to develop self confidence and come up in life.”