Editorial - Enough of ‘establishment blues’!
27 March 2013 06:30 pm
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We are no fans of Vijay. Especially with his sympathy towards LTTE that slaughtered thousands of civilians; and not forgetting the political leaders of both Sri Lanka and India. If you are wondering who Vijay is, he is a South Indian actor, who is considered Shahruk Khan in Kollywood. He has a substantial fan base amongst the Tamil speaking communities in Sri Lanka as well.
One must be wondering why this sudden interest in Vijay, who the majority of Sinhala speaking citizens may not be familiar with. Well, the reason is, Vijay, some time back in a rally in Tamil Nadu, organised by certain anti-Sri Lankan political leaders, talked about wiping out Sri Lanka from the map.
Vijay was seen very angry hearing the alleged atrocious manner the Sri Lankan Navy treats South Indian fishermen who venture into Lankan territorial waters for poaching. He also appeared to be distraught hearing the news that slained LTTE leader Prabakaran’s mother had passed away.
As you may now have guessed we are not going to sing praise to Vijay. But we can’t deny the fact that Vijay seems to be having certain qualities that his counterparts in Sri Lanka certainly lack. Not only Vijay, other South Indian actors like Kamal Hassan, Rajini Kanth have publicly condemned Sri Lanka and challenged India’s central government to take tough stance against Sri Lanka and warned dire consequences if not.
The lesson here is how many Sri Lankan artistes have come and voiced their disapproval publicly against forces that are trying to undermine and destabilise Sri Lanka. We are not saying what Vijay and the crowd are shouting for is right. Regardless of its right or wrong, they have come forward and are currently leading a movement with the support of the Tamil Nadu people on what they believe.
On the contrary, it’s sad to see the majority of Sri Lankan artistes fraternity instead of initiating progressive movements for liberty, freedom and independence—as artistes are supposed to— singing ‘establishment blues’. How many Sri Lankan artistes have today become lackeys of politicians and powerful people?
It is no secret how these so called artistes make big money by supporting the tamashas and vanity projects the establish organisers in the guise of development initiatives to distract people from what is really happening in the country. Those pseudo artistes who know what we are talking about may wear the hat if it suits them!
The fact about artistes around the world has been that they’ve always been with the people and not with the establishment. Because sooner or later, the repressive nature of an establishment is exposed. Mexican American singer Sixto Rodriguez is a fine example to highlight the refine qualities of a real artiste. An Oscar nominated documentary film has been created based on this singer/songwriter extraordinaire. The brand ‘establishment blues’ is a term we borrowed from one of the songs by this brilliant artiste.
So we believe that its high time for our artiste community to live up to the profound term they are being introduced as and show to the world that they really deserve to be recognised as artistes for the sake of the high ideals artistes worldwide stood for, such as freedom, liberty, independence, ethnic harmony etc.