Tamils are boycotting the upcoming biopic on Muttiah Muralitharan owning to his ‘anti-Tamil’ stance

Legendary Sri Lankan cricketer Muttiah Muralitharan is in the news for his upcoming biopic where the Tamil superstar Vijay Setupathi is all set to play the lead role of the leg spinner who took 800 wickets in the International arena and is regarded as one of the greatest spinners to have ever graced the game. The movie is also titled ‘800’ and the motion poster was released on Tuesday. However, moments after the motion poster of the film was unveiled, ‘Shame on Vijay Sethupathi’ started trending on Twitter in a rather big way. Indian Tamil users slammed Sethupathi saying he was not being ‘ethical’ and ‘not thankful to Tamil people who praised him as ‘MakkalSelvan’ (People’s man).

The reason for the flak is Muralitharan himself who has had a controversial stand over the decades-long civil war between the Sri Lanka government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Muttiah is a supporter of the Sri Lankan government which crushed the LTTE, killing its leader V Prabhakaran in 2009, and is accused of committing the genocide of Tamil people.

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The civil war between the Sinhalese majority speakers and the minority Sri Lankan Tamils has killed over 80,000 since 1983 and the majority of the deceased have been Sri Lankan Tamils. According to several media reports, Muttiah’s public stance has been that there has been no genocide in the country and that there were no war crimes.

Previously Murali has even claimed that former British Prime Minister David Cameron had been “misled” over reports of rights abuses faced by Tamils. Cameron during his visit to the island country in 2013 had been pressing the Sri Lankan regime to do more to improve conditions for the minority Tamil population still suffering the effects of a 26-year civil war which ended in 2009. However, Murali at that time had also denied any human rights violation activities.

“He must have been misled by other people. People speak without going and seeing the things there. I go on and off. I see from my eyes there is an improvement,” Muralitharan had said when asked about Cameron’s statements.

In the past, the leg-spinner, known for bowling booming ‘doosras’, has also compared Mahinda Rajapaksa, Gotabaya’s older brother and former president who also stand accused of war crimes, to Nelson Mandela.

In 2019, when news reports suggested that he may be the Governor of the Tamil-dominated Northern Province in Sri Lanka, many Tamils in the island country were vocal in their objections.

During the elections that year, Muttiah had campaigned in favour of Gotabaya Rajapaksa who was the Defence Secretary when the LTTE was dealt a death blow by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government.

Murali has openly said in interviews that he felt Gotabaya Rajapaksa was the right person to lead the country, and that Tamil Nadu politicians should not interfere with what’s happening in Sri Lanka.

“If there is a problem within your family, do your neighbours interfere? Tamil Nadu politicians do not understand the problems of Sri Lankans. They should allow our government to get on with governance. I support President Rajapaksa because he is the right person to lead our country. Over the years before he came to power, there was no progress. The economy was down, nothing was moving. President Rajapaksa is an administrator, a former defence secretary and army man. He is a clever person who will carry out reforms, strike a different path, improve lives and do the right thing,” Muttiah Muralitharan had said in an interview to Hindustan Times

Muralitharan’s history of supporting the Sinhalese leaders and his apparent whitewashing of the genocide has landed both Muralitharan and Sethupathi in troubled waters. Sethupathi is yet to comment on the controversy and it needs to be seen if the movement to boycott the movie or actor yields any result or just like every other social media outrage, this one fizzles out too.