New Delhi: After Maitreyi Ramakrishnan described herself as a “Tamil Eelam woman” during the promotion of her new Netflix film, the Canadian actor is facing caustic criticism over her identity.
During an interview for her new film Best of the Best, Ramakrishnan said she identifies as a Tamil Canadian rather than Sri Lankan. That identity is part of the film too. Ramakrishnan plays the role of Maya, a college student who joins a Bollywood-fusion dance team. In a scene, a character assumes that she is Indian. Maya corrects him: “I’m Tamil. My family’s from Sri Lanka.”
An earlier version of the scene had Maya describe herself as “Tamil Sri Lankan”. Ramakrishnan asked for the line to be changed because that was not how she described herself.
She has explained the distinction through her own family.
“My culture is Tamil. My country is Canada. My roots are from Sri Lanka,” the 24-year-old said.
Her parents grew up in Sri Lanka and later left the country as refugees, fleeing the civil war.
The comments have since upset a section of people, who say Ramakrishnan is distancing herself from a Sri Lankan identity. Her use of “Eelam” has drawn particular criticism because of its association with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE.
The LTTE fought for a separate state, Tamil Eelam, in the predominantly Tamil northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. The civil war began in the early 1980’s and went on till 2009, when the separatist group was defeated by the Sri Lankan military.
Ramakrishnan’s comments have triggered many Sri Lankan pages and social media accounts to flood her film with one-star ratings on IMDb. Sri Lankan news publication Jaffna Monitor reported that several nationalist Facebook pages in Sri Lanka asked followers to give Best of the Best one-star ratings. Another page shared a prompt for generating negative reviews using ChatGPT or Gemini.
At the same time, Ramakrishnan is also receiving support, particularly within the Tamil diaspora, who said the distinction she makes between being Tamil and being Sri Lankan is familiar to families who fled the country during the civil war. Several others have welcomed seeing Maya identified specifically as Tamil rather than simply South Asian.
The way Ramakrishnan describes herself is not new. In 2019, shortly after she was cast in Never Have I Ever (2020-2023), she said she had asked to be described as Tamil Canadian
“My identity isn’t being Sri Lankan. That’s not my country. My country is Canada. But my culture is definitely Tamil,” she said then.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)