Anarkali Araksha and Mahinda Chinthanaya

She is back in news. Daily Mirror reports a commotion at a leading five star hotel recently saw film star Anarkali Akarsha and Western Provincial Council Member Duminda Silva seeking police help to settle a dispute between them. This post has nothing to do with that incident. One’s personal life is a domain which others should not trespass. Sorry to disappoint you, but I see things more from the political angle.

Anarkali is a popular young actress whose celebrity has much to do with appearances than talent. Nothing wrong with that. Whatever the ascriptions, there is no question that she has achieved stardom at relatively young age. She, among others like Shihan Mihiranga, Roshan Ranawana, Bhathiya & Santhush and Pradeep Rangana,  is a stylish icon of the Y Generation of Sri Lanka.

Anarkali is also a political activist. She, with her then partner Duminida Silva was seen campaigning for Rajapakse-Pillayan alliance during the last Provincial Council elections. That is her choice. There is nothing wrong her campaigning for any political party she thinks best. It is a right any ordinary citizen enjoys in any democratic society.

There is another angle too. Let us get back to 2005 Presidential Elections. Does anyone remember the card current President Sri Rohana Jana Ranjana Rajapakse used? Passing his trade Union cap and red shirt (used in street protests) to good ole Vasu, he donned the kurakkan shawl with a saffron tinge. So the ‘angry street protestor’ became a staunch Sinhalese Buddhist. Then the Sapumal Kumaraya started the military campaign for a unitary state, interestingly forgetting all about Human rights he himself once used as a tool for self-promotion in international circles.

Now where does Anarkali fit in this picture? Where is the intersection between Sri Rohana’s Sinhalese Buddhist universe and Anarkali’s modernist Y Generation cosmos? Even a blind can see the two are light years away.

So why does modernist Anarkali politically support the feudal lord Sri Rohana? What common ground they have?

The simple answer is whatever the mask they wear in public; both of them are not what they want to show us. Mr. Kurakkan’s nationalistic thinking is only skin deep. Anarkali might be more honest, but her modernism too go too far. With those shawls taken away there is enough common ground between the two.

This demonstrates the appalling state of Sri Lankan politics. So many get carried on with external appearances. Especially the rural crowds blindly vote for one who wears a sarong, mistaking him to be one of them. Little do they know wearing a sarong or carrying ‘mal vatti’ are only political gimmicks.  The real person inside the sarong can be different from the image. 

Perhaps Anarkali might canvass for UPFA in forthcoming Provincial Council elections too. She might temporarily dress in a saree and go from house to house begging in what little Sinhala she knows. The voters too might listen to her and vote for the man in sarong. Perhaps her dazzling looks will make them forgot that they no more get the fertilizer subsidy they were promised under Mahinda Chinthana, or  now they have to pay twice or thrice more for a packet of milk powder.

When will this farce end? When will the voters realize they were shown only magic to rob their vote? When they realize they should vote for a party that has solution to their burning problems rather than getting dazzled with the tricks of swindlers?

I do not think anyone has readymade answers right now.