Why Does Eelam Tamil Art Speak About Politics?

I am a Tamil. Today, I live as a refugee. Throughout my life, I have lived alongside people from many different ethnic backgrounds and communities.

In my experience, living with other peoples has never been the problem. The difficulty for us has always been living under a political system in Sri Lanka where our abilities, our labour, our language, and our identity have been repeatedly suppressed and marginalized.

That is why we ask for a political solution.

Not because we want to dominate anyone else, but because we want the right to determine our own future with dignity, security, and meaningful political power.

This demand did not begin yesterday.

For more than thirty years, Tamil people have struggled and advocated for political rights, recognition, and self-governance.

Over time, this struggle has become part of our collective experience. It is not merely a political issue; it is a lived reality that has shaped generations of our people.

And that is precisely why our artists create work about it.

Artists create from what they know, what they feel, and what they have experienced.

Someone who has experienced love creates stories about love.

Someone who has experienced loss creates stories about loss.

Likewise, a people who have experienced political conflict, discrimination, and a long struggle for rights will naturally express those experiences through art, literature, music, poetry, and film.

This is not about hatred.

It is about memory.

It is about testimony.

It is about preserving the voice of a people.

So when people say, “Don't talk about politics,” or “Don't create art about these issues,” they are effectively asking us to distance ourselves from our own lived experience.

They are asking us to become strangers to our own history.

And when a people are separated from their own experiences, memories, and stories, it weakens their creative spirit and their cultural identity.

Art is not merely entertainment.

Art is memory.

Art is identity.

Art is the living history of a people.

That is why our art speaks about our experiences.

And when our experiences are political, our art will inevitably be political too.

This is not about being against anyone.

It is about refusing to forget who we are and where we come from.

By Siva SanthakumarEelam Tamil | Cinematographer | Storyteller