How a trip to Sri Lanka sparked backlash against Asin Thottumkal and impacted her Tamil film career: ‘Involved merely in the capacity of an artiste'

Indian Express

19-05-2025

Although her career lasted just over a decade, Asin Thottumkal was undoubtedly one of the biggest names in Indian cinema during the 2000s. She appeared in films across multiple languages, turning almost everything she touched into gold. From South Indian stars like Kamal Haasan, Nagarjuna Akkineni, Nandamuri Balakrishna, Venkatesh, Ravi Teja, Vijay, Prabhas, Ajith Kumar, Suriya, Vikram and Pawan Kalyan to Bollywood icons like Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, Mithun Chakraborty, Ajay Devgn and Abhishek Bachchan, Asin shared the screen with some of the industry's biggest names in a remarkably short span of time.
Nonetheless, at the peak of her career, Asin became embroiled in a controversy that many believe significantly impacted her cinematic journey and contributed to a decline in film offers from the South, particularly Tamil. Following the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009, the South Indian Film Artistes Association had reportedly urged all Indian celebrities to refrain from participating in cultural events or shooting films in Sri Lanka, citing the long-standing persecution of Tamils there. Despite this, Asin, along with her co-star Salman Khan and others, visited Lanka in mid-2010, where a major portion of their film Ready (2011) was shot. Asin reportedly even organised three-day eye-care camps in Jaffna and Vavuniya with the support of Salman's Being Human Foundation.
This move apparently angered the South Indian Film Artistes Association, leading to what was believed to be an unofficial ban on her. Asin's actions came after the association had issued a statement warning celebrities against attending that year's IIFA Awards in Colombo. In response, stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, and Aishwarya Rai even skipped the event. However, actors such as Salman Khan, Vivek Oberoi, Saif Ali Khan, Hrithik Roshan, and Lara Dutta attended, and were subsequently banned by the association, according to Hindustan Times.
'I am involved merely in the capacity of an artiste. I have to abide by the filmmakers' decision on such issues,' India Today quoted the actor as saying when asked about her decision to shoot in Sri Lanka for Ready. The controversy didn't end there. In October 2010, during her visit to Mettupalayam in Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore district for the shoot of Kaavalan (2011), directed by Siddique and co-starring 'Thalapathy' Vijay, members of a political party staged a protest at the filming location. Holding black flags, the demonstrators objected to her visit to Lanka and accused her of taking an 'anti-Tamil stand' and 'enjoyed the company of anti-Tamil Sinhala politicians', Times of India reported.
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While it's unclear whether the controversy directly caused a decline in Tamil film opportunities for her, Kaavalan was the last Tamil film Asin ever did. By that time, she had already begun focusing on Bollywood, though her career there never fully took off after her blockbuster debut in Ghajini (2008).
Following Khiladi 786 in 2012, she took a three-year break and returned with All Is Well (2015), co-starring Abhishek Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor. That film would mark her final screen appearance before her marriage to businessman Rahul Sharma in 2016, after which she bid farewell to cinema.