by Our Political Affairs Editor
Deepthi Kumara Gunarathne, the founder of the X-Group, stands at the crux of a tumultuous and increasingly fractured Sri Lankan political sphere. His journey, marked by betrayal, setbacks, and an almost unrelenting philosophical inquiry, is not merely the tale of an individual’s rise, fall, and rejuvenation within the domain of political activism. It is, more profoundly, a scathing critique of a system so entrenched in mediocrity, emotionalism, and vacuity that it continues to thwart any meaningful attempt at transformation. The X-Group, while initially bursting with revolutionary potential, quickly became yet another casualty of Sri Lanka’s political morass—a movement hampered by its intellectual rigor and inability to engage with the prevailing mass sentiment that dominates Sri Lanka’s public life. Today, Gunarathne’s return to the forefront with the Samabima Pakshaya, his newly revived political initiative, signals not merely an attempt to revive a political faction but a full-scale philosophical insurrection against the very forces that have hollowed out Sri Lankan political discourse.
Gunarathne’s brand of politics is fundamentally not about partisan loyalty, personal ambition, or fleeting electoral victories. It is a radical interrogation of the epistemological and ontological foundations upon which Sri Lanka’s political and social realities have been built. The X-Group, and by extension Gunarathne’s continued leadership, represents an intellectual defiance against the pervasive banality that characterizes the public sphere. His critique is, in its essence, one of profound existential consequence—Sri Lanka, in his view, is locked in a cycle of intellectual and moral decay, unable to break free from the clutches of an empiricist and phenomenological approach to politics that has, for far too long, rendered meaningful change impossible.
At the heart of Gunarathne’s intellectual project is an audacious proposition: the very language of politics in Sri Lanka must be overhauled. Politics, as it is currently practised in the island, is a game of affectation, driven by populist emotionalism and the manipulation of the masses. Leaders do not engage in discourse; they engage in spectacle. They manipulate the masses not through rational deliberation, but through the subtle cultivation of desire, fear, and the will to conform to the familiar. This form of politics, Gunarathne argues, is anathema to genuine emancipation. It is the very fabric of a political system that preys upon the weaknesses of the populace—an insidious cycle where the electorate is lulled into submission by the ever-present, intoxicating promises of the status quo. In such a system, intellectual movements like the X-Group are destined to fail, not because their ideas are insufficient, but because the general public has been conditioned to resist anything that dares to challenge the comfort of the familiar, the visceral, and the immediately gratifying.
What makes Gunarathne’s critique so searing is its uncompromising honesty regarding the intellectual stagnation that plagues Sri Lanka. Gunarathne sees the political sphere as nothing more than a theater of absurdities, where ideology is reduced to emotive slogans and superficial gestures. The X-Group’s setback, in his view, was its inability to manufacture the kind of emotional resonance that would allow it to infiltrate the deeply emotional and often irrational fabric of Sri Lankan politics. Gunarathne’s philosophical disillusionment with the masses is evident in his bitter, yet truthful, acknowledgment that the Sri Lankan electorate is driven not by critical reasoning but by a visceral, almost animalistic desire to perpetuate the existing system.
However, Gunarathne’s intellectual rigor is not merely a lamentation of the failures of his own movement. It is a call for an intellectual and philosophical revolution—a movement that begins by rejecting the simplistic, sentimental tropes that govern political discourse and moves toward a more profound, structural critique of the forces at play. For Gunarathne, the path to political redemption lies in transcending the limitations of empiricism, which governs the way Sri Lankans view their world. Emphasizing structuralism and post-modern theory, Gunarathne calls for a shift in thinking—a shift away from the immediate, lived experience of politics toward a more analytical and critical engagement with the deep-seated structures that shape society.
The challenge Gunarathne faces in this intellectual revolution is as much one of language as it is one of ideology. In a society governed by the forces of capital, where everything—personal relationships, desires, and even identities—has been commodified, how can one talk of emancipation? How can one fight for a society that transcends the manipulation of desire, when desire itself has been so thoroughly co-opted by the mechanisms of capitalism? In his most provocative moments, Gunarathne suggests that the very tools of political engagement—the language, the structures, and the ideals we rely on—have been corrupted. The masses, in their daily lives, have been reduced to mere commodities, their existence consumed and controlled by the networks of capital. In this context, political action is no longer a matter of overthrowing the state or engaging in symbolic revolutions; it is a matter of dismantling the very fabric of society, of rethinking and re-constituting the way people relate to one another and to the world.
This philosophical standpoint is precisely what separates Gunarathne’s politics from the self-serving populism that has dominated Sri Lanka for decades. In the face of such deep ideological and societal decay, it is easy to embrace cynicism and resignation. However, Gunarathne’s refusal to be swept into the tide of empty rhetoric represents a rare and much-needed intellectual defiance. Rather than retreat into the comforting embrace of cynicism, Gunarathne presses forward, demanding that the people of Sri Lanka confront the profound contradictions of their political and social realities.
One of the most striking elements of Gunarathne’s critique is his rejection of the facile distinction between “the masses” and “the intellectual elite.” The failure of the X-Group, and indeed of most progressive political movements in Sri Lanka, can be traced to the assumption that a gap exists between the people and the intellectuals. This is, for Gunarathne, a false dichotomy. The problem lies not in the supposed ignorance of the masses but in the inability of intellectuals to communicate effectively with the public, to speak in ways that transcend the banal and the superficial. The intellectuals are not the bearers of a truth that the masses are incapable of understanding; rather, the masses themselves have been systematically indoctrinated into a state of political passivity that prevents them from engaging critically with the world around them. The intellectual’s task, then, is not to speak “above” the people but to challenge the very structures that have reduced them to political impotence.
Gunarathne’s intellectual project, in essence, is a radical engagement with the very possibility of transformation. His refusal to pander to the emotionalism of the electorate is not a rejection of the people but an act of radical trust in their potential for critical engagement. Gunarathne’s vision for Sri Lanka is one where politics is not about ephemeral, emotional appeals but about an unwavering commitment to the intellectual and philosophical task of dismantling the structures of power. It is a vision of politics that refuses to accept the world as it is and dares to imagine what it could be.
This is the paradox at the heart of Gunarathne’s political movement: while his critiques may appear deeply pessimistic, they are, in fact, the bedrock of his hope. His work, through the X-Group and now the Samabima Pakshaya, is an effort to resuscitate political action that transcends the petty, transactional politics of today’s Sri Lanka. Gunarathne’s call is not for another political revolution, but for a revolution of thought, one that challenges every assumption and reorients society towards the possibility of genuine transformation. The failure of the X-Group may be seen as a proof to the difficulty of such a project, but it is also a demonstration to its necessity.
Political actions are increasingly commodified; where leaders offer nothing more than the soothing balm of superficial promises, Gunarathne’s uncompromising philosophical stance offers a rare glimpse of what might be possible in a truly revolutionary political sphere. Whether or not his ideas will ever permeate the wider public consciousness remains uncertain. What is certain, however, is that the intellectual and political movement he leads stands as a challenge to the prevailing order, a call to look beyond the surface and confront the deeper structures that continue to shape our lives and our politics.
