A democratic awakening born of crisis
In 2022, Sri Lanka experienced a rupture few believed possible in their lifetime: the forced resignation of a sitting President, not through elections, parliamentary mechanisms, or military intervention, but through the sustained, collective pressure of ordinary citizens. The Aragalaya “struggle” in Sinhala, Poorattam in Tamil, was not simply an outburst of economic frustration. It marked a radical transformation in the nation’s political imagination: a convergence of despair, dignity, and democratic energy that briefly unsettled entrenched authoritarianism.
Three years later, as the country adjusts to life under the newly elected National People’s Power (NPP) Government led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the memory of the Aragalaya invites reflection. What, precisely, did the Movement demand? What structures did it dismantle? And what has become of its spirit, realised, suppressed, or strategically forgotten?
The fire beneath: a system in decay
While the Aragalaya was triggered by an acute economic collapse, its roots lay in decades of systemic dysfunction. By early 2022, the country faced cascading crises: kilometre-long fuel queues, power outages lasting for hours, the unavailability of gas and medicine, and hunger even among the once-insulated middle class. People died in queues. Institutions failed en masse.
But these were only the surface manifestations of a deeper malaise. Since 1977, Sri Lanka’s embrace of unregulated neo-liberalism, absent institutional safeguards, had eroded social safety nets, hollowed out public services, and subjected critical sectors like agriculture and energy to speculative global markets. State capture by political dynasties reinforced a system of corruption, short-term populism, and elite impunity.
Following the end of the civil war in 2009, these dynamics intensified. The Rajapaksa regime deepened militarised governance, constructed debt-fuelled infrastructure projects, and weaponised Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism as a tool for consolidating power. What was framed as post-war “recovery” was, in reality, a peace of silence rather than reconciliation. Development was equated with unaccountable borrowing; sovereignty with repression; nationalism with exclusion.
The tipping point came swiftly: the overnight fertiliser ban that devastated domestic agriculture, a tourism industry crippled by Covid-19, and a historic sovereign debt default. The illusion of economic stability collapsed, and when it did, the streets erupted. But this was no ordinary protest.
The Aragalaya as democratic praxis
The Aragalaya was not merely a reaction, it was an enactment of radical democratic agency. It defied political parties, hierarchies, and fixed ideologies. It belonged to everyone: students and teachers, street vendors and professionals, families of the disappeared and queer activists, clergy and artists. Each group brought its own histories of pain and its own political vocabulary. In doing so, the Aragalaya transcended narrow identity politics and created a shared civic space of possibility.
At the Galle Face Green, renamed Gota Go Gama, protestors constructed a living, breathing space of resistance. Free community kitchens, public libraries, lecture forums, theatre performances, healing circles, murals, and performance art transformed the protest site into a collective reimagining of what democracy could be. It was a people’s university, an open archive of dissent, and a fleeting manifestation of a more egalitarian social order.
Its strength lay in its multiplicity. Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim youth marched side by side. Victims of the Easter Sunday bombings and families of the disappeared stood alongside environmentalists and labour unions. This convergence marked not only a rejection of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s regime, but of militarised democracy, economic kleptocracy, and the deep silences that have haunted Sri Lanka’s post-war political project.
The chant “Gota Go Home” condensed decades of disillusionment into a singular demand. It was a repudiation of both authoritarianism and the failure of representative politics to address structural injustice.
The collapse of a myth: dismantling the Rajapaksa domination
On July 9, 2022, thousands breached barricades and entered the Presidential palace. The image of protestors swimming in the President’s pool circulated globally, a surreal symbol of reclaimed sovereignty. Within days, Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country. A family dynasty that had long portrayed itself as the immovable guardian of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions.
This was a historic rupture. Electoral politics and Opposition parties had repeatedly failed to challenge the Rajapaksas. But a decentralised, leaderless People’s Movement succeeded where formal institutions had not. The Aragalaya demonstrated that collective solidarity, rather than elite brokerage or external intervention,could precipitate change.
Authoritarianism (re)invaded
But the victory was short-lived. In a swift political manoeuvre, Ranil Wickremesinghe, a politician repeatedly rejected at the ballot box, was installed as interim President with the backing of the Rajapaksa-aligned SLPP. His ascent, while legal, was perceived by many as profoundly illegitimate.
What followed was a sophisticated counter-revolution. On July 22, 2022, the military violently dismantled protest camps. In the months that followed, protest leaders were arrested, some under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). Others were surveilled, exiled, or silenced. Legal instruments like the Online Safety Act (OSA), the Anti-Terrorism Bill, and the DDR Act were deployed to criminalise dissent and shrink civic space. Murals were whitewashed. School curricula omitted the uprising. Aragalaya was recast as chaos by Government-aligned media and intellectuals.
In perhaps the most insidious move, memory itself became a battleground. The Movement’s decentralised nature, once its greatest strength, left it vulnerable to erasure. Yet the memory endured: in oral histories, in community archives, in street art, and in the stories passed from protest site to village.
The ballot and its echo: the NPP’s ascent
In 2024, the people once again asserted their agency, this time through the ballot box. The National People’s Power (NPP), led by the JVP and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, swept both the Presidential and Parliamentary elections. The victory signalled a profound political realignment: youth, the urban middle class, the Northern and Eastern communities, rural farmers, and first-time voters coalesced around a shared rejection of the UNP-SLPP duopoly.
This was not simply a shift in leadership. It was the electoral afterlife of the Aragalaya, a transfer of its ideals into the formal political arena. Structural reform, economic justice, anti-corruption, and participatory governance became the central demands of a new political generation. Yet, as history has often shown, elections do not guarantee transformation. The question now is whether the NPP can move from symbolic rupture to systemic reform.
Beyond symbolism: the struggle for structural change
As the NPP Government enters its eighth month, it faces formidable challenges. The debt crisis persists. The IMF’s austerity measures threaten to undermine social investment. The deep State, composed of entrenched bureaucratic, judicial, and military interests, remains largely intact. The architecture of impunity still stands.
To honour the Aragalaya’s legacy, the NPP must go beyond governance and pursue genuine structural change as they promised prior to the elections. Repeal repressive laws such as the PTA, OSA, and related legislation must be dismantled to restore civil liberties. Also, deliver transitional justice: war crimes, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings cannot remain unaddressed. Reinvest in public goods: Healthcare, education, energy, and agriculture must be shielded from privatisation and restored to public control. Decentralise State power: meaningful devolution and inclusive governance must guide reconciliation processes. Institutionalise participatory democracy: Mechanisms must be built to embed civil society and marginalised communities in policymaking.
Crucially, the NPP must construct a new ideological framework, one that abandons Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarianism and affirms pluralism, equity, and people-centred governance. Without this, the deep State will persist, wearing new masks.
A living legacy: struggle as continuum
The Aragalaya was not without contradictions. It was messy, leaderless, and at times politically naïve. But it reawakened the political agency of a people long told that change was impossible. It reminded Sri Lankans, especially a new generation, that democracy lives not only in institutions, but in the street, the square, and the shared act of refusal.
Three years on, its legacy remains contested. Some seek to erase it. Others co-opt it. Yet it endures: in every protest against repression, in every vote cast for justice, in every mural that dares to speak of freedom.
The Aragalaya was not a moment. It was the rediscovery of the possible. The future of Sri Lanka hinges on whether we nurture that possibility, or allow it, once again, to be buried under bureaucracy, fear, and the comfort of forgetting.
