“In a recent submission to “Raavaya”, Kumudu Kusum Kumara had attempted a reading of Sumathy’s Ingirinthu as a text of subaltern identity. As implied in that essay — and as it can be conjured from the text itself — the story of Esther Valli is the “silence” of a community that has been the subject of multiple oppression ever since the set up of the Colonial plantation economy. In fact, the very heart of the Hill Country Estate Tamil question was tied up with the case of “legitimacy” as a part of the citizen body: where, in the collective consciousness of Lanka, these marginalized communities were, at best, seen as the vassals of an export economy; while, at the worst, they were condemned to a sub-human status.”
source: www.slwakes.wordpress.com