Kalimuttu, Who Rose from the Pit Holding a Bone, Meets President Anura
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake presided over the official handing over of newly constructed homes to the Malayaha (Upcountry) Tamil community at the Poonagala, Kabaragala estate in Bandarawela.
This historic milestone marks a decisive turning point in the 200-year history of the Malayaha Tamil community. The intense struggles and systemic disenfranchisement faced by this population were poignantly captured by short story writer A. S. Muruganandam in his work “Kalimuttu’s Citizenship” (Kalimuttuge Purawesibhawaya). Translated into Sinhala by Ibn Asumath and Pushpa Rangani Rathnayake, the collection was published as a book in August 1991.
Set against the painful reality of the Malayaha community rendered stateless in 1948, the short story follows Kalimuttu—an estate worker born in Sri Lanka who faces deportation to India because he lacks official documentation to prove his birthright.
Overwhelmed by distress, Kalimuttu decides to dig up the burial site of his great-grandfather to present a bone to government officials as proof of his deep-rooted ties to the land. Emerging triumphantly from the pit holding his ancestor’s bone, he challenges the authorities to either accept it as his ultimate birth certificate or bury him alongside his forebears.
After two centuries of hardship, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the National People’s Power (NPP) government have reshaped this legacy in Bandarawela, granting land deeds, homeownership, and permanent legal addresses to the Malayaha community.
“Kalimuttu’s Citizenship” (Short Story)
By A. S. Muruganandam (Translated from Tamil)
To the Sri Lankan society of the time, Kalimuttu was just an ordinary estate laborer who had made no grand contribution recognized by the state. Yet, generations of his family had poured their sweat, blood, and tears into the central highlands, nourishing the land and sustaining the country’s economy. The lush tea bushes standing proud on the Rajagiri Estate owed their existence entirely to the grueling labor of Indian indentured workers like him.
When rumors began circulating that the government was taking over the Rajagiri Estate and would retain only verified Sri Lankan citizens while deporting the rest back to India, Kalimuttu felt a deep pang of anxiety. He did not seek political power or voting privileges; he simply wanted to secure a future for his mother, wife, and three children—all born in the freezing highland chill of Sri Lanka just like their local neighbors.
Determined to obtain citizenship, Kalimuttu went from office to office, only to be shuffled between bureaucrats demanding official documents and birth certificates:
“Bring a letter from that official, a certificate from this gentleman,” they demanded.
How could estate workers obtain formal birth certificates during the colonial era? A worker informing a clerk at the estate office of a child’s birth was usually dismissed with abbreviated names scribbled in a register. When Kalimuttu pleaded that the sprawling tea estates built through generations of labor were proof enough, his words fell on deaf ears.
Exhausted and resolute, Kalimuttu invited the registration officials to his line-room backyard. Stopping before a massive tree, he picked up an axe and began felling it with furious determination. Once the tree fell, he cleared the roots and began digging deep into the earth.
Curious and impatient, the officials watched as he dug until the pit reached past his shoulders. After unearthing an old silver waist-chain that brought tears to his eyes, he dug deeper still. Suddenly, a voice echoed from within the pit, and something wrapped in soil was tossed to the feet of the waiting officers.
It was a fragment of a human bone.
“Gentlemen!” Kalimuttu cried out from inside the pit. “This is a bone from my grandfather, buried here decades ago! This is my birth certificate. If this is not enough to prove I am a citizen of Sri Lanka, then throw the soil back in and bury me right here alongside him!”
0
