While you are writing in a sweeping way about social movements from 1980s to 2010, it is quite evident that almost all detials are overlooked just to ‘arrive’ at predetermined conclusions.Thank you so much for proving one more time that critical engagements are impossible with such judgemental writings.

Let me remind you that you haven’t yet answered my one and only one question. Instead you directed me to another thread (along with lots of misdirected comments. wish you will find the right occassion and person for making it again).

Happy debating to all ( megalomaniac/main, split subsidiaries included)

Well, there is something else called making others “subsidiary personality”.This arises out of a meglomaniac desire to control and appropriate anything. It usually appears in the form of ‘approprioating other’s voices” where actually the other(s) is/are able to represent her/him self. But the problem is that individuals with low self-esteem “subject” themselves to this kind of “benevolence”. Hence, it is not exactly the problem of “meglomaniac” himself. It requires an instinctual sense of self-respect to uunderstand this disease. Have you come across any such “personalities”? If you have, pls be sympathetic to them and help them cure themselves of such decease.

I am sure Jaseela must have observed that Nizar’s response to me is ‘applicable’ in all contexts. The words of Nizar perhaps expresses a “universal” axiom, which certainly has a meaning beyond this chat-room! Even as I say this, there is tone of “interrogation” in Nizar’s words. All attempts of “interrogation” accompanies its own unique set of problems.

Thanks for pointing to me the mistake in wrongly putting the intials of Chekku. I admit my error.

That said, I don’t want to make this reponse thread, a one to one discussion betwewen us.

I dont share your viewpoints. Please dont support your arguments by brininging in my name

@Damodar Prasad

Yes, the list was incomplete. Bobby,Jaseela ( not me!),Abhilash, Amala, baby, Usha, Kaveri… Unlike you, I think each individual and their interventions need to be acknowledged, referred to and respected. Your comment lacks that sensitivity.Not that you should come with lists all the time. But avoid clubbing multifarious efforts under some prejudices (about leadership)and assumed unity

“It is salutary that some of the civil society activists and groups in Keralam after some initial fabrication like “we versus aliens” came out actively in support of Chitralekha”
See, its in plural that you allege that ” some of the civil society activists and groups in Keralam” fabricated or manufactured ‘we versus aliens”.
What I learned from reading ‘Many Vices of Chitralekha”is that it is a ‘solidarity group Delhi” which fabricated or manufactured this “we versus aliens” intially. Nobody seemed against Chitralekha and everybody comes out actively supporting her there itself! I sincerely fails to understand what you meant by the above sentence.If you were referring to the Kafila discussion, saying that would have helped. You judged a whole cyber discussion and a collective (extra cyber or non cyber) intervention at one stroke and in one sentence!!! Dont you think you yourself are responsible for interventions like this ( which you believe are triggered by half-read responses)? What do you expect an ideal reader of your writing to do? just skip such references? I feel politically involved and sensitive persons have enough provocations for discussing that single sentence at length.

On anonymity, yes I agree with you that it helps being unreflexive.Interestingly I found “George john” repeatedly
appearing in the kafila thread as well. On all occassions supporting Prasad in that thread and supporting you in this thread. Perhaps ‘split personalities’ fascilitate a displaced discourse? Or mere coincidence? Or some other business?Anyway makes no difference for me.

I didnt read Nizar Ahmed’s response while responding. Now i read it. He is referring to the lack of reflexivity in your writing, right? there anonymity makes absolutely no difference.Three words he uses there are helpful in understanding your writing.i,e: privilege, ‘the derisively critical tone’, ‘ the elitisitic overviewing role ‘
sad that your response is underlining those traits once again, though feigning ‘politeness’.Bad fate indeed

Its PKM Chekku, not PMK , right? Be little more cautious while making references to people living in ‘noncyber world”? ( Or am I wrong?)

I was looking whether your name also figures in the list of prominent and visible in your response. I didn’t see your name.
Jessila, I am as “anonymous” as you are.

This “anonymity” is limited to the lack of knowledge of each other. “Anonymity” also helps in being un-reflexive. I am not sure whether is a prescription that only ‘authors” have to be reflexive while in responding one can be “supra-reflexive”.

But there is something called “conditioned reflexity”. But even anonymous are not exempt to this!!

BTW, I don’t know whether you were part of the ‘support” movement. Perhaps you are. But your name doesn’t count to be listed along with eminent people.

This is because both of us share a broader understanding of what constitutes civil society. Are we part of the civil society? Yes, we are. Both of us share the space of the civil society. Both of us are anxious about the issues concerned with civil society. It is we who constitute the civil society. As constituents of civil society and participants thereof its activities, I only gave expression to my own anxieties and crises. The middle-class anchors of the civil society may not feel responsible to express themselves. Perhaps, my “intention” to probe into the contemporary concerns is limited because in the CSA anchors view point I am a subtracted being from what they were/are.

From here, I will drive alone. Again look at the list of the prominent and the visible. Many in the lists were active in the CS movement of last decades. They were in the ‘support side” working along (?) with the main movement, sometime “lobbying” with the government, sometimes doing the PR work, sometimes networking, sometimes fund raising, sometimes even setting the “maximum” and “minimum” agenda of the struggle there of. But there is quintessential difference between the main actors and the supporting actors.
We know that some amongst the list were supporters of the Chaliyar-anti-Grasim struggle. (We also have heard from some documentaries that some in the list had a “difference on view” on the man agenda of the agitation). But where does PMK Chekku figure amongst the list? Do we remember Chekku? Is there any difference between the supporting actor and the real actor?

The history does not stand still. I think the Adivasi and Chengara land strrugles are two greatest moments from contemporary history. My understanding of the epochal changes in political sensibility, I have only tried to outline this with my limitation in the same write-up. The main “intention”, so to say, was to bring this into attention. The disengagement with the leading issue here itself exposes the “ill-fate” of civil society politics. It is an ill-fate, certainly!

On “we versus aliens”, I know I am responsible to answer. But as a response, shall I direct you to the article, “Many vices of Chitralekha” written by J.Devika and the responses to the same in the site “Kafila”. I don’t exactly remember who wrote it but you can see references to some “dichotomy” etc etc. If you find the word “fabrication” improper, you can also read it as “manufacturing”.

I am happy to note your “politically correct” reading of my “emotional disturbance”. This is because I am emotionally involved to issues even as I remain in the back. It has to be contrasted with “calculation disturbance”, which arises from the ‘calculated involvement” while physically remaining where one is throughout.

However, I am sad that you only half-read the write-up. You may also be interested to read about the “unity and opposition” between ruling party and CS activists. I salute each eminent persons listed in your response. I admit my limitations in correspondence to them. But it is an irony that such lists are perhaps used in business networking as well. One can ask what is so objectionable in it. Well!!

“prejudice free”?????
Take one example

‘the civil society sisterhood and brotherhood then split along several lines. The aboriginals lost the innocence the eco- mothers of Keralam had been celebrating for long.’

Can KGB or Damodar Prasad describe (let alone explain)’eco-mother’s participation in the agitation led by CKJanu? I remember reading in newspapers about both of them joining hands in the struggle. As Jaseela rightly pointed out,once we go to the state of affairs deeply and take a close look,this analysis exposes itself to be nothing but a compendium of prejudiced statements about certain agents whom the author doesn’t like.
Perhaps KGB is on the other side of the table! ( sorry, i dont know who KGB is either)shared prejudices are celebrated as accepted knowledge..

These starting sentences look incidental to this whole readymade argument.Most of the time such ‘ever prepared’ thoery suppliers smuggle in such ‘vague’,unsupported, idiocyncratic ‘judgements’ in the guise of serious political analysis.As neither Chitralekha nor ‘civil society activists and groups in Keralam” are not only ‘symbols’or ‘signs’, let me raise some priliminary questions to this omnipotent ‘author’. Which activist/group in “Keralam’ intially fabricated ‘we versus aliens’, when and where? I saw the following names coming out actively in support of Chitralekha ‘recently’. Chandraban Prasad,A.Vasu, A.K.Jayasree,BRPBhaskar, K.Ajitha,CSChandrika,Rekha Raj, K M Salimkumar, K K Baburaj, K K Koch,J.Devika,Iniyammal,Resly Abraham,Praveena K P,Amala,Dileep Raj,Civic Chandran,S Sithara, Reshma Bharadwaj,K.Giresshkumar. Vasu,Rekharaj, Ajitha, K K Koch were active at least for three years in connection with this issue, and intervened publicly many times..Chandraban is not from “Keralam”. Misreporting right under the nose of an overarching title like “Civil Society, Victim Industry and Keralam ” is an interseting as that gives away ‘author’s immediate provocation and emotional disturbance behind writing.Better such instant theory suppliers spend some time on what exactly is happening before going ahead with ‘oppositional’ theory constructions.
Let me ask another naive but basic question to the author. Why is it that he decide to support Chitralekha at this point of time? What is the present issue?What will he do in future on this issue ( of course, in addition to surfacing with such readymade writings

whenever some activists or groups do someting on the issue)? I dont demand anything from the author, but am simply curious because he seems to be omnipotent, capable of passing judgement on anything and everything