110 SOCIAL SCIENTIST form in popular media is getting to be crass and cynical. What is more striking is the enigmatic silence of women themselves in the face of these atrocities—and that despite the impressive achievements of Kerala in spheres like women's education and employment! No doubt these disconcerting developments have to be seen against the backdrop of the waning hegemony of the left and the systematic abridgement of the rights of the masses that has come in its train. THE ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE BACKLASH AND SOME QUESTIONS OF METHOD Any realistic analysis of contemporary Kerala society and culture will have to come to terms with what can tentatively be termed 'the ultra-conservative backlash'. Nurtured diligently by the popular media, and aided and abetted by the establishment, the 'backlash' has become a well-entrenched and palpable ideological entity in our daily 4fe. Further, its pernicious influence has eroded, to a great extent, the unquestioned hegemony that the progressive forces had enjoyed in the cultural life of Kerala right up to the sixties. Certainly the 'backlash' is a nebulous phenomenon, eclectic in its ideological composition and protean in its manifestations. This is perhaps no accident when we consider the curious chemistry of ruling-class alliances in response to which the backlash ideologues modulate their voices. No doubt, owing to its bewildering transmogrifications, the backlash defies simple or precise definition. Yet, in general, it can be seen to be characterised by its pronounced anti-progressive, anti-left stances, its unabashed idealisation of the feudal past, its belligerent apolitical posturing, its unconcealed male-chauvinistic and sexist bias, its pathological dread of people's movements and its strident revivalist rhetoric. Emerging rather shamefacedly from the murky aftermath of the infamous 'Vimochana Samaram' in the late-fifties, the backlash has cunningly exploited the numerous dissensions and theoretical convulsions within the left to acquire a certain measure of political respectability and ideological sophistication. The eclipse of women's freedom in Kerala society—and the resultant marginalization—has to be seen in the context of the now insidious, now open, but ever relentless efforts on the part of the backlash ideologues to abridge the rights that had been wrested by the masses from the ruling classes in bitter struggles of the past and to even rewrite the history of our times devaluing these struggles. Nevertheless, it needs to be emphasised that attempts to dismiss the 'backlash* 3s a fortuitous development foisted upon us by external agencies—be it the incursion of imperialist culture or the media revolution, though gratifying to a certain species of self-complacency, are, in the last analysis, bad as theory and unsound as a guide for