BRIEF REPLY TO A CRITIC 65 labourer constantly has to do: to understand the village structure, caste and class, the economics of life, the impact of technology, cultural revivalism, the contesting claims of different ideologies, the mysteries of birth and death, the change in human relations. This may be immodest to do but then it is life itself which poses this very immodest task and the only advice Susan Ram seems to have is to forget about the wholeness and complexity of life and to compartmentalize. I feel there are many studies which have compartmentalized life. This is why we know so little about the interaction of different aspect's. One of the important tasks is to learn about this interaction. What I have tried to do is at least to acknowledge and to confront this task since this seems to be the only way to ever develop methods to do it more efficiently. There are a few imputations in the review which seem to have the sole function of discrediting the author and could have been avoided with more careful reading. Just to give an example: It is wild speculation that the GPI-influenced people should have been indoctrinated by the leadership to lie to a foreign interviewer. First, as can be seen from the acknowledgements, the interviewers were Tamilians, second, the mistrust against outsiders, as can be seen from the narrated history of the conflict, was much weaker among the GPI than the CPI-M. Even if the attempt made in this study to understand a part of the complex cultural reality of India is not altogether convincing, at least the questions raised need to be indentified and pursued. GABRIELE DIETRICH