To the Sanjana – Malinda exchange I can only confirm that some of my best friends are Sinhala racists.

As for the plagiarism thing, I don’t usually find myself in disagreement with David Blacker but i think he’s taking the stricter and narrower view of things
(copyright). Rajpal is right about plagiarism. I would understand it as passing off as your own product, someone else’s stuff, i.e. copying in a classroom or lifting chunks from a book unacknowledged and including it in your tutorial. So far Rajpal has not been found guilty of that deadly charge.

I do think though that Rajpal’s manner of expressing himself on this and occasionally other matters has been even more sophomoric than Malinda’s usually tends to be.

Anyone who is a registered author (just registering on the site does not make one an author) on this site can see all the comments on the site. WordPress lists the IP against each comment. Wasn’t my or by design – just WordPress for you.

This is water under the bridge. I’m sad that his comment was of the this nature in response to my own missive to him (http://www.groundviews.org/2007/07/12/bloggers-and-mainstream-media-media-ethics-in-a-digital-age/#comment-16239) but have no regrets that it was I who drafted the FMM statement against his removal from the post of Editor at the Observer back in the day (http://www.dailymirror.lk/2006/10/13/news/09.asp). He doesn’t know this.

Take care,

Sanjana

For some reason an earlier response to your comment re me didn’t go through….I said something on the following lines:

At the time I wrote the piece (there was a back-and-forth over several weeks if I remember right), I did not know Dayan. Met him later and we became friends. Still friends. Collegaues, close colleagues…depends on how one sees such things. There are more things we agree on today than we did before, true. Does this make me take back what I said? No. Not unless I found that what I wrote was somehow wrong.

I don’t subscribe to the theory that a political enemy cannot be a personal friend. I consider you a friend although we are ideologically at odds with one another in more ways than Dayan and I are or were.

Histories do matter. They teach us to be wary. Does it mean that if common ground is found one must choose to be grumpy and scowl? What if you and I at some point in time come to share the same ideological position(s). Should we refuse to work together becaue I was once associated with NMAT and you with the CPA?

Tomorrow, Dayan and I, by the same token, might have differences of opinion and will no doubt call each other out. So what?

It’s a judgment call too, of course. It depends on the person. I think you (and Dayan) are fundamentally decent individuals. As such histories, although they do figure in assessments, will be less raucus factors in the overall view. There are always those we learn to treat with utmost suspicion, even to the point of rejection. One does not play with vipers.

For the record, I still have my disagreements with Dayan and Rajpal. They both took issue with me with respect to Sivaram (I wrote in http://www.theacademic.org as did Dayan; Rajpal wrote in the Sunday Times and Dayan’s piece was carried in the Sunday Island at a time when i didn’t have access to any newspaper). We still disagree on that score. Didn’t stop me from defending Rajpal, editorially, in The Nation, when the Sunday Observer fired him (see under ‘Media Machinations’ at http://www.nation.lk/2006/10/15/edit.htm.)

Malinda

p.s. by the way, can you email me that article you’ve picked the quote from? it was an interesting exchange and Dayan got the last word SINCE I was a staffer at the Island. Prabath refused to carry my final, 7 line rebuttal. 🙂

re ip addresses….if A and B are networked your research will still give you one ip address. does not mean A=B. In this case, Rajpal may not equal ‘Lakbima’ (if that’s where he’s writing from) and there’s nothing to stop others at Lakbima posting something, is there?

And Sanjana, since you are hot on democracy and stuff, howhat’s your take on the privileges accorded to some to trace back posts? 🙂

Malinda

Dayan was not a friend then, for I had never met him. Friend a couple of years later, even though we disagreed about many things. Friend still. Rajpal is a friend even though he has taken issue with positions I held/hold. I consider you a friend, although there are lots we disagree about.

The comment on Dayan is still valid, even though we think alike on a lot more things now than we did before.

Histories are important for they tell us something about what we can expect. But I am not fixated on such things and don’t subscribe to the Trotskyite dictum ‘political enemy can never be personal friend’. Tomorrow, Dayan and I might disagree vehemently. And we will probably call each other out. Tomorrow, by the same token, you and I may find ourselves on the same ideological page. Should we let suspicions on account of me having been associated with NMAT and you being in the CPA get in the way of working together?

I guess it’s a call about how one chooses to relate to people, isn’t it?

There are people we learn to keep at arm’s lenth. People we shake hands with. I would shake Dayan’s hand any day. Yours too. Regardless of the ideological positions you may take up on Day X, because at some fundamental level I think both of you are decent people. The same goes for Rajpal.

There are others I would hesitate to go near. One does not play with vipers.

Cheers.
Malinda

“About Dayan’s history, let me say it all in one line: it includes a particularly funny way of handing over nomination papers, a funny way of popping in and out of the country, offering an abject public apology to J.R. Jayewardene, not to mention defending the party lines of the various groups in power (nationally and regionally). It would suffice to say ‘Danno Danithi’ at this point.”

“Some mild thoughts on Dayan Jayatilleka”, The Island, Colombo, Oct.9, 2000

Sanjana