(08-May-2011, 07:41 PM)Shekhar Wrote: Hi Ajita,
Surprised to note Cbe - the land of great Basava Premanand- has no formal representation. I would love to be instrumental in organizing such a group. Though I have been a rationalist all my life I have not joined any group so far. I would like to take now an active part as I have free time on hand.I am not on the face book. Is that an essential requirement? Initially I think I would have to communicate with the like minded in Coimbatore. Suggest me the possible ways of doing this.
Basava Premanand was the first major activist we contacted when planning Nirmukta's launch. He was already in poor health, but fortunately for us prof. Nayak was very active and enthusiastic. (By the way, I did a lot of my schooling in Coimbatore.)
A handful of people from Coimbatore are part of Nirmukta. Its not a requirement that you are on facebook to be part of Nirmukta's communities, but as of now FB is where most of our interactions have been taking place. These forums are a great resource for various reasons, but Nirmukta has grown by harnessing the influence that social media such as facebook have with the middle-classes in India. All our regional groups are represented only on facebook, and for the immediate future facebook is where we do most of our "recruiting" and social networking.
See here for a list of Nirmukta's regional groups:
http://nirmukta.com/nirmukta-regional-groups/
Our national level group is here:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=61...151&ref=ts
and we have an atheism page on FB, as part of our Indian Atheists brand, here:
http://www.facebook.com/IndianAtheists
This last one is the fastest growing of our social networks.
If you do decide to join facebook, we can create a Coimbatore Freethinkers group and begin promoting it. If you don't wish to get on facebook (and I completely understand your aversion to it), we may have to wait a bit longer until someone else is willing to work with a Coimbatore group on FB. We can always create a Coimbatore section on the forums, under the Tamil Nadu regional groups section.