Prof. Chomsky, Carol Chomsky, Ram, Sashi Kumar and Friends,

It’s a great honour to have this opportunity to thank all of you on behalf of the twenty-two organizations, who have been privileged to be associated with this historic assembly of citizens, who have come to listen to Prof. Chomsky and to interact with him. Prof. Chomsky, we are deeply indebted to you for articulating the voice of reason, the voice of humanity and the voice of civilised thinking. Mrs. Carol Chomsky, we thank you also for being with us this evening; it’s been a great pleasure. We would like to thank N. Ram of Frontline and Sashi Kumar from the Asian College of Journalism for making this evening come true for all of us. Ever since everyone heard about the possibility of Prof. Chomsky’s visit , we have been dreaming of this evening, and we are very grateful to you for making this true for us Thank you very much Ram and Sashi Kumar. I would also like to thank Mr. Kamal and his team from the Asian College of Journalism for the acoustics and for the technical arrangements made to record the proceedings in time on audio and video. Those who wish to procure copies, please get in touch with the Asian College of Journalism. We thank Sadanand Menon for the stage setting and lighting, Radhika Menon and Tulika for the design and printing of the posters and the invitations to this event, The Hindu for the series of advertisements it ran in the newspaper announcing the public lecture, the media in Chennai - Print, Broadcast and Online media - for the interest and support they have shown in their coverage leading up to this evening, and being present in such solid strength here to cover the lecture. In this connection, we would like to make particular mention of Sun News, which telecast promotional spots on this function on the channel. We would like to thank the Music Academy, particularly its President, Mr. T.T. Vasu and their staff, for kindly making this auditorium available to us. Finally, the wonderful audience who have turned up in such overwhelming numbers, not only from Chennai but also from other parts of the country. We thank you very much for your patience, because many of you had to stand outside, inside, many of you did not have seats and still there was pin drop silence, and we thank you so much for your cooperation. We were just thinking, but for the transport workers strike, the crowd, the audience here would have been really unmanageable, we would have had a tremendous crowd. And volunteers from all the sponsoring organisations, whose names I am going to read out in a minute, I would like to thank the volunteers who have been running around doing a lot of things and thank you so much. And now, if I may just take a minute to read out the names of the 22 organisations that are sponsoring this :

Indian School of Social Sciences, Chennai

Campaign Committee against Nuclear Weapons,

Movement against Nuclear Weapons,

Peoples’ Governance Cell,

Tamilnadu Science Forum,

Tamilnadu Progressive Writers’ Association,

Democratic Youth Federation of India,

All India Youth Federation,

Students’ Federation of India,

All India Students’ Federation,

All India Lawyers’ Union,

All India Bank Officers’ Confederation (Tamilnadu Unit),

All India Insurance Employees’ Association,

Bank Employees’ Federation of India,

Tamilnadu Post-Graduate Teachers’ Association,

Tamilnadu Government Employees’ Association,

Indian Oil Employees Union,

Confederation of Central Government Employees and Workers (Tamilnadu unit),

Federation of Medical and Sales Representatives Association of India,

All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA),

DAWN, and

Indian Scientists Against Nuclear Weapons.

Thank you Prof. Chomsky once again, and thanks all of you.