Towards a New Dharma of Peace Building

This volume deals with a new Dharma of peacebuilding and conflict transformations, drawing on the world's philosophical, religious, and spiritual traditions and many recent initiatives and experiments with peace. It deals with issues of sustainable peace, Dharma and Ubuntu of peace from African traditions, neurological insights of peacebuilding, traditions of conscientious objection, Satyagraha, possibilities of Gandhian Ahimsa, and moral and ethical limits of conflict and conflict resolution. It also presents the works of peace thinkers and activists such as Spinoza, Abhinavagupta, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Ulrich Beck, and others. It offers new initiatives and experiments in peace in different parts of the world—Palestine-Israel, Colombia, the Middle East, India, and South Africa. This pioneering and handy book is of interest to students, scholars, teachers, and activists working in peace and conflict studies, development studies, cultural studies, and religious studies as well as in different civil society organizations around the world.

Ananta Kumar Giri is a Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India. He has taught and done research in many universities in India and abroad, including Aalborg University (Denmark), Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris (France), the University of Kentucky (USA), University of Freiburg & Humboldt University (Germany), Jagiellonian University (Poland) and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has an abiding interest in social movements and cultural change, criticism, creativity and contemporary dialectics of transformation, theories of self, culture, and society, and creative streams in education, philosophy, and literature.  Dr. Giri has written and edited around two dozen books in Odia and English, including Global Transformations: Postmodernity and Beyond (1998); Sameekhya o Purodrusti (Criticism and Vision of the Future, 1999); Patha Prantara Nrutattwa (Anthropology of the Street Corner, 2000); Conversations and Transformations:Toward a New Ethics of Self and Society (2002); Self-Development and Social Transformations? The Vision and Practice of Self-Study Mobilization of Swadhyaya (2008); Mochi o Darshanika (The Cobbler and the Philosopher, 2009); Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons (2012), Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations (2013); Philosophy and Anthropology: Border-Crossing and Transformations (co-edited with John Clammer, 2013); New Horizons of Human Development (editor, 2015); Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues (editor, 2017); Cultivating Pathways of Creative Research: New Horizons of Transformative Practice and Collaborative Imagination (editor, 2017); Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony (editor, 2017); Beyond Cosmopolitanism: Towards Planetary Transformations (editor, 2017); The Aesthetics of Development; Art, Culture and Social Transformations (co-editor, 2017); Beyond Sociology (editor, 2018); Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary Conversations (editor, 2018); Practical Spirituality and Human Development: Transformations in Religions and Societies (editor, 2018); Practical Spirituality and Human Development: Alternative Experiments for Creative Futures (editor, 2019) and Transformative Harmony (editor, 2019); Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Border Crossings, Transformations and Planetary Realizations (editor, 2021); Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo (editor, 2022); The Calling of Global Responsibility: New Initiatives in Justice, Dialogues and Planetary Realizations (2023); Social Healing (2023); Cultivating Integral Development (2023); and Learning the Art of Wholeness: Integral Education and Beyond (forthcoming). Address: Madras Institute of Development Studies, 79 Second Main Road, Gandhi Nagar, Adyar, Chennai-600 020, India.


Saji Varghese is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Lady Keane College, Shillong, India. He has done his Ph. D from North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. His areas of interest lie in Environmental Ethics and contemporary social and cultural issues including dynamics of cultural transition. He has authored Political Philosophy of Antonio Gramsci (2008) and edited Beyond Humanism (2014); Nature, Culture, and Philosophy (2014);  Culture, Identity, and Development: Global and Local in North East India (2015); and Globalization and Cultural Pluralism (2016) (editor). He has also published research papers in different journals of national and international repute.