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Peace and Development:
Haksar Memorial-Volume IV
The volume is imposing in its bulk (486 pages), but it is much more imposing in its content matter. A single glance at the names of the seminarians and the topics they have chosen gives an idea of the scholarship of a very high order. Also, one must commend the order in which these papers have been categorised. Peace and development are amorphous words, meaning different things to different people. Overlapping might have been a serious hazard to an ordinary editor/anthologist, but Subarata Banerjee has devised a foolproof method—a combination of division and classification that does away with overlapping to a large extent. There are nine sections devoted to specific topics that explain, comment upon, contribute to or discuss the points of hindrance from the humanity’s desired goals of peace and development. Section I, Threats to Peace and Development: International Scenario, opens the floodgates of discussion with papers contributed by such luminaries as I. K. Gujral, Suhas Chakravarty, Andrey Volodin, Pham Van Choug, Paw Lwin "Sein" and Ashok Parthasarathi, belonging to three continents. Section VIII, Terrorism as a Deterrent to Peace and Development, if read as a supplement to the first section, the picture acquires another dimension which is of the immediate interest to the world in general and to India in particular. Likewise, "area studies" in reference to the SAARC region have two complimentary papers on Pakistan, one in relation to India and the other focused on engaging the Taliban. Section V, Relations among Nations in a Globalised World, fills in many of the gaps that might have remained gaping holes in a spreadsheet like this. This section covers topics that relate to India directly or indirectly in the most relevant way. Well, as usual, there are areas that just cannot be ignored in any seminar of this kind because they are the first ones that come to an organiser’s mind. They provide not only the background so essential for a seminar spreadsheet but also provide the holdall straps that bind the loose odds and ends. Section III, Democratic Governance and Decentralisation; Section IV, Social Sciences and Peace and Development; Section VI, Economic Dimensions of Peace and Development; Section VII, Gender Dimensions of Peace and Development, and Section X, Spiritually, Science and Technology as a Source of Peace and Development, do the job extremely well. The introduction by Subrata Banerjee is so profound that I left it till now that it may have a lasting impression on the reader. Indeed, when he identifies the source for this series of seminar as P. N. Haskar’s dream of a "plural humanist world" and how the thinkers might get involved in "conflict resolutions", he gives the cardinal reason for holding these seminars. The last words of his introduction are prophetic and need to be quoted. "The old parameters of thinking and terms of discourse, evolved over the last two centuries, are no longer valid if the humanity has to survived in a world threatened by wars and nuclear annihilation."
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SOME seminars do have
presentations of a very high order, and if these are anthologised, the
volume becomes a permanent source of information for scholars, social
historians and laymen alike. Edited by the late Subrata Banerjee, Peace
and Development is the title of Haksar Memorial Volume IV recently
brought out by the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial
Development (CRRID), Chandigarh. This volume contains 50 papers
presented at the 5th Haksar Memorial Seminar-cum-Lecture
Series in the specific area of ‘Peace and development’ at CRRID from
November 4 to November 11, 2006.