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Collection Highlights

Practical Spirituality and Human Development:

Transformations in Religions and Societies Ananta Kumar
Giri

Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Border Crossings,

Transformations and Planetary Realizations Ananta Kumar
Giri

Social Theory and Asian Dialogues Ananta Kumar Giri

Beyond Cosmopolitanism: Towards Planetary Transformations

1st Edition Ananta Kumar Giri (Eds.)
Reclaiming the University for the Public Good: Experiments
and Futures in Co-operative Higher Education Malcolm Noble

Human Rights Futures Stephen Hopgood

Vampire Capitalism: Fractured Societies and Alternative

Futures 1st Edition Paul Kennedy (Auth.)

Spirituality in Management: Insights from India Sushanta

Kumar Mishra

Redefining Religious Education Spirituality for Human

Flourishing 1st Edition Scherto Gill
PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY
AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Creative Experiments for Alternative Futures
Practical Spirituality and Human Development
 Ananta Kumar Giri
Editor

Practical Spirituality
and Human
Development
Creative Experiments for Alternative Futures
Editor
Ananta Kumar Giri
Madras Institute of Development
Studies
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

ISBN 978-981-13-3686-7 ISBN 978-981-13-3687-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3687-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964110

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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For Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, Thich Nhat Hanh, Swami Agnivesh,
Manoj Das and Guruma Arundhati Debi
 Foreword

The twenty-first-century world we live in reflects opportunity and

direct costs of the fracture of the harmony that governed the human,
spiritual and natural ecosystem and made the evolution of the human
race in Africa possible. This book, Practical Spirituality and Human
Development: Creative Experiments for Alternative Futures challenges
us to re-commit to embracing ways of thinking, acting and being as
spiritual beings so we can re-establish sustainable harmony.
Ananta Kumar Giri sets the tone of this important book in the pref-
ace to this book as well as in his introductory chapter to the first vol-
ume on Practical Spirituality and Human Development by making the
case that practical spirituality is “transformative practice which leads to
self-transformation, cultural transformation and world transformation.”
Transformation as an expression of the spiritual work of confronting the
self in its brokenness and striving for the wholeness that emerges from
seeing the Divine in all of the creation starting with the self, one’s society
and the whole world.
We have much to learn from indigenous cultures across the globe,
from the Khoi/San in Africa, the Intuits in the Arctic region, the
Aborigines in Australia, etc. Their cultures unself-consciously embrace
the Divine as manifest in all creation. Their cultures have no boundaries
between the spiritual, physical, human, nature and the cosmos.
Modern humans although bestowed with the capacity for a con-
sciousness of the inextricable links between body, mind and soul as well
as generations that have come before and would come behind us across

vii
viii    Foreword

time and space, have not done the practical spiritual work to give expres-
sion to this holism. Our focus on materialism, the nature of economic
and social systems we participate in, alienate us from the imperatives of
holism as essential to harmony and peace in our lives, society and the
world.
I have been encouraged by a book I read recently The Nordic
Secret—A European Story of Beauty and Freedom by Lene Rachel
Andersen and Tomas Bjorkman, Danish and Swedish citizens respec-
tively. The book makes the case that at the core of the Nordic success
is a deep understanding of, and commitment to investment in the pro-
motion of a strong social fabric characterized by shared values and eth-
ics through the complex “inner work” in each citizen linking the body,
mind and soul. Each of the Nordic countries has over centuries invested
in Bildung defined as moral, intellectual and emotional transformation.
Transforming mindsets of feudalism that sustain hierarchical author-
itarianism and abuse, to helping citizens attain emotional freedom and
self-authorship, is an essential complex and painful process. Pastors of
the Reformed Churches ably led the transformation of Nordic coun-
tries from feudalism to prosperous social democracies over a period of
70 years. These pastors redefine their ministry from serving the elites to
focus it on practical spirituality of healing the wounds of feudalism and
weaving together societies characterized by caring human rights values.
Practical Spirituality and Human Development: Creative Experiments
for Alternative Futures provides a rich platform of insights by thinkers
across all faiths and cultures to forge diverse pathways to the transfor-
mation of the self, our cultures and the world. Each one of us needs to
become actively conscious of the Divine within us, within our fellow
human beings, and within nature and the cosmos around. This con-
sciousness of the Divine will guide us to contribute in a deliberate way to
a more harmonious sustainable world.

Camps Bay, South Africa Mamphela Ramphele

 Preface

Spirituality is an integral part of life and is manifest in our aspirations

and relationships. It is also manifest in our quest for beauty, dignity and
dialogues in the midst of ugliness, disrespect and monologues of many
kinds which constitutes the vision and pathways of practical spiritual-
ity in self, culture, society and the world. This second volume in our
engagement with practical spirituality, Practical Spirituality and Human
Development: Creative Experiments for Alternative Futures, continues our
quest for understanding and realizing the vision and practice of practi-
cal spirituality which follows our first volume, Practical Spirituality and
Human Development: Transformation in Religions and Societies.
This book has been long in the making and I am grateful to all the
contributors to our volume for their kindness and patience. I am grateful
to Professor Mampehla Ramphele, an inspiring activist, thinker, fighter
for freedom and public intellectual from South Africa for her Foreword
and Paul Schwartzentruber, a deep thinker, activist for non-violent
change, theologian and friend of the world, for his Afterword for our
book. I am grateful to friends in Palgrave Macmillan especially Connie
Li and Sarah Crowley Vigneau for their kind interest and support for
this project. I am also grateful to colleagues and staff at our Institute—
Madras Institute of Development Studies—for their kind interest.
We dedicate this book to five inspiring spiritual seekers of humanity—
Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, Thich Nhat Hanh, Swami Agnivesh, Manoj Das
and Guruma Arundhati Devi. Buddhadasa Bhikkhu was the great seeker
from Thailand who inspired a deep creative rethinking of the Buddhist

ix
x    Preface

Path of spiritual realization. He also inspired democratic transformation

of religion, society and polity in Thailand and the world. He challenged
us to think about challenges such as Nibbana (Nirvana) in practical terms
as developing our capacity not to cling to things and practice non-attach-
ment in our day to day lives. He also inspired the movement of Engaged
Buddhism which has contributed to self-development and social transfor-
mation in Thailand, South East Asia and around the world. Thich Nhat
Hahn has been a seeker of spirituality and peace in our contemporary
world. During the Vietnam War, he courageously strove for peace. He
has inspired many people around the world with his meditation works,
books and poems. His ideas like inter-being inspire us to transform it
into trans-being in our day to day lives where interactions and rela-
tionships become sites both of creative immanence and transcendence.
Swami Agnivesh has also been a great fighter for peace and social jus-
tice. He has worked for the downtrodden and for the emancipation of
bonded labourers. His kindness and struggle for justice attract many
souls and inspire us to practice practical spirituality as struggle for dig-
nity, beauty and dialogues in our lives. Manoj Das has also been a fighter
for dignity and creator of beauty in words and worlds. In his young
days, he took part in the Communist movement of Odisha and India
and struggled for dignity and justice. He then heard the call of a dif-
ferent related vocation of transformation and joined Sri Aurobindo and
the Mother in their spiritual laboratory, Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Das has
been teaching there for nearly six decades and has been exploring deeper
dimensions of the journey of self, consciousness and society through his
many deep works in literature and human relationships. His short sto-
ries, novels, and essays such as his novel Akahsara Ishara in Odia invite
us to discover the meaning of our lives and realize its higher purpose of
transformation of consciousness in the midst of the manifold challenges
of our lives, especially the pull of desire to bring us down into the pits of
destruction, hatred and death. Guruma Arundhati Debi is an inspiring
embodiment of practical spirituality as an effortless and smiling dedica-
tion to the betterment of humanity through education and social work.
She embodies the spirit of a Divine Mother and relates to all concerned
with love, care and karuna. Guruma joined the Sobhaniya Movement
for education, peace and dignity launched by Kumara Bhai and has been
with many schools inspired by this movement. All our five seekers whom
we humbly dedicate this work invite us to explore new dimensions of
 Preface    xi

practical spirituality in manifold webs of our lives—religion, education

and intractable fields of domination such as caste and gender.
I hope this humble effort of ours inspires many seeking souls and
movements around the world to engage with the vision and practice
of practical spirituality. Our humanity today is going through several
catastrophes and many of us are feeling helpless as orphans. Here prac-
tical spirituality can help us regain hope and courage and in this journey,
we can get inspiration from the following thought of Janusz Korczack1
which he used to share with the outgoing students from his orphanage:

We have not given you God; because you must search for Him and find
Him within yourself. We give you no country, because you must make
your own choice, the choice of your heart and reason.
We give you no love of Man, because there is no love without forgiveness.
You must search for it through hard work.
We do give you one thing, however. We give you a longing for a ­better
life, based on truth and justice, which you are destined to build for
yourself.
We hope that it will be this longing that will lead you to God, to your
country and to love.

But as we come to God it is a different God that we meet and play

together in practical spirituality. We get a glimpse of this in the song “Oh
God” where Annika Norlin writes that God comes and sits by her side
and smiles like a toothless child. She also writes about her being with
God: “I only go under your spell how you spell my name.”2 We also
find a similar invitation for a different path of God realization as an
act and art of playing and dreaming together in the following poem,
“Homework,” by the deep and heart-touching Brazilian poet Jaci
Bezerra, a creative soul from Recife, Brazil:

It was God’s time, and God used to come

Unforeseen and, almost always, towards the end of the afternoon:
Upon arrival, He would open the doors I had closed
Revealing, at a pace, eternity.
God had the splendor of a holiday
open to innocence and toys:
xii    Preface

In that time of peace and wet ground

I used to see God and not feel afraid.
What I used to dream, God used to dream with me,
The sun, the sky, the sea, everything was ours:
If I wanted to sin, God would not let me,
The soul was unaware of remorse.
Time, with insomnia, used not to sleep,
and life, roaming the backyards,
Though naive and meek, had already announced
That time was never coming back.
Time passed, I passed, passed
Life, every day more remote:
The only one that does not pass, preserving what remains,
Is the God who dreams and opens his doors to me.3

As we walk and meditate with Janusz Korzack, Annika Norlin and Jaci
Bezerra in our times of orphanage, amnesia and annihilation, practical
spirituality can help in creatively remembering alphabets of creation as
explored in my following poem:

Alphabets of Creation

A for Aleph, Aum, Allah

B for Beginning
C for Creation
A is also Annihilation
B, Banning and Bigotry
C, Cunning and Cruelty
How do we work with Aleph and Annihilation
Together
In the alphabet of creation
Towards a New Tapasya of Transformations4

In the train from Datong to Ananta Kumar Giri

Beijing, China
August 2018
 Preface    xiii

Notes
1. As may be painfully remembered, Korczak and his inmates were annihi-
lated in the concentration camp in Treblinka by the Nazis.
2. I heard this song at a bar in Datong, China during my travel just before
midnight on August 27 and it was a deep spiritual experience for me.
3. I am grateful to kind and nurturing wife of Jaci Bezerra, for kindly read-
ing this poem to me during our meeting in Recife on August 1, 2018
and before our moments of parting. She told me that it is poems like this
which made her fall in love not only with the poem but also with the poet.
Unfortunately her dear husband Jaci is now going through a different pro-
cess of physical impairment and memory loss and her love, care and ded-
ication for her husband is an exemplary act of practical spirituality. I am
grateful to her sweet and kind daughter Siliva for her translation of this
poem from Portuguese to English.
4. A poem by Ananta Kumar Giri originally written in the home of Peter and
Holey, two inspiring co-travelers with Mata Amritanandamayee in Bailey,
Colorado, USA on October 23, 2015.
 Contents

1 Practical Spirituality, Human Development and Creative

Experiments for Alternative Futures: An Introduction
and an Invitation 1
Ananta Kumar Giri

Part I New Visions and Cultivation of Practical

Spirituality and Human Development

2 On the Holy Ground: Practical Spirituality

and Practical Moral Courage 13
Reverend Carolyn Swift Jones

3 Multidimensional Mysticism 17
Shivjot Gill and John Clammer

4 Practical Spirituality: The Art and Science of Conscious

Living 39
Karminder Ghuman, Michael A. Wride and Philip Franses

5 The New Spiritual Paradigm as Facilitator of Social

Change 59
Marta Botta

xv
xvi    Contents

6 Expressions of Self in Market, Society and Self: Toward

Spiritual Praxis for Human Development 73
Subhash Sharma

7 Cultivating Practical Spirituality: Soil, Soul and

Sarvodaya 89
Alexander Scheiffer and Ronald Lessem

8 Practical Spirituality and Human Development: Circles

of Gender Liberation and the Calling of Lokasamgraha 109
Ananta Kumar Giri

Part II Creative Experiments in Practical Spirituality

and Human Development

9 Practical Spirituality and the Contemporary City:

Awakening the Transformative Power for Sustainable
Living 129
Christoph Woiwode and Nisha Woiwode

10 Practical Spirituality: Dabbawala Case 153

Mala Kapadia

11 Practical Spirituality and Developmental Challenges

Amongst Tibetan Communities in India 171
Thomas Kauffmann

12 Practical Spirituality with Meher Baba and Human

Development in the Modern Age 195
Rachel Dymond

13 Practical Spirituality and Religious Giving: Pluralism

and New Forms of American Muslim Giving 213
Sabith Khan

14 Community and Practical Spirituality: Perspectives on

L’Arche as an Arena for Contemplative Transformation 237
Anne Escrader
 Contents    xvii

15 Assertive Sprout from Wounded Psyche: Glimpses

into Dalit Spirituality 255
A. Maria Arul Raja SJ

16 The Politics of Spirituality: Dissident Spiritual Practice

of Poykayil Appachan and the Shared Legacy of Kerala
Renaissance 277
Ajay S. Sekher

17 Transforming Life-Worlds: In Praise of Kundrakudi

Adigalar’s Practical Spirituality 283
James Ponniah

18 Subud: A Practical Mystical Path for the Twenty-First

Century 303
Reynold Ruslan Feldman

19 Islam, Political Culture and Practical Spirituality

in Kedah, a State in Northwestern Malaysia 323
Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid

20 Ziyaret and Practical Spirituality: Women’s Shrine

Visits in Anatolia 353
Smita Tewari Jassal and Sebnem Koser Akcapar

Part III Transformation of the Material and the Spiritual

and Practical Spirituality as New Movements
of Awakening

21 The Material and the Spiritual: The Provisionality

of Matter and the Politics of Miracles in Japanese
New Religions 379
John Clammer

22 The Spiritual Politics of Bio-Cultural Regeneration 403

Frédérique Apffel-Marglin
xviii    Contents

23 Human Consciousness and Its Discontents: An

Ecological Reading of The Awakening of Faith in the
Mahāyāna 423
Feng-chu Cheng

24 Ecological Holism: Arne Naess’s Gestalt Ontology

and Merleau-Ponty’s Bodily-Flesh Phenomenology 437
Su-chen Wu

25 Light Development in an Age of Climate Change 455

Louke van Wensveen

26 Spirituality as a Bridge: A Holistic Approach to Social

Development and Dignity 479
Sudha Sreenivasa Reddy

27 Practical Spirituality and Journey with Sacred

Mountains 495
María Constanza Ceruti

Afterword 511

Index 521
 Notes on Editor and Contributors

Editor

Ananta Kumar Giri is a Professor at the Madras Institute of Development

Studies, Chennai, India. He has taught and done research in many univer-
sities 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 lit-
erature. 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); Mochi o Darshanika (The Cobbler and the Philosopher, 2009);
Sri Jagannathanka Saha: Khyaya, Khata o Kehetra (With Sri Jagannatha:
Loss, Wound and the Field, 2018); 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

xix
xx    Notes on Editor and Contributors

John Clammer, 2013); New Horizons of Human Development (editor,

2015); Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues (edi-
tor, 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);
The Aesthetics of Development: Art, Culture and Social Transformation
(co-editor with John Clammer, 2017); Beyond Sociology (editor, 2018);
Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary Conversations
(editor, 2018); Weaving New Hats: Our Half Birthdays (2018); Beyond
Cosmopolitanism: Towards Planetary Transformations (editor, 2018); and
Transformative Harmony (editor, 2018).

Contributors

Dr. Sebnem Koser Akcapar is Professor in Sociology at Ankara

Social Sciences University. She is a senior research fellow and an exec-
utive board member at Migration Research Center (MiReKoc), found-
ing Director of Center for Asian Studies (KUASIA) at Koc University,
Istanbul and Associate Member at Asia Centre at University of Sussex.
After completing her Ph.D. in Belgium, she moved to the United States
as a postdoc visiting fellow at the Institute for the Study of International
Migration (ISIM), Georgetown University. She taught graduate courses
on Gender and Migration, Muslim Immigrants in Western Europe
and North America, Politics of Migration and Integration Problems at
Georgetown University at the School of International Service, BMW
Center for German and European Studies. She was later appointed as the
Director of Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies of Georgetown
University. She also worked as Visiting Professor between 2013 and
2015 at South Asian University in New Delhi, India and taught on dias-
pora and transnationalism as well as on social stratification in Asia. She
published books and articles in peer-reviewed academic journals on the
concept of integration and immigrants. Her research areas include sociol-
ogy of religion, marriage migration, forced migration, labour migration,
highly skilled migration, social networks in migration, diaspora formation
and political mobilization. Her current projects include migrant entre-
preneurs from Asia; integration processes of Syrian refugees in Turkey
and the Middle East; elimination of discrimination and social exclusion at
university campuses in the EU and Turkey.
 Notes on Editor and Contributors    xxi

Frédérique Apffel-Marglin is a Professor Emerita of Anthropology.

She taught at Smith College in Massachusetts. She was a research advisor
at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER)
in Helsinki, an affiliate of the United Nations University, from 1985
until 1991. As part of that endeavour, she and Harvard economist
Stephen Marglin formed an interdisciplinary and international collabora-
tive team that has produced three books on critical approaches to devel-
opment and globalization. She has published over 55 articles and 13
books.
She is one of the associate editors of the journal INTERculture
(Intercultural Institute of Montreal).
Marta Botta is based at the Sustainability Research Centre of the
University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. She completed her Bachelor
of Science/Psychology degree at the Central Queensland University,
Australia, her Graduate Diploma of Media Studies at Massey University,
New Zealand, and a Graduate Certificate and doctorate in Futures
Studies at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. Marta’s doc-
toral thesis focused on social change, heritage futures and practical spirit-
uality. In line with her endeavour to facilitate sociocultural renewal, she
produced several video documentaries of environmental and community
projects to advance the sustainability agenda. Address: University of the
Sunshine Coast Locked Bag 4, Maroochydore DC, Queensland, 4558
Australia. https://au.linkedin.com/in/marta-botta-8a920925.
María Constanza Ceruti is an Argentinian high-altitude archaeolo-
gist and anthropologist who has done more than 80 field surveys, most
of them with National Geographic teams in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia,
Ecuador and Peru. She specializes in excavating Inca Empire ceremo-
nial centres on the summits of Andean mountains. Her most important
finding are the Llullaillaco Mummies, the best preserved mummies in
the world according to the Guinness Book of Records. She’s the only
archaeologist specialized in the field of High Mountains. She’s also a
researcher in the CONICET, director of the Institute of High Mountain
Research at the Catholic University of Salta.
Feng-chu Cheng is interested in creating intercultural dialogues
between the West and the East and has presented several academic
papers on related subjects in various international conferences in Taiwan,
Thailand, and India. After receiving her Ph.D. in English Literature
xxii    Notes on Editor and Contributors

at Tamkang University, she taught as an Assistant Professor at Taipei

College of Maritime Technology for two years. Currently she works as an
independent researcher and freelance translator. Address: No.6, Ln. 175,
Niupu N. Rd., Hsinchu City 300, Taiwan (R.O.C.).
John Clammer is a Professor in the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and
Humanities at the O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Delhi NCR,
India. He was previously a Professor in the Faculty of Comparative
Culture at Sophia University, Tokyo and at the Institute for Advanced
Studies in Sustainability at the United Nations University. He has
taught or been a Visiting Professor at universities in the UK, Germany,
Australia, South Korea, India, Argentina and India. His work ranges over
many fields of cultural sociology, including art, religion and the relation-
ships between culture and development.
Rachel Dymond is an independent scholar and spiritual seeker based in
the UK and is interested in global spiritual movements.
Anne Escrader graduate with a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and
Special Education from The University of Western Ontario, Canada.
She has worked extensively with the L’Arche community in Canada, and
presently teaches online courses for the Intellectual Disability Studies
programme at St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, Canada. She
lives with her family in Chennai, India, and works as a Special Education
Consultant and researcher.
Reynold Ruslan Feldman was born in New York City on November 6,
1939. After preparing at the Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey,
he received three degrees from Yale, a B.A. (1960), an M.A. (1962)
and a Ph.D. (1966), all in English. He has also studied and taught in
Germany and Indonesia. After a career as a college English teacher, aca-
demic dean, and academic vice president, he became an independent
consultant, working as a foundation evaluator, nonprofit administrator
and planner, university consultant and fundraiser. Counting his doc-
toral dissertation on the fiction of the American novelist Henry James
and Terranautics 101, he has now written and published 10 books. A
widower with two grown daughters, he is married to Cedar Barstow, a
psychotherapist, ethics trainer and author, and lives with her in Boulder,
Colorado. Besides working on the Terranautics Project, which he consid-
ers his primary legacy, he tutors students and edits doctoral dissertations
 Notes on Editor and Contributors    xxiii

and professional manuscripts. An internationalist, Ren has studied 12

languages and can get along in six. For more about him, you can see his
personal website: www.reynoldruslan.com.
Philip Franses is a Senior Lecturer in Holistic Science and teaches com-
plexity at Schumacher College, UK. He studied mathematics at New
College Oxford. In 2005, after a fifteen-year career designing intelligent
software, culminating in a programme now used in The Netherlands by
all Dutch courts, Philip came to Schumacher College as an M.Sc. stu-
dent. Philip began and edits the Holistic Science Journal. He is also the
convener of a successful inquiry forum called Process and Pilgrimage and
is the author of Time, Light and the Dice of Creation: Through Paradox in
Physics to a New Order.
Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid is a Professor of Political Science at the
School of Distance Education, and consultant researcher at the Centre
for Policy Research and International Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia
(USM), Penang, Malaysia. Trained in politics and economics at Oxford,
Leeds and Newcastle universities, UK, his research on political Islam
in Southeast Asia has landed him visiting fellowships at the Rajaratnam
School of International Studies (2008–2009) and the ISEAS-YusofIshak
Institute (2015–2016), both in Singapore, resulting in four well-cited
monographs. Ahmad Fauzi has published over forty scholarly arti-
cles in leading journals such as Indonesia and the Malay World, Islamic
Studies, Asian Studies Review, Southeast Asian Studies, Asian Journal
of Political Science, Japanese Journal of Political Science, Asian Survey,
Pacific Affairs, Sojourn, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations and
Contemporary Southeast Asia. He regularly contributes book chapters to
edited volumes, including Palgrave Macmillan’s Southeast Asian Muslims
in the Era of Globalization (2015), edited by Ken Miichi and Omar
Farouk. He sits on the editorial board of USM’s flagship journals Kajian
Malaysia: Journal of Malaysian Studies and Kemanusiaan: Asian Journal
of Humanities. His expertise has earned him speaking engagements with
international media outlets such as Singapore’s Channel News Asia and
the BBC World Service. Address: Political Science section, School of
Distance Education, UniversitiSains Malaysia, 11800 Minden, Penang,
Malaysia. https://usm.academia.edu/AhmadFauziAbdulHamid.
xxiv    Notes on Editor and Contributors

Karminder Ghuman is currently an Associate Professor and Area

Chair—Marketing & Entrepreneurship at LM Thapar School of
Management, Thapar University, Dera Bassi campus. He is Heading
the Centre for Indian Management and also leading the Venture
Lab—Thapar, an incubation centre of Thapar University. With 19
years of professional experience, he is trainer and consultant and has
conducted numerous assignments with government and private sec-
tor organizations. Dr. Ghuman’s books titled “Rural Marketing”
(2007) and “Management: Concept, Practice and Cases” (2010), have
been published by McGraw-Hill. He has edited a book titled Indian
Management, which has been published by Bloomsbury India.
Shivjot Gill is a doctoral research fellow at Jindal Institute of
Behavioural Sciences, O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat. Currently,
she is pursuing her Ph.D. in Sports Psychology and is working on inves-
tigating the impact of mental training methods on psychosocial well-be-
ing of Indian target sports athletes. She holds a Bachelor with majors
in Psychology from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar and Master’s
in psychology from Punjabi University, Patiala. In addition to aca-
demics, she has actively participated in shooting sport at National and
International level and has experience of 2 years as a Student counsellor.
Smita Tewari Jassal is a Professor of Sociology in Ambedkar University
Delhi’s Kashmere Gate campus. From 2009 to 2015 she was an
Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology,
and Graduate School of Social Sciences, METU, Ankara. In 2013, she
spent a year as research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies, Delhi. She was the Madeleine Haas Visiting Professor of
Anthropology, Brandeis University in 2008–2009 and prior to that,
taught at Columbia University, New York and SAIS, Johns Hopkins
University in Washington, DC. She was Visiting Fellow at the Truman
Institute for Peace, Hebrew University, Jerusalem between 2003 and
2004. From 1992 to 1995 she lived in Moscow and regularly contrib-
uted articles for the Arts and Culture pages of the English language
daily, “The Moscow Tribune.” Professor Jassal teaches courses on gen-
der, theories and methods in social anthropology, culture, and courses
on India. Her research interests include marginality, gender, religion,
rural transformations, caste, collective memory and cultural production.
She has authored Unearthing Gender: Folksongs of North India (2012,
Duke UP), Daughters of the Earth: Women and Land in Uttar Pradesh
 Notes on Editor and Contributors    xxv

(2001, Manohar) and co-edited New Perspectives on India and Turkey:

Connections and Debates (2017, Routledge, UK) and The Partition Motif
in Contemporary Conflicts (2006, Sage). Her ethnography on religiosity
in contemporary Turkey is soon to be published by Routledge, UK and
she is currently completing a manuscript on the Nishad caste.
Reverend Carolyn Swift Jones is a pastor and social activist in
Connecticut, USA. She is the nurturer of a very creative church called
Church of Practical Spirituality.
Mala Kapadia, Ph.D. is a writer and researcher in Management,
Ecology, Psychology, Ayurveda and Yoga. She has her career in
Journalism, Teaching and Human Resource Management. Her work
in Management & Literature, specially poetry and creative essays have
got her National & State level awards. She is the Founder of Human
Potential Consulting named “Tame the Monkey.” She is also a faculty
with S. P. Jain School of Global Management Singapore Dubai Sydney
campuses since 2005. Researching in area of Wellbeing, Holistic Healing
and Integrated Intelligence for more than two decades, Mala has been
renowned speaker internationally. She has developed psychometric based
on ancient wisdom of Ayurveda and has designed a certification course
of the same. Her book Heart Skills Emotional Intelligence for Work
and Life has been awarded ISTD Award 2008–2009. Her work inte-
grates Western Competency Framework of EI (Emotional Intelligence)
with Eastern perspectives and wisdom of Yoga and Ayurveda. Mala was
Festival Coordinator for 10th edition of 7 Islands International Film
Festival, 2016, dedicated to world peace, disarmament and Ecology. She
has also been Jury at Auroville Film Festival in 2015.
Thomas Kauffmann has studied Economics and Anthropology where
his interest for the Tibetan culture and its rehabilitation in exile flour-
ished. After having worked for some years in the development sec-
tor, he decided to study the relationship between the Tibetan refugees
and the Western NGOs. He completed this study by a Doctorate in
Anthropology at the University of Oxford, from which different publi-
cations and a book came out, titled: The Agendas of Tibetan Refugees:
Survival Strategies of a Government-in-Exile in a World of Transnational
Organizations. Dr. Kauffmann is since eight years the Executive Director
of an international NGO based in Luxembourg.
xxvi    Notes on Editor and Contributors

Sabith Khan is an Assistant Professor at California Lutheran University.

He is a scholar-practitioner with expertise in American philanthropy, civil
society, religion and culture. Most recently, he served as the Executive
Director of Muslim Public Service Network in Washington, DC, an
NGO that engages and inspires young American Muslims to do public
service. He successfully revived the organization and executed a summer
fellowship programme which brings the best young talent to DC for an
intense immersion experience. His skills include: management and lead-
ership of organizations, strategic communications. Having worked in
India, UAE and the USA, he brings strong cross-cultural expertise, as
well. In addition, Khan served as a Visiting Researcher at the Center for
Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University between 2015
and 2017. Address: 111 S Oaknoll Ave #209, Pasadena, CA 91101.
Ronald Lessem is an activist and thinker based in London.
James Ponniah is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Christian
Studies at the University of Madras, Chennai. He holds membership in
various scholarly associations such as EASAS (European Association for
South Asian Studies), AAR (American Academy of Religions), SHCS
(Society for Hindu Christian Studies, USA) and AAS (Association of
Asian Studies, USA) and ACPI (Association of Christian Philosophers
of India) and has presented scholarly papers in their annual confer-
ences. In addition to many articles in various international journals, he
has authored a monograph The Dynamics of Folk Religion in Society:
Pericentralisation as Deconstruction of Sanskritisation (2011) and co-ed-
ited Dancing Peacock: Indian Insight into Religion and Redevelopment
(2010), Committed to the Church and the Country (2013) and Identity,
Difference and Conflict: Postcolonial Critique (2013). He was a pro-
ject co-investigator with Chad Bauman (Butler University, USA) on
“Christianity, Religious Freedom, and Religious Violence in Contemporary
India” funded by Berkeley Centre for Religion, Peace and World Affairs,
Washington. He was awarded Collaborative International Research
Grant by American Academy of Religions in 2015. His areas of research
and teaching include folk religious practices of India, ritual power, popu-
lar Catholicism, Dalit Christianity, Inter-faith religious practices, Religion
and Globalization, religious violence and Christian responses in India
and Sri Lanka.
 Notes on Editor and Contributors    xxvii

Mamphela Ramphele has had a celebrated career as an activist, med-

ical doctor, academic, businesswoman and political thinker. In 1968
she enrolled for a medical degree at the University of Natal, where she
became involved in the South African Students Association (SASO) and
was a founder, with Steve Biko, of the Black Consciousness Movement.
In 1976 she was detained under the Terrorism Act, and from 1977 to
1983 she was banned to Tzaneen in the Northern Transvaal. She has a
Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, a B.Com. degree, a Diploma in Tropical
Hygiene and a Diploma in Public Health. In 1996 she was appointed
Vice-Chancellor of UCT. In 2000 she became a managing director of
the World Bank, based in Washington, DC. Dr. Ramphele has served
as chairperson of many boards and is currently a trustee of the Nelson
Mandela Foundation, a board member of Women Strong International.
She was the Founder of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa
and the Citizens Movement and is Co-Founder of ReimagineSA. In
2013 she formed the political platform AgangSA, and in 2014 she with-
drew from party politics to return to her role as an active citizen. Dr.
Ramphele is the author of several books and publications on socio-eco-
nomic issues in South Africa, including A Passion for Freedom, Laying
Ghosts to Rest and Conversations with My Sons and Daughters, her lat-
est book Dreams, Betrayal and Hope is her analysis of “the state of the
nation” in South Africa. She has received numerous national and inter-
national awards acknowledging her scholarship and leading role in spear-
heading projects for marginalized people in South Africa and elsewhere.
Website: http://www.mamphela-ramphele.com.
Sudha Sreenivasa Reddy has more than 25 years of experience in social
development sector in India. She has Masters in Sociology from Mysore
University; Diploma in Community based Rehabilitation of the disa-
bled in India; Diploma in Social Leadership and Rural Development—
SEARSOLIN, Xavier University, Philippines; International Course in
Development Communication from International Institute of Rural
Reconstruction, Philippines. Presently, Sudha is the director of Eco
Foundation for Sustainable Alternatives (EFSA), a registered nonprofit,
nongovernmental social development organization based in Bangalore,
India. She is passionately involved with the holistic empowerment of
the marginalized communities and action research into several dimen-
sions of human nature. Sudha has been striving for alternative models
xxviii    Notes on Editor and Contributors

of environmental and social justice, eco spirituality, human and nature

interconnectedness, rights and responsibilities and nonviolent approach
to peace. She has presented papers on diverse social themes in the inter-
national conferences.
Paul Schwartzentruber is an independent writer and researcher with
primary interests in intercultural and inter-religious dialogues. He has
recently returned to Canada and lives in Halifax. Prior to that he lived
for four years in the middle east studying Arabic culture and music.
Research on (Zen and Theravada) Buddhism also took him during
that time to India, China and Sri Lanka. Prior to that (2007–2012),
he spent five years in India working as a volunteer with the Gandhian
land rights organization, Ekta Parishad as well as for the International
Gandhian Institute for Nonviolence and Peace in Madurai. During this
time, he travelled extensively in India, doing advocacy work, documenta-
tion, editing, website development, coordinating volunteers and writing.
He also published many scholarly articles on Gandhi and nonviolence
for Ahimsa/Nonviolence, a journal of the IGINP and regularly edits the
English version of the Journal. Recent writings include a lengthy study of
the Canadian political philosopher George Grant and Gandhi as well as
another study of the American pacifist and Gandhian, Richard B. Gregg
(published in India).
Paul has B.A. in English and Classics from University of Toronto
and an M.A., in Theology and a Ph.D. (All but Dissertation) from
St. Michael’s College. He was a Lecturer in the Graduate School of
Theology at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota (1985–
1990). He also worked as the Executive Director of the Marguerite
Centre, a Retreat and Educational Centre in the Ottawa Valley
(1997–2007).
Alexander Scheiffer is an activist and thinker based in London.
Ajay S. Sekher is currently an Assistant Professor of English at SS
University Kalady, Kerala. His recent works are on Kerala Renaissance
Modernity, Ambedkar, Shodaran Ayyappan and Narayanaguru. He writes
in English and Malayalam.
Subhash Sharma an eminent management thinker and author holds
Ph.D. from University of Southern California, Los Angeles and Post
Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Ahemdabad. He is well
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