This comprehensive and erudite study on peace, stressing the imperative need for preserving it in a turbulent world, is of great relevance today in the context of the menacing nuclear arms race, the imminent possibility of extending nuclear weapons deployment to space and the increasing number, frequency and intensity of ‘local wars’. It has rightly been said that wars begin in the minds of men. Basanta Kumar Mallik points out that mankind’s ills have been brought about by man himself. He has yet to realize that he can, if he so chooses and strives earnestly to move forward towards establishing and maintaining peace, transform human society from one riven by mutual conflict into one where relative harmony prevails. In order to achieve this a fundamental change in man’s thinking is essential. Man has to educate himself—that is, acquire knowledge as Mallik emphasized and practice austerity or the ‘ethics of mutual abstention.’ The thrust of Mallik’s philosophy as ably explained by the author is that true knowledge or thought as he describes it, is non-absolutist understanding of reality in contrast to Hegel’s definition of reality or truth as being absolute or perfect.
January 1986, volume 1, No 1&2