As long as the present generation of the powerful, whether the rulers in Washington or in New Delhi, persists with the practice of depending on its armed infrastructure to lord over the political space and establish hegemony over civil society, and fails to learn that such a policy invariably escalates a cycle of violence, the language of discourse in the relationship of the powerful and the powerless will be dominated by violence. In India today, how can there be a non-violent resolution of the major confl icts that are plaguing our society?