This thesis is an assessment of interreligious dialogue in India developed as an approach to other religions in the context of exclusivist attitudes. While dialogue is important in such a context, nevertheless, in terms of its wider objectives of creating better relationships in society, it has some limitations which need to be addressed for it to be more effective in society. Studying the past 60 years of dialogue in India and undertaking field-research in south India, this thesis discusses three such limitations. Firstly, critiquing the notion of world-religion categories which is fundamental to dialogue, it argues that such categories are products of the western Enlightenment and colonialism leading to framing colonised people’s identities largely in terms of religion. Dialogue, emphasising the plurality of religions, has appropriated these notions although people live with multiple identities. Secondly the idea of religious conflicts serves as the basic context for dialogue in which dialogue should take necessary actions to contain them. While the concern to do away with conflicts through dialogue needs to be furthered, this thesis considers the multiple factors involved in such conflicts and works for solutions accordingly. Analysing through a case study a clash in 1982 in Kanyakumari district which continues to be termed as Hindu-Christian conflict, this thesis shows that there are multiple factors associated with each communal conflict, and dialogue needs to understand them if it is to work effectively. Thirdly it critiques the elite nature and methods in dialogue which ignore grass root realities and call for ‘taking dialogue to grassroots.’ The argument is that grassroot experiences of relating with each other in everyday living should be incorporated in dialogue for better results. What is proposed at the end is a necessity of re-visioning dialogue which can lead to fostering ‘inter-community relations based on multiple identities and everyday living experiences of ordinary people’ that invites one to enlarge the horizons to comprehend the plurality of relations and identities, not just plurality of religions, understand and address real-life conflicts and question naming conflicts as religious, and incorporate grassroot experiences of everyday living in continuing to work for a more peaceful society.

Samuel Huntington provoked great debate among international relations (IR) theorists with an article titled ¡¥The Clash of Civilizations?¡¦ and thus caused ¡¥civilizational turn¡¦ in international studies. While criticizing Huntington¡¦s mode of analysis, the IR theorists seek alternative ways of interpreting civilization. This civilizational turn has also emerged in the discussion of ¡¥non-western IR theories¡¦. Reflecting the Eurocentrism of the discipline, some of the IR theorists have kept searching alternative ways of theorizing the world through cultures and historical experiences originated in the non-western areas, which conceive of learning across different ways of being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology). This dissertation analyzes the possibility of an Asian school of international relations through civilizational analysis of non-western IR theories with Asian perspectives. While Asia is often regarded as a highly heterogeneous area both culturally and economically, this dissertation explores the compatibilities or even commonalities among discourses of Asian intellectual communities on civilization which may consist of a school of thought serving to enrich and dialogue with contemporary IR theories. The dissertation consists of three case studies: Confucian ¡¥Harmonious world¡¦, Nishida¡¦s philosophy on ¡¥nothingness¡¦ and postcolonial India with principles of non-violence, nonalignment and subaltern studies. Based on different ontologies and epistemologies, these three schools of thought contribute a common alternative way of interpreting world politics: the middle way, which provides the rationale for the possibility of an open Asian regionalism.