Thinking from the Margins and for the World: Theology, Dignity, and Planetary Responsibility
Authors: Pandikattu (Joseph), Kuruvilla, Lopes, Richard
Type: Book
Published: 2026-08-03

<h2>About the Book</h2>
<p><em>Thinking from the Margins and for the World: Theology, Dignity, and Planetary Responsibility</em> is a companion volume to <em>Thinking with and for the Church and Nation: The Future of Theology</em>, the earlier Festschrift published in honour of Fr George Pattery SJ. It is not a second volume in a numbered series, nor merely an appendix to the earlier collection. It is a distinct yet closely related work that continues the intellectual, theological, ethical, and social concerns that have shaped Fr Pattery’s life and scholarship.</p>
<p>The earlier book reflected on the future of theology in relation to the Church and the nation. It brought together scholars who engaged with questions of faith, public responsibility, Indian realities, ecclesial renewal, social justice, and the vocation of theology in a changing world. The present companion volume widens that conversation. It moves deliberately towards the margins: towards those persons, communities, memories, cultures, and ecological realities that are often excluded from dominant theological, political, and developmental discourse. Yet it does not remain at the margins. It thinks <strong>from the margins and for the world</strong>, allowing marginal experiences to become sources of knowledge, moral insight, theological renewal, and planetary responsibility.</p>
<p>The title expresses the central conviction of the book. The margins are not empty places. They are not merely locations of deprivation or helplessness. They are also sites of memory, resistance, creativity, wisdom, community, and hope. People at the margins often see dimensions of social and religious life that remain invisible to those at the centre. The contributions in this book therefore do not treat the marginalised simply as objects of concern. They recognise them as subjects of history, interpreters of experience, bearers of culture, and participants in the creation of a more just and humane world.</p>
<p>The volume opens with the urgent need to rebuild social trust. In societies wounded by polarisation, religious suspicion, violence, and ideological hostility, dialogue is no longer an optional intellectual exercise. It is a condition for shared life. The chapters on interreligious friendship, <em>ahiṃsā</em>, Sarvodaya, and the yoga, tantra, and kundalini of development explore the moral and spiritual resources needed for personal and social transformation. Gandhi’s vision of nonviolence and universal welfare is brought into conversation with wider Indic traditions of self-discipline, relationality, liberation, and integral development. Development is thus understood not simply as economic growth, but as the cultivation of persons, communities, moral responsibility, and harmonious relations with nature.</p>
<p>The second part turns to recognition, memory, usefulness, and human dignity. Modern societies frequently measure human beings by productivity, efficiency, social status, economic contribution, or public visibility. Those who cannot perform, produce, compete, or command attention may be considered burdensome or insignificant. Against this tendency, the volume affirms that human worth does not depend upon usefulness. The need to be recognised and needed is examined alongside the moral significance of memory, presence, vulnerability, and personhood. Even what appears socially “useless” may remain deeply meaningful. Human dignity belongs to the person before it becomes an achievement, role, function, or measurable contribution.</p>
<p>The third part addresses the relationship between Church and nation through democracy, constitutional peace, public ethics, religious freedom, and human dignity. These essays examine the pressures confronting contemporary Indian society: political polarisation, religious majoritarianism, democratic exclusion, violence, inequality, and the instrumental treatment of human beings. The Church’s public vocation is interpreted not as a struggle for privilege but as a call to witness, service, solidarity, and constitutional responsibility. The section also extends the language of dignity into economic and organisational life by questioning the reduction of persons to “human resources” and proposing more humane forms of leadership and entrepreneurship.</p>
<p>The fourth part gives particular attention to theology emerging from indigenous communities, migrants, and everyday life. Oraon rites of passage, the struggles of indigenous peoples, the unheard voices of internal migrants, and the ordinary experiences of wounded communities are presented as genuine sites of theological reflection. Theology here is not produced only in seminaries, universities, or ecclesiastical institutions. It arises within birth and death, movement and displacement, ritual and memory, labour and suffering, celebration and survival. Listening to these experiences requires more than the collection of information. It demands humility, presence, empathy, and a willingness to allow marginal lives to question established theological categories.</p>
<p>The final part situates these concerns within the planetary crisis. Climate change, ecological destruction, unequal climate finance, anthropocentrism, and the exhaustion of the earth are not merely scientific or technological problems. They are ethical, political, spiritual, and theological challenges. The essays on climate justice, eco-theology, ecosophy, eco-philosophy, and planetary coexistence call for a transformed understanding of the relationship among human beings, society, nature, and the cosmos. The volume argues that care for the vulnerable cannot be separated from care for the earth. The poor, indigenous peoples, women, migrants, future generations, and non-human forms of life are connected within one fragile planetary community.</p>
<p>The book is held together by three closely related themes: <strong>theology, dignity, and planetary responsibility</strong>. Theology must listen to life before it speaks about life. Dignity must include those whom society overlooks, excludes, or considers unproductive. Planetary responsibility must move beyond abstract concern towards new forms of solidarity, justice, restraint, reverence, and collective action.</p>
<p>As a companion to the earlier Festschrift, this volume continues the celebration of Fr George Pattery’s intellectual and spiritual legacy. At the same time, it honours him in the most fitting manner: not by repeating what has already been said, but by extending the conversation into new areas of thought and action. The contributors engage his concern for dialogue, Gandhi, culture, liberation, compassion, contextual theology, social transformation, and the future of humanity. Their essays carry these concerns into the worlds of indigenous experience, constitutional democracy, economic ethics, migration, human vulnerability, ecological crisis, and planetary hope.</p>
<p><em>Thinking from the Margins and for the World</em> is therefore both a tribute and an invitation. It honours a scholar, teacher, priest, and public intellectual whose work has sought to connect faith with life, India with the world, and spiritual depth with social commitment. It also invites readers to examine their own locations, privileges, responsibilities, and relationships. It asks whether theology can become more attentive, democracy more compassionate, development more integral, institutions more humane, and human civilisation more responsible towards the earth.</p>
<p>The future may not be created only from established centres of power and knowledge. It may emerge from ignored communities, forgotten memories, vulnerable persons, dialogical friendships, indigenous wisdom, ecological consciousness, and the courage to think differently. This book listens to these possibilities and offers them to the Church, the nation, and the wider world.</p>