Philosophies of Transformative Practice: Social Movements in India is the result of the efforts of the members of the Association of Christian Philosophers of India (ACPI) to engage themselves in philosophizing, a bold attempt at making philosophy into a tool of liberation of society, bringing it down from the realm of the Ideal to the Real. The fruits of this venture have been gathered in this edited volume, containing twenty-two well-researched contributions, with liberative praxis as their thrust, and social movements as their loci of grounded reflection and critical enquiry. The first cluster of six essays, of an archaeological nature, stresses the fact that social movements are to be prophetic and sapiential, able to be speaking wisdom and truth to power, caring for the human, daring the culture of death, and reinventing themselves as agents of life for the peoples especially at the periphery, thereby challenging dominant models of development. The second cluster of five articles is genealogical in nature, foregrounding dialectical factors which lie beneath the events or the insurrection of knowledge(s), which trigger the origin and the trajectory of social movements. The third and the last cluster of contributions, eleven in number, is about the Programmatic and the Pragmatic of social movements in India. They examine the various ways in which these movements constantly challenge the prevalent monocultural and hegemonic ideologies, deploying religious and social capital, accrued through dialogue between religions, between religion and science, and through ecological citizenship and conversion. This attempt at elaborating the philosophies of transformative practice in the company of social movements resonates with the echoes of a new politics of dissent and difference(s), towards reweaving democracy in India, as a cultural space where a hundred different voices could bloom, in equality, freedom, and fraternity. Contents Editorial Chief Guest's Address Part 1. Towards an Archaeology of Social Movements 1. From the Ideal to the Real: A Shift in Philosophizing 2. Liberation Philosophy: Wisdom, Power and Care Within Transformative Social Practice 3. The Rise and Fail of Social Movements 4. Nature and Scope of Social Movements in Democratic Societies 5. Building Capacities and Enhancing Freedoms: Movements that Foster Social Development 6. Towards a Biblical Philosophy of Liberation Part 2. Towards a Genealogy of Social Movements 7. Productive Semiotics of Social Movements 8. Religious Beliefs and Practice: The Philosophical Treatment after Wittgenstein 9. Critical Theory and the Youth Movements of the Sixties: A Privileged and Comples Relationship 10 `Not without Difference': Re-visiting Emmanuel Levinas on Racism 11. "Royce's Beloved Community: An Antidote to Globalizing India" Part 3. Praxis: Programmatic and Pragmatic 12. Sarana Movement: A Revolution for the New Society 13. Bhakti Movements in Contemporary Religious 14. Gandhian Movement for Women's Liberation in India 15. The Chipko Movement and Its Aftermath: A Few Reflections Based on Environmental Philosophy 16. Alternative Media Movement 17. From Sudra to Servanthood: Reimagining Education in India 18. The Emerging Phenomena of Contemporary Inter-Faith Harmony Movements in Urban India 19. The Pro-Life Movement: A Transformative Movement of Society 20. Science-Religion Dialogue as a Movement: The Need of the Hour to Transform Society 21. Agapocracy: A New Response to the Ideological Foundation of the RSS Movement 22. Communist Movement in India: Democracy Implications ACPI Statement Contributors Index Dr Jose D. Maliekal SDB holds a doctorate in Subaltern Fundamental Theology from the Department of Christian Studies, School of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Madras. He is the co-editor of the volume entitled, Hermeneutics: Truth or/and Meaning? (1994) and The Struggle for the Past: Historiographies Today (2002). He has also authored a book named Standstill Utopias? Dalits Encountering Christianity (2017), which won the James Massey Subaltern Studies Award from ISPCK, Delhi. At present, he is the academic coordinator at St John's Regional Seminary (Institute of Philosophy, Religious Studies and Social Sciences) Kondadaba, Vizianagaram District, Andhra Pradesh, where he teaches systematic philosophy and social praxis. He brings to his long career as a teacher of philosophy a transdisciplinary approach. His areas of research include subaltern perspectives on the production of knowledge, Dalit identities and empowerment, and the impact of religion on socio-economic transformation.