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This book is a collective venture of the Peace Studies Group in the Department of History. In this assortment of essays on diverse themes, the contributors have shared a common concern about how, in recent times, contestation over territory by rival nations and communities has threatened peace and harmony. Looking at the South Asian scenario in the near past reminds one of this sordid truth. The essays on India's partition - Basudeb Chattopadhyay, Bharati Ray and Bhaskar Chakrabarty-reveal how the violent origin of the two nation states in the subcontinent in 1947 vitiated the region's subsequent history. Prof. J.B. Das Gupta's essay addreses the problem of recurrent and ceaseless violence in Afghanisthan during the 1980s and 1990s, while Prof. H.S. Vasudevan's work is focussed on the impact of the break up of the Soviet Union on Russia's foreign relations which in turn escalated local conflicts as the one we saw in Afghanisthan. The way out of such conflicts is suggested on the essays written by Prof. Suranjan Das and Prof. Jayanta Kumar Ray drawing our attention it some of the great possibilities of the future in constructive bilateralism and regional cooperation.