How to Settle a Dispute So Both Sides Are Satisfied

Two neighbours argue over a boundary wall. Eventually someone decides: the wall stays where it is. One neighbour wins. The other loses. The dispute is officially over.

But the two families still live next to each other. The children stop playing together. Each family tells its own version for years. A verdict was given, and nothing was settled.

Madhyasth Darshan has a sentence for this. In Vyavaharvadi Samajshastra (व्यवहारवादी समाजशास्त्र), Shri A. Nagraj writes that every human being needs justice, not a verdict. This post looks at the difference, and at how to settle a dispute so that both sides are satisfied.

This may sound like asking someone who has been wronged to make peace with the person who wronged them. It isn’t. Where someone is in danger, protecting them comes first. These steps are for the ordinary disputes between people who will go on living near each other.

Justice is not a verdict

A verdict answers one question: who is right? It is decided by someone outside the relationship, usually on the basis of what can be proved. In Vyavaharatmak Janvad (व्यवहारात्मक जनवाद), the darshan observes that courts decide on testimony rather than on what actually happened, and that a decision comes with no programme for helping anyone change.

Courts do far more than choose winners, and many disputes need them: where there is danger, where one side has much more power, or where someone won’t take part. The darshan’s point is narrower. A verdict on its own doesn’t repair a relationship. And the steps below aim for both sides to be satisfied without being able to promise it. They work only when both people take part willingly, sometimes with a helper both trust, and some relationships should end.

Justice, in Madhyasth Darshan, is defined quite differently: recognising the relationship, fulfilling the values it carries, evaluating how well they were fulfilled, and both people ending satisfied. The test isn’t whether one side has won. It is whether both people can trust each other again. That is why the darshan calls it mutual satisfaction (उभय तृप्ति).

“A verdict was given, and nothing was settled.”

Step 1: Settle it as close to home as possible

In the village plan in Avartanshil Arthashastra (आवर्तनशील अर्थशास्त्र), a dispute between families goes first to the families’ own representatives and their family group. Only if they can’t resolve it does it go to the village’s justice committee. The darshan describes correction beginning even earlier, inside the family, before an inclination becomes an incident.

The reason is simple. The people closest to a dispute know the relationship, the history and the families. A stranger can only judge the event. So before taking a disagreement anywhere else, ask: who already knows both of us, and is trusted by both?

Step 2: Start from the relationship, not the complaint

Most disputes begin with a complaint: you built your wall on my land. Justice begins somewhere else: what is our relationship? Neighbours. Brothers. Business partners. A teacher and a parent.

Naming the relationship changes the conversation. It reminds both people that they want something from each other that outlasts the dispute: safety, help, trust. And it sets the goal. The aim is not to end the relationship on the best terms, but to restore it. We say more about why relationships come before rules in Rules or Relationships?

Step 3: Find what each person expected

Every relationship carries expectations. A neighbour expects not to be encroached on, and to be asked before something changes. A partner expects honesty and a fair share. A dispute almost always means one or both people feel an expectation went unmet.

So let each person say, without interruption: what did I expect from you, and where did it fall short? Then the other person says it back, in their own words, until the first person agrees that is what they meant. This is the “evaluation” in the darshan’s definition: looking honestly at how well the relationship’s values were fulfilled, on both sides.

Step 4: Find the misunderstanding underneath

Madhyasth Darshan makes a strong claim: wrongdoing, injustice and mistakes all grow out of not understanding. It also says, in Manav Vyavahar Darshan (मानव व्यवहार दर्शन), that a human being is born with the right to make mistakes, and with the opportunity and the means to correct them.

Whether or not you accept the strong claim, it is a useful question to ask in any dispute: what did each of us not understand? Perhaps one neighbour didn’t know where the boundary ran. Perhaps the other assumed they were being deliberately ignored. Very often, the dispute turns out to rest on an assumption one side never checked. The practice in What Was I Assuming Just Before I Reacted? is a good way in.

Step 5: Aim for both to be satisfied

Now look for a resolution, and hold it to one test: will both people be satisfied with it? Not resigned. Not relieved it’s over. Satisfied.

That often means something other than splitting the difference. The wall might stay, and the neighbour who built it helps plant a hedge on the other side. A debt might be repaid in work rather than money. The question is what would let each person trust the other again. If one person leaves satisfied and the other doesn’t, the dispute isn’t settled yet. It has only gone quiet.

Step 6: Correct, don’t only decide

A verdict ends with a decision. Justice continues a little further, until whatever caused the dispute has been put right. If someone acted out of a misunderstanding, help them understand. If they lacked something they needed, see whether it can be provided. The darshan describes a justice system whose purpose is to help someone become just, not only to rule on what they did.

Then come back after a few weeks. Ask both people: is it still settled? That one follow-up is often the difference between a dispute that ends and one that returns.

And the planet?

Many disputes over the earth are disputes between neighbours: over a boundary, a well, grazing land, a stream, a path through the forest. Settled by verdict, they tend to divide the land up and leave each side guarding its part. Settled as relationships, they often lead to the land being cared for together. The village plan makes protecting land, water, forest and minerals part of the same committee’s work as settling disputes, which is a sign of how closely the two are linked. We set out how a village can look after these things together in How to Organise a Village So Every Family Has Enough.

And our happiness?

A dispute won still leaves you living next to someone who thinks you wronged them. A dispute settled so that both people are satisfied leaves something better: a relationship that has been tested and has held. That kind of trust is one of the most reliable sources of happiness there is, because it doesn’t have to be won again tomorrow.

A protocol to try

Think of one small, unresolved disagreement in your own life: with a family member, a neighbour or a colleague. Not a serious one.

Before you next talk to them, write down three things: what our relationship is, what I expected from them, and what I might not have understood. Then, when you talk, start with the first, not the complaint.

Limitations

• Where there is violence, abuse or a large difference in power, “both sides satisfied” can become pressure on the weaker person to accept less. Those cases need protection and often the law, not only a conversation.
• Madhyasth Darshan holds that all wrongdoing comes from not understanding. Readers may disagree, and some wrongs may need consequences as well as correction.
• Courts exist for good reasons, and nothing here replaces them. We describe what can happen before a dispute needs one.
• The six steps are our arrangement of what the books say, not a procedure from them. We haven’t yet tested them.

References

1. Shri A. Nagraj, Vyavaharvadi Samajshastra (व्यवहारवादी समाजशास्त्र), introduction (everyone needs justice, not a verdict), p. 95 (both people reaching satisfaction), p. 130 (justice as relationship, values, evaluation, mutual satisfaction), p. 148 (justice and relationships)
2. Shri A. Nagraj, Avartanshil Arthashastra (आवर्तनशील अर्थशास्त्र), p. 130 (disputes between families settled first by their representatives and family group), p. 145 (helping families in accident, disaster and illness)
3. Shri A. Nagraj, Vyavaharatmak Janvad (व्यवहारात्मक जनवाद), p. 84 (courts decide on testimony, with no programme of correction), p. 85 (wrongdoing as the product of not understanding), p. 106 (correction before an inclination becomes an incident, starting in the family)
4. Shri A. Nagraj, Manav Vyavahar Darshan (मानव व्यवहार दर्शन), p. 121 (born with the right to make mistakes, and the opportunity to correct them)
5. Madhyasth Darshan Paribhasha Sanhita, न्याय (justice), p. 103