Maharana Pratap to Mahatma Gandhi: The Transformation of Martial Patriotism into Ahimsa in North India

Abstract

The history of the North Indian is marked with a long succession of patriotic resistance, which moved through martial defiance to the ethical non-violence. The paper analyses how the heroic culture of Maharana Pratap, which was based on the dharma of Kshatriyas, Kshatriya sovereignty and martial sacrifice slowly developed into the dharma of Mahatma Gandhi which has been based on satya (truth), ahimsa (non-violence), and mass civil disobedience. Meditative literature has tended to make medieval Rajput resistance and Gandhian nationalism two rather separate histories; the historical period between warrior-patriotism and non-violent swaraj is little studied. To fill this gap, the paper is a historical-analytical treatise and employs primary sources such as Mewar court chronicles, Akbar Nama, bardic ballads, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Hind swaraj, young India, and colonial administrative sources. Analytical interpretation is supported by secondary literature of peer-reviewed journals and the present historiography. The main thesis is that the two traditions have the same principle of defiance to domination, but they vary in the means, which transformed as the armed courage being transformed into the moral courage. The article is a contribution to research since the ideas between universalism and socialism can be traced across time, and the reconstruction of social media constitutes the socio-cultural circumstances that facilitated the process of change. Instead of breaking the continuity of India on the resistance, it relocates Gandhi in reconstituting its morality into the new political form of mass.