<![CDATA[The concept of social harmony in South Asian political thought has been understood either as sociological stability or as an administrative consequence of state power, thus missing its ethical-political aspects. In this article, this paper explores the historical roots of social harmony by looking at the connexion between the traditions of pre-colonial resistance in North India and Gandhian moral politics. This research seeks to show that Gandhian nonviolent politics did not represent a complete break with the preceding political practises but rather a selective ethical reworking of already existing traditions of resistance and coexistence. The paper utilises a qualitative, interpretive, and genealogical research design, examining historical work about peasant mobilisations, stories of Rajput resistance, and shrine-based solidarities, Gandhian texts, and the contemporary theory of politics. The results indicate that pre-colonial resistance tended to be conducted under ethical guidelines that governed the conflict by restraint, negotiation and morality instead of open violence. Colonial rule interfered with these moral frameworks by remaking social difference in terms of bureaucratic categorization and formulating resistance as lawlessness. In this respect, Gandhian politics changed the previous traditions of moral restraint into disciplined nonviolence, self-suffering and interfaith coexistence. This paper contends that social harmony must be viewed as a political morality that has been formed through historically based practises of ethical resistance rather than the absence of conflict.]]>
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