The Hindavi Swarajya (; "self-rule of Hindu people", meaning independence from foreign rule): "Chhatrapati Shivaji's coronation and setting himself up as a sovereign prince symbolises the rise of the Indian people in all parts of the country. It was a bid for ''Hindawi Swarajya'' (Indian rule), a term in use in Marathi sources of history.": "Probably the earliest use of a word like 'Hindu' was in 1645 in a phrase in a letter of Shivaji, ''Hindavi swarajya'', meaning independence from foreign rule, 'self-rule of Hindu people'." is a term attributed to

Shivaji Shivaji Bhonsale I (; 19 February 1630 – 3 April 1680), also referred to as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, was an Indian ruler and a member of the Bhonsle Maratha clan. Shivaji carved out his own independent kingdom from the declining Adil ...

, the founder of the

Maratha Empire The Maratha Empire, also referred to as the Maratha Confederacy, was an early modern Indian confederation that came to dominate much of the Indian subcontinent in the 18th century. Maratha rule formally began in 1674 with the coronation of Sh ...

. After Shivaji's death, the term ''swarajya'' came into widespread use, without "Hindavi" but rather associated with "

Maratha The Marathi people ( Marathi: मराठी लोक) or Marathis are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who are indigenous to Maharashtra in western India. They natively speak Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language. Maharashtra was formed a ...

". According to André Wink, the term "Maratha swarajya" meant a form of zamindari sovereignty, not necessarily attached to any particular territory.: "Maratha ''svarajya'' was a form of ‘zamindari sovereignty’ not merely in the eyes of the Mughals but actually established by people who were often just one or two generations away from village or district zamindari status and the practice of ‘organizing cultivation and expelling robbers’." During the reign of Shivaji, The

Koli Koli may refer to: Places * Koli, Finland, a hill in Finland * Koli National Park, a national park in Finland * Koli, Iran (disambiguation), several places in Iran * Koli Airfield, a former airfield in the South Pacific Other uses * Koli peopl ...

Caste Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultur ...

made a substantial contribution to the success of the Swarajya movement. The term '' Swaraj'' was later adopted by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, one of the early leaders of the

Indian independence movement The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British Raj, British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947. The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged ...

against the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

Origin

Popular belief holds that the Maratha warrior

used the phrase ''Hindavi Swarajya'' in a letter to Dadaji Naras Prabhu Deshpande of Rohidkhore on 17 April 1645. The purported letter, in Marathi, states: Scholars do not agree on the authenticity of the letter. Historian

Setumadhavarao Pagadi Setumadhavarao Pagdi or Sethu Madhav Rao PagdiK. VenkateshwarluA slice of Marathi history The Hindu, 9 May 2011. (27 August 1910 – 14 October 1994) was an Indian civil servant, a polyglot, an accomplished historian and a distinguished man of l ...

states that a lot of the historical source material on Shivaji is spurious, contributed by various influential families of Maharashtra to show how close their ancestors were to Shivaji. J. V. Naik states that, irrespective of the authenticity of the letter, Shivaji's career itself amply demonstrates his conception of ''Swarajya''. The term ''Hindavi'' (or ''Hindawi'', as also ''Hindui'' and ''Hindi'') has been in use since the 14th century with the meaning of "Indian". Poet

Amir Khusro Abu'l Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrau (1253–1325 AD), better known as Amīr Khusrau was an Indo-Persian culture, Indo-Persian Sufi singer, musician, poet and scholar who lived under the Delhi Sultanate. He is an iconic figure in the cultural his ...

listed various "''Hindavi'' languages" in use in his time. These were distinguished from

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

, the court language in most Muslim states. Historian

Irfan Habib Irfan Habib (born August 10, 1931) is an Indian historian of ancient and medieval India, following the methodology of Marxist historiography in his contributions to economic history. He identifies as a Marxist and is well known for his strong ...

states that, the term "Hindu" had acquired a religious sense by this time, and so, other terms such as ''Hindi'', ''Hindustani'' and ''Hindavi'' began to be employed to mean "Indian", spanning all Indian people. According to Pagadi, ''Hindavi'' had the sense of "the sons of the soil" in this context. ''Swarajya'' ( IAST: svarājya) is a

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

term, whose meaning is "independent dominion or sovereignty" according to the

Monier Williams Sir Monier Monier-Williams (; né Williams; 12 November 1819 – 11 April 1899) was a British scholar who was the second Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University, England. He studied, documented and taught Asian languages, especially ...

dictionary.Monier Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary (2008 revision)
entry for "svarAjya". Pagadi notes that Shivaji had referred to his jagir in Pune as a ''rajya''. He takes ''Swarajya'' to have meant a "homeland", and ''Hindavi Swarajya'' a "state of the sons of the soil".

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * {{citation , last=Wink , first=André , title=Land and Sovereignty in India: Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth-Century Maratha Svarājya , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kGL3IQAACAAJ , year=2007 , publisher=Cambridge University Press , isbn=978-0-521-05180-4 , ref={{sfnref, Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India, 2007 Indian independence movement Maratha Empire Wars of independence