What is freedom if it forgets its face in the mirror? What is a kingdom if it does not echo the rhythm of Dharma? When Shivaji Maharaj uttered the phrase “Hindavi Swarajya”, was it merely about defeating the Mughal sword? Or was it the long-delayed answer to a civilizational question, Can the land of Vedas breathe without its own soul governing it? This was not rebellion. This was a reclamation. Not a revolt against rule, but a revolt against wrongness.
Hindavi Swarajya was not a slogan. It was a whisper from the Rigveda, returning. A memory. A vow. A mirror to a time when kings bowed before Dharma, not Delhi. So it is always necessary to ask: Is Swarajya the right to rule, or the right way to rule? Is it the people’s power, or the power to serve the people with Dharma as king?
To imagine that the idea of Swarajya began with a sword is to miss the whisper behind the roar. The concept of Swarajya is not a historical invention, it is a civilizational memory. And certainly not a Western idea translated into Indian context. It is, in fact, the inverse.
In this light, Swarajya is not just a political status, it is a metaphysical stance. It is not about borders and flags, it is about boundaries of conduct and the flag of righteousness. It is not merely about having a king, but about who the king bows to. So, is heaven the goal or harmony? Is the throne for pleasure or for responsibility?
The Vedic and Itihasa traditions do not celebrate kings who accumulate, they celebrate those who renounce at the height of power, those who wield authority not as entitlement but as Yajna. And in this deeper Indic sense, Swarajya means to be sovereign within, first, before claiming sovereignty without.
Shivaji Maharaj did not invent Swarajya. He remembered it. He reasserted what had been distorted by centuries of foreign rule and the erosion of Dharma-based polity. In choosing to be anointed and not just proclaimed, Shivaji was not becoming king, he was restoring the Rajadharma Mandala. A king not for himself, but as the axis of civilizational balance. So, should Swarajya be measured in land or in Loka-sangraha, welfare of the world? That is the question Shivrajyabhishek silently answered
We often translate Swarajya as "independence." But is that what it truly means?
If we break the word: Swa + Rajya, rule over the self. But what is this self? Is it the individual ego, untamed, unanchored, and entitled? Or is it the Dharmic self, the atma-yaji, the one who performs inner yajna, who sees all as equal and aligned?
Manusmṛti 12.91 offers clarity: sarvabhutesu catmanam sarvabhutani catmani | samam pasyannatmayaji svarajyamadhigacchati || The one who sees all beings with equanimity, who is devoted to the inner yajña, attains Swarajya. Here, Swarajya is not just a political status, it is an inner achievement. It is not freedom from authority but freedom to live by Dharma. It is not the overthrow of kings but the overcoming of chaos, within and without.
But in this the practicality lies in the state, a governing structure. But its shape and strength must reflect the society it serves. If the people are aligned with Dharma, the ruler becomes a facilitator. If the people are fragmented, the ruler becomes a reinforcer.
This is why Shivaji Maharaj's Swarajya was not built on conquest alone, it was scaffolded on character. On temples restored, local languages revived, and justice delivered in the tongue of the people. So the real question is not: “Do we have the right to rule?” It is: “Are we ready to rule ourselves?” and so, for only the one who has ruled himself has the right to rule others
What exactly did Shivaji Maharaj reclaim on June 6, 1674? Not just a fort. Not just a throne. He reclaimed a principle, the very soul of governance in Bharat.
For centuries, the incursion of the Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughal Empire brought not merely territorial conquest, but epistemic colonization. Governance was no longer about Dharma, it became about decree. Kingship turned into autocracy, power wielded in the name of one man, one religion, one absolute will.
The Indic conception of rulership had never been that. In the Dharmic tradition, Raja is not sovereign, Dharma is. The king is not the lawmaker, he is the upholder of a cosmic law already present: Rta. He does not own the kingdom; he is merely its trustee, its ksatriya, protector, not possessor.
Today, there are many who believe that this bifurcation is not necessary to make. Indian kings are Indian kings - what is Akbar is similar to Rana Pratap, What is Aurangzeb is similar to Shivaji. but, there is a need to distinguish, it is not academic, it is civilizational. So, when Shivaji Maharaj was crowned, he wasn’t establishing a new power. He was correcting a distortion. He didn’t seize the throne, he reinstated the throne to its rightful metaphysical context.
This is why he underwent a full Vedic coronation. Not to display grandeur, but to affirm allegiance: not to himself, but to Dharma. He submitted to the very order he would be entrusted to uphold. So ask again, did Shivaji “take” power? Or did he consecrate it? In an age where kings had become emperors and justice had become fiat, Shivaji reminded the land: Power is sacred only when it bows before something higher than itself. And so the question is from where does this teachings of power come from?
Can a kingdom be born from a mother’s lullaby? Yes, a leader is born from a strong woman. Shivaji’s Hindavi Swarajya did not begin on the battlefield. It began beside a cradle. It was Jijabai, his mother, his first guru, who whispered into his ears not stories of escape and cowardice but sagas of dharma, valour, and responsibility. While the world saw kings as rulers, she taught him to see them as guardians of truth. In a time when temples were desecrated, when dharma lay orphaned, and society bent under humiliation, not just physical but spiritual, Jijabai nurtured a different imagination. Her son would not be another warlord. He would be a restorer.
And then one day at Rohideshwar, in front of Bhavani Mata, the boy Shivaji made his vow. No fanfare. No royal decree. Just a quiet fire in the heart of a child who saw what many grown men had failed to grasp.
What did he see, what did he vision-ized? He saw his people living not as citizens but as subjects. He saw dharma suffocated under the weight of foreign rule, rules alien to the land, and alien to its soul. He saw the land of Sarasvati silenced. And in that silence, he heard a call, not for revenge, but for restoration. And so, at Rohideshwar, he made his sankalpa. Not to conquer the world, but to bring it back to alignment.
Why was Shivaji born? Because someone had to remember. Someone had to remind the land of what was lost, not just land or liberty, but the dignity of Dharma. He didn’t vow to build an empire. He vowed to recover a world-view. That was the day Hindavi Swarajya was truly born, and not just on June 6, 1674, but much earlier, in the inner sanctum of a child’s spirit, shaped by a mother’s dream and a goddess’s grace.
So, what was Hindavi Swarajya? Was it a theocracy? No. Was it democracy as modernity defines it? Still no. Hindavi Swarajya was something deeper, a dharmocracy. A rule not merely for the people, and certainly not by their whims, but a governance aligned with Dharma, that timeless order which sustains both cosmos and conscience. When Shivaji Maharaj invoked Hindavi Swarajya, it wasn’t just a territorial slogan, it was a civilizational declaration. The first known use of the term did not signal a break from the past, but a reconnection with it.
But what kind of freedom was this? Unlike the Western Enlightenment’s “freedom from”, from monarchy, from Church, from imposed authority, Shivaji’s Swarajya was “freedom for”: For dharma to breathe. For temples to stand. For people to live with dignity, not denial. For culture to flourish without apology. He wasn’t building a State to define the individual. He was reviving a sacred ecosystem where Dharma defined the State, and the State protected Dharma, not through force, but through alignment. So no, Hindavi Swarajya was not just a political ambition. It was a cultural reclamation. A moral rebalancing. A civilizational compass reset. In an age of empires and absolute rule, Shivaji carved out a dharmic space, not as nostalgia, but as necessity. So, only kings dream of Swarajya?
In Hindavi Swarajya, citizenship was not a contract. It was a calling. The king was not a sovereign above all. He was a servant to ṛta, the eternal cosmic order. Raja dharma was not about control, it was about containment of ego within the bounds of dharma.
Today we speak of rights as if they float freely, entitlements without anchors. But in Swarajya, rights were born from duties. Not imposed duties, but natural, rta-aligned obligations. Freedom wasn't doing what one wished. It was doing what was right, and the right was not relative; it was rooted. Shivaji Maharaj understood this framework deeply. He didn’t just protect temples; he revered them as cultural lungs of civilization. He didn’t just spare women in war; he honoured them as carriers of shraddha, not trophies of conquest. He didn’t just collect taxes; he listened to farmers, recognizing that the food they grew was not just grain, but grace. This wasn’t PR. This was praja dharma.
In Swarajya, the citizen wasn’t a passive recipient of the State’s mercy. Nor was the king a messiah. They were both participants in a shared dharmic order, a civilization where duties were dignified rights. Can modern governance recall this balance? Or has the thread snapped between freedom and responsibility? Western freedom, as it evolved, was always outward, rarely inward. Greek democracy excluded women, slaves, and “others.” Citizenship was for a few, built on the backs of many. Rome introduced laws, yes, but laws without dharma become tools of empire, not instruments of justice. Then came Christianity’s universalism, but with exclusivist teeth. Crusades were not just wars, they were conversions by coercion. Magna Carta? A contract of the elite, not a cosmic covenant. Liberalism? Gave rights, but dislocated them from duties. And the American and French revolutions? Necessary, perhaps. But violent, deeply individualistic. “Freedom from” replaced “freedom for.” They broke chains, yes, but did they build inner order?
This Western-Eastern difference showcases the reality of the state order. Shivaji Maharaj didn’t return to power. He returned to nyaya, justice. He didn’t glorify violence; he disciplined it. He didn’t centralize authority; he decentralized governance, through the Ashtapradhan Mandal, through sabhas and samvads at village level. He knew that shakti (power) without dharma is tyranny. But nyaya anchored in dharma? That’s Swarajya.
It was never majoritarian. Never autocratic. It was balanced. Rooted. Reflective. In an age of arbitrary empires, Shivaji’s state was a sacred experiment in cosmic accountability, and this continued, When Tilak roared, “Swarajya is my birthright,” he ignited a movement. But what kind of Swarajya? Savarkar took it further, political independence, cultural assertion. But he, too, warned: Swarajya without Swadharma is a hollow shell.
And now? Swarajya is dangerously becoming Swachhandata, a freedom with no form, liberty with no limits. Where the “self” is not ātman but ego, and rule becomes indulgence. Have we forgotten that Swarajya begins not with rebellion, but with restraint?
So, on this day we must not just celebrate Shivrajyabhishek, we must absorb it, we must relive it, we must propose it. It was not just a coronation. It was a consecration. A ritual that reinstalled Dharma at the center of power. A reminder that self-rule first requires self-mastery. The real revolution of Shivaji was not military. It was metaphysical. Swarajya begins not with the sword, but with samam pasyan atmayaji, seeing the self rightly, acting from it justly. In that light, the Rajyabhishek remains not just a memory, but a mirror. The question is: do we still recognize our reflection in it?
