Anarchism in India first emerged within the Indian independence movement, gaining particularly notoriety for its influence on Mohandas Gandhi's theory of Sarvodaya and his practice of nonviolent resistance. Anarchism was also an influence on the revolutionary movement, inspiring the works of Har Dayal, M. P. T. Acharya and Bhagat Singh, among others. Background The foundations for anarchism in India were laid by a number of different religious traditions in the subcontinent. Buddhism and Jainism both taught of a prehistoric state of nature, in which people lived in harmony and their needs were satisfied by the land. Although Hinduism developed a hierarchical caste system, the establishment of a state was also discouraged by the concept of dharma, which was seen as sufficient to govern society. In Hindu cosmology, the Satya Yuga described a possible stateless society where people were governed only by the "universal natural law of dharma". Where much of Hindu political philosophy upheld the divine right of kings, the Chanakya sutras held that "it is better to not to have a king then have one who is wanting in discipline". It was through these concepts that Indian anarchism developed out of "non-statism", which held it better to build an alternative society that would make the state redundant, rather than destroying the state outright (as in the Western conception of anti-statism). Early libertarian thought Swami Vivekananda derived a form of individualism from the Bhagavad Gita, arguing that "liberty is the first condition of growth". He saw individual freedom as something that leads directly to solidarity and social equality, as individual self-actualization would necessarily bring people together. He claimed his ultimate goal was "freedom from the slavery of matter and thought, mastery of external and internal nature." One disciple of Vivekananda was Sri Aurobindo, who applied his libertarian principles to the Indian independence movement, agitating for "non-violent direct action". Aurobindo's philosophy was concerned with reconciling individualism and collectivism, proposing a synthesis of individual enlightenment with community outreach. In The Ideal of Human Unity, Aurobindo advocated for the nation state to be replaced with a form of anarchy, based on voluntary associations between "free individuals" and the principle of "unity in diversity". Aurobindo's theory of nonviolent resistance was later developed upon by Mohandas Gandhi, who was himself inspired by the Russian anarcho-pacifist Leo Tolstoy to organize a mass civil disobedience movement against British rule in India. He viewed the state fundamentally as