ABSTRACT
The first chapter considers the socio-ethical origins of discourses on civil disobedience in order to move to the secularized arguments on civil disobedience of Henry David Thoreau, which are rooted in the United States’ movement for abolitionism. The influence of the former eclectic thinker on Mohandas K. Gandhi turns the focus of this discourse to the southern Asian independence movements. In this framework, much attention is devoted to the history and the ideas of nonviolence of both Mohandas K. Gandhi and Abdul Ghaffar Khan.
