The term,‘Shanti Sena’ (Peace/Nonviolent army) was first coined by Gandhi in 1922 when he conceptualized a nonviolent volunteer peacekeeping program dedicated to minimizing communal violence within the Indian populace. 

The Shanti Sena concept is based on the belief that is crucial to the development of world peace because any truly free society must be able to manage conflict in its midst with an awakened consciousness, neither resorting to violence nor fear, lest it become beholden to a military class and thus forfeit its democracy to that extent.

Gandhi began writing about the possibilities of national defense by nonviolent resistance in 1931. He recommended a nonviolent defense policy to Switzerland in 1931, to Abyssinia in 1935, to Czechoslovakia in 1938, and to Britain in 1940. The Congress Party in India rejected his proposal for a nonviolent defense in 1939, and again in 1940.