Leo Tolstoy

I have just read your book “The Indian Question.” It has evoked in me the feelings which I always experience when I encounter works written by Hindus.

These feelings are partly those of joy and partly of sorrow. Joy, because I always discover in the works of Indian authors, especially in those written by Hindus, that profound metaphysical insight which characterizes the Indian mind and which seems natural and indispensable to it, but which is so often absent in the works of European writers.

Sorrow, because the authors of such works, educated in European universities and having absorbed the prevalent European conception of life, seem to have lost that confidence in the metaphysical insight which is natural to them, and display a tendency to prove the truth of their views by considerations that are very weak and often completely inappropriate.

Your book has not escaped this defect. You strive to prove that the Indians have the same right to freedom and independence as the English. But the question is not really about what rights Indians have, but about the means by which these rights can be obtained and maintained.

The answer to this question seems to me quite clear and indubitable, and it flows from that metaphysical insight which is natural to the Indian mind. Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills, and in it you too will find the solution of the Indian question.

What I say is not new. It was said nineteen hundred years ago. But it is not preached now, and especially it is not preached to those who require it most—to the oppressed, the enslaved.

The reason why this method of resisting evil by non-participation in it is so little understood and so little practised by people is that the habit of meeting violence with violence is so firmly rooted in them that the very idea of not resisting evil by violence, but by love, seems to them wild, strange, and impracticable.

But the difficulty is still greater when it is not a question of individual relations between human beings, but of the relations between the government and the governed, between different nations and different faiths.

In reality, however, the same rule which applies to relations between individuals also applies to the relations of nations and governments. The law is one: as a man liveth so he dieth. As he soweth so shall he also reap.

Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the deeds of administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.

The essence of all slavery consists in this, that people do things not because they want to do them, but because they believe they ought to do them. No external force can compel a man to perform acts which seem to him bad. He may be tortured, killed for his refusal, but he cannot be compelled.

And what is most important in this matter is that the recognition by some people of the duty of non-resistance to evil by violence will very soon make such people quite invulnerable, and will lead to the liberation not only of themselves but of all humanity from violence.

This liberation will come to pass not through the violent extermination of all the oppressors (such extermination is always impossible, for as fast as external oppressors are destroyed, new ones rise up among the liberated people themselves), but through the non-participation of the oppressed in the oppression.

Liberation will come when all people will understand that their welfare, both material and spiritual, individual and social, temporal and eternal, lies not in the domination of some people over others, but in the loving harmony of all people.

The Indian people will free themselves and their example will be a lesson to all enslaved people and will assist in freeing them. But this will come to pass not through hatred and violence, but only through love and the consistent application of the law of love in all relations.

This alone is needed and this alone is possible, for love is the fundamental law of human life. This law acts despite all the attempts to violate it by individual people and by governments. The violation of it is the cause of all the misfortunes of individuals and of nations.

Therefore, my dear brother—for I think I may call you so—if you think my opinion just, use your undoubtedly great influence among your countrymen to direct them in this true way of resistance, which is the only way that can lead to real freedom for all oppressed people.

This letter expresses the very essence of what I wanted to say to you. I should like to write more fully, but I have no time. I can only repeat once more that the solution of the Indian question lies only in love.

Your brother,

Leo Tolstoy

Yasnaya Polyana December 14, 1908