Multi-stories by Kalpana Sahni

Author:Kalpana Sahni [Sahni, Kalpana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, Popular Culture, Sociology, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781136704628
Google: z9qrAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-06-02T01:15:53+00:00

Most of his articles were banned for publication. Yet they were extensively copied, circulated clandestinely and printed abroad. People said Russia had two Czars — Nikolai II and Tolstoy.

Who is more powerful of the two? Nikolai II is helpless against Tolstoy … whereas Tolstoy is forever shaking the throne of Nikolai and his dynasty. Let anyone lift a finger against Tolstoy and the whole world will be up in arms and our administration will turn tail and run.

Tolstoy’s last novel, Resurrection, was a scathing attack of the government, the church and the judiciary. The authorities fought back and got the church to excommunicate him, hoping to ostracise and isolate him. The effect was just the opposite; spontaneous meetings and demonstrations of solidarity began. Tolstoy received thousands of telegrams of support. During the 1905 famine, Tolstoy set up relief kitchens in the affected areas while the Czar’s government stood by in dumb silence. When the writer died in 1910, the demonstrators defied the government by taking up Tolstoy’s slogan, ‘Down with Capital Punishment’.

The belief in non-violence and love were the cornerstones in Tolstoy’s later philosophy. Yet it was as a 19-year-old that Tolstoy had met a Buddhist monk who had revealed to him how nonviolence was fundamental to every religion. Some believe that it was this meeting that spurred Tolstoy to join the Oriental Languages Department of the Kazan University. In later years he undertook a deep study of Buddhism, and then ventured into other Eastern philosophies, including the Vedas, the Indian Epics, the works of Vivekananda, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism and Islam. His readings convinced him of the truth revealed to him by the monk — that the essence of all religions, including Christianity, was that social change could only come from love and non-violence.

Just about this time in history, in 1893, a 24-year-old Indian arrived in South Africa only to be shocked by the rampant racism he encountered. A year later, he chanced upon some of Tolstoy’s writings, but it was his most recent work, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893), that overwhelmed him. ‘It’s reading cured me of my scepticism and made me a firm believer in ahimsa (nonviolence)’. Henceforth he regarded himself as a disciple of Tolstoy and named his commune ‘Tolstoy Farm’. This young man was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi’s first letter to Tolstoy was in 1909. A brief correspondence followed. Tolstoy wrote to Gandhi how Christian nations had turned away from Christ’s basic tenets:

… they deemed the use of force to be permissible, and based their lives on violence — so that the life of the Christian nations presents a greater contradiction between what they believe and the principle on which their lives are built: a contradiction between love … and the employment of force, recognized under various forms — such as governments, courts of justice, and armies, which are accepted as necessary and esteemed.

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