Analysis Of Tolstoy's 'A Letter To A Hindu'

Introduction
If you were offended by any means, what you would do. Do you forgive the offender or you act violently towards him? The act you implement reflects your beliefs towards violence and non-violence. When hearing non-violence and peace, everyone associates it with Gandhi. However, the source from where Gandhi stemmed his peaceful movements did not spread as the spread of his name around the world. Gandhi derived his fundamental principle of love and non-violence from a Russian philosopher called Tolstoy. How these two great influencers became so close despite the geography distance between Russia and India. One of Tolstoy’s publications entitled ‘A Letter to a Hindu’ came into Gandhi’s hands by chance and it influenced him rapidly.
At the beginning, people were afraid to talk about anything marked religious. Religion was only a tool for people in power knowing that they would face no inquiries if they connected any violent act they wanted to achieve to religion. Although no religion in the world promotes violence, those people referred to it for their own sake. Tolstoy emphasized the concept of love and that all religions encourage love towards mankind. After this contradiction between the love that religion calls for and the violence that the people in power used under the religion’s name has become clearer, those people had to come up with a new excuse to allow violence and this excuse was represented in
To justify violence and convince people of its truth in science, some assertions were made. The first assertion indicates that people should be only replicates of the past ages without operating their minds, without reasoning and without thinking as it says, “because the coercion of man by man has existed in all ages, it follows that such coercion must continue to exist” (Murthy, 1987, p.52). The second justification uses plants and animals as models for humans to follow. Because there is a constant fight among plants and animals and the powerful survives, why shouldn’t human beings do the same. This statement is evidently lacking the fact that human beings are gifted with brains to think, discuss and find solutions for problems other than triggering wars. The third justification and the most widespread is the right to take decisions of against whom violence should be used. In religion, it is for those who have power but in science it is different. These decisions represent people’s will, science claims, which is under government control to do what its people want. Although these justifications are not weak, they are invalid and serve only those who occupy privileged positions.
After explaining the reasons on how Indians were tricked by their colonizers, Tolstoy wanted to state clearly his thoughts towards Indian enslavement. He provided an interesting example to show that Indians enslaved