Leo Tolstoy

Dear Friend,

I have received your journal Indian Opinion and am happy to know all that is written about non-resistance and glad to see that the question of love as opposed to brute force is more and more conquering the minds of men.

I have read with great interest your book Indian Home Rule. The acknowledgment of love as the highest law of life, as everyone knows and feels in the depths of his heart, but which is so clouded by falsehood that people do not see it - this acknowledgment of love as the highest law has been more clearly and strongly expressed in your book than anywhere else, not excluding the writings of the greatest teachers of humanity.

The longer I live, and especially now in old age when I clearly see the approach of death, I want more and more to tell people what I consider most important for them - that which is called non-resistance but which is essentially nothing other than the teaching of love, unclouded by false interpretations.

That love - I mean the aspiration of human souls toward unity and the conduct that flows from that aspiration - represents the highest and indeed the only law of life, as everyone knows and feels in the depths of his heart. This law was proclaimed by all the wise men of the world - Hindu, Chinese, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman. I think it was expressed most clearly by Christ, who plainly said that all the law and the prophets hang on this one commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself.

But beside this law, people have always admitted, and continue to admit, the use of violence - that is, such conduct toward other people as we would never wish to have applied toward ourselves. And all the evil in the world, all the suffering of humanity apart from that which flows from natural calamities, comes from this contradiction.

Indeed, look around you. Everywhere you will see people doing to others what they would not have done to themselves: the employer exploiting the worker, the conqueror oppressing the conquered, the punisher executing or torturing the criminal, the tax-collector taking from people their hard-earned money, the soldier killing men. And all these people - exploiters, conquerors, punishers, tax-collectors, soldiers - would never consent to being treated as they treat others.

This contradiction, which destroys life and torments people, can have only one solution: the recognition of the law of love and the repudiation of all violence. And this is beginning to be recognized. Your activity in the Transvaal, as it seems to us from this distance, is the most essential work, the most important of all the work now being done in the world, wherein not only the peoples of the Transvaal, but all the peoples of the world will unavoidably participate.

I think that your activity is based on love and is therefore fruitful, and I hope you will not weaken in continuing it.

God help our dear brothers and coworkers in the Transvaal. This same God will help you and them, for He is always with those who fight for love against violence.

Leo Tolstoy