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A Letter to a Hindu,
the Complete Original Classic:
(Leo Tolstoy Masterpiece Collection)
with Introduction, by Mahatma Ghandi
by Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi
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I seem to have bought a copy of this book on kindle, from Amazon, with a cover, giving title
"A Letter to a Hindu"
and author
"Graf Leo Tolstoy"
from
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38243129-a-letter-to-a-hindu;
but it has the identification - when checked with Amazon -
ASIN B0084ANYWY
assigned to
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15788803-a-letter-to-a-hindu,
and blurb and title
"A LETTER TO A HINDU
THE SUBJECTION OF INDIA—
ITS CAUSE AND CURE
With an Introduction by M. K. GANDHI
Leo Tolstoy"
from
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26775258-a-letter-to-a-hindu-the-complete-original-classic,
so it's hard to know if Amazon mixed it up, and why.
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The two names involved are universally thought great. It's not just dismaying, but shocking to see how little the reverence, universally accorded, is deserved by worth evident in their arguments.
Moreover, the quotes ascribed to Krishna aren't clear as to where exactly they come from - it ought to be from Bhagawatgeeta, but therein one can hardly justify claiming Krishna talks of Love! It's about explaining to the chief warrior on the just side that he must war, and in the process explaining the unreality of the material world, the reality of Divine and Soul behind it all; it was not a moment about talk of loving the enemy who were unjust. And there is no such talk therein, as far as memory serves.
Imagine Churchill sending in RAF to fight off bombers arriving yo destroy London with a message of loving the nazis!
The quotes below are remarkable, not necessarily for laudable reasons. Often enough it's candy floss, unhealthy, however colourful and attractive to kids.
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From introduction by Gandhi:-
"One of the accepted and 'time-honoured' methods to attain the end is that of violence. The assassination of Sir Curzon Wylie was an illustration of that method in its worst and most detestable form. Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non-resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self-suffering. He admits of no exception to whittle down this great and divine law of love. He applies it to all the problems that trouble mankind."
"If we do not want the English in India we must pay the price. Tolstoy indicates it. 'Do not resist evil, but also do not yourselves participate in evil—in the violent deeds of the administration of the law courts, the collection of taxes and, what is more important, of the soldiers, and no one in the world will enslave you', passionately declares the sage of Yasnaya Polyana. ... 'A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand people, not athletes, but rather weak and ordinary people, have enslaved two hundred millions of vigorous, clever, capable, freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that not the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves?'"
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Quoted from Tolstoy letter:-
" ... The oppression of a majority by a minority, and the demoralization inevitably resulting from it, is a phenomenon that has always occupied me and has done so most particularly of late. ... "
"The reason for the astonishing fact that a majority of working people submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very lives is always and everywhere the same—whether the oppressors and oppressed are of one race or whether, as in India and elsewhere, the oppressors are of a different nation."
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"Your letter, as well as the articles in Free Hindustan and Indian political literature generally, shows that most of the leaders of public opinion among your people no longer attach any significance to the religious teachings that were and are professed by the peoples of India, and recognize no possibility of freeing the people from the oppression they endure except by adopting the irreligious and profoundly immoral social arrangements under which the English and other pseudo-Christian nations live to-day."
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"In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads of states. But the longer humanity lived the weaker grew the belief in this peculiar, God—given right of the ruler. That belief withered in the same way and almost simultaneously in the Christian and the Brahman world, as well as in Buddhist and Confucian spheres, and in recent times it has so faded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonable understanding and the true religious feeling. People saw more and more clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness and immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just like themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only to their interests but also to their moral sense. And so one might suppose that having lost confidence in any religious authority for a belief in the divinity of potentates of various kinds, people would try to free themselves from subjection to it. But unfortunately not only were the rulers, who were considered supernatural beings, benefited by having the peoples in subjection, but as a result of the belief in, and during the rule of, these pseudodivine beings, ever larger and larger circles of people grouped and established themselves around them, and under an appearance of governing took advantage of the people. And when the old deception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had dwindled away these men were only concerned to devise a new one which like its predecessor should make it possible to hold the people in bondage to a limited number of rulers."
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"A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?"
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"If the people of India are enslaved by violence it is only because they themselves live and have lived by violence, and do not recognize the eternal law of love inherent in humanity."
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"If only people freed themselves from their beliefs in all kinds of Ormuzds, Brahmas, Sabbaoths, and their incarnation as Krishnas and Christs, from beliefs in Paradises and Hells, in reincarnations and resurrections, from belief in the interference of the Gods in the external affairs of the universe, and above all, if they freed themselves from belief in the infallibility of all the various Vedas, Bibles, Gospels, Tripitakas, Korans, and the like, and also freed themselves from blind belief in a variety of scientific teachings about infinitely small atoms and molecules and in all the infinitely great and infinitely remote worlds, their movements and origin, as well as from faith in the infallibility of the scientific law to which humanity is at present subjected: the historic law, the economic laws, the law of struggle and survival, and so on—if people only freed themselves from this terrible accumulation of futile exercises of our lower capacities of mind and memory called the 'Sciences', and from the innumerable divisions of all sorts of histories, anthropologies, homiletics, bacteriologics, jurisprudences, cosmographies, strategies—their name is legion—and freed themselves from all this harmful, stupifying ballast—the simple law of love, natural to man, accessible to all and solving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear and obligatory."
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July 24, 2021 - July 25, 2021.
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