Leo Tolstoy's A Letter to a Hindu

1908 Tarak Nath Das, an Indian revolutionary and editor of "Free Hindustan", a magazine published to further the efforts of emancipating the Indians from the British colonial rule, sent Leo Tolstoy two issues of "Free Hindustan" and a letter explaining the oppression and subjugation of the people of India by the English and asked the world famous writer for advice on the best way to achieve freedom from the minority who enslaved 200,000,000 people and on December 14th, 1908, Tolstoy began writing what would be inevitably entitled "A Letter to a Hindu" in Russian, but it was soon translated into English by an anonymous writer and in 1909 Das published "A Letter to a Hindu" in an edition of "Free Hindustan", his magazine. A young lawyer turned activist who worked nonstop for the emancipation of India named Gandhi read Tolstoy's "A Letter to A Hindu" in "Free Hindustan" while living in South Africa where he resided with a population of 30,000 other Indians who were being oppressed and subjugated by the white Christians in the Transvaal province of South Africa. Gandhi was already a follower of Tolstoy after he read and was radicalized by Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of GOD is Within You" and immediately Gandhi knew he wanted to publish "A Letter to a Hindu" in his own magazine "Indian Opinion" that he was printing and distributing from Transvaal. And so, the young Gandhi wrote to Tolstoy to make sure that Tolstoy actually wrote the letter and asked Tolstoy if he, Gandhi Himself, could translate "A Letter to A Hindu" into the Indian dialect Guajarati and this began a correspondence of six letters between Gandhi and Tolstoy which concluded with Tolstoy's death in 1910 at 82 years old. The story of India's nonviolent revolution led by Gandhi is amazing and inspiring, but the reader of "A Letter to a Hindu" doesn't need to know all the details of the Indian problem presented by Tarak Nath, they are not necessary, because the Indian situation is used by Tolstoy only as an example. It is the theories presented by Tolstoy that are the guts of the letter, and at its center is the reason for publishing these texts, Tolstoy's thoughts on the concept of nonresistance to evil by violence (Matthew 5:38-42, Luke 6:27-31) which includes giving good to evil, not retaliating, loving your enemies, and most importantly the order from Christ that if someone slaps your face you should then turn your face so they can hit the other side as well. This is usually referred to as "to turn the other cheek" and it is roundly negated and discarded by most pastors and Christians, but this is a direct command from Christ that cannot be ignored or rejected, and this is the core of Tolstoy's ethics: Nonresistance to Evil by Violence.In this new documentary play by Damian Westfall the entire story and philosophy of the connection and interactions between Tolstoy and Gandhi are portrayed using their own words. The play is made up of primary sources including Tolstoy's essay A Letter to a Hindu, an introduction by Gandhi, the complete correspondences between Tolstoy and Gandhi and a new introduction and epilogue by the playwright. What's most significant is that this text of Tolstoy's A Letter to a Hindu is newly translated with all the other texts, the first new translation of these texts in decades.