Gandhi as a Reader of Tolstoy

S. SEREBRYANY
Gorky Institute of World Literature, USSR

The grandeur of truly great personalities is seen, among other things, in that after their death they continue to serve the living by their works and ideas and even just by their being re­membered. Such service, such posthumous assistance to posterity can grow in scope and significance as the years go by.

Almost eighty years have elapsed since Leo Tolstoy’s death (a period about as long as he himself had lived), and his fame in the world has not declined, but is continuously growing. Tolstoy’s heritage continues to serve the cause he found most important: the cause of “uniting people”. His role is perhaps especially weighty in the cause of uniting India and the Soviet Union, in the cause of their friendship and cooperation.

History, which frequently teaches us bitter lessons, has presented us with an astonishing fact this time. It so happened that Leo Tolstoy, one of the greatest men of new Russian culture, has become particularly–I’d even say exclusively–popular in India and particularly significant for 20th century Indian culture. True, Tolstoy’s popularity in India is symbolic in many respects. As the Italian author Alberto Moravia said, Leo Tolstoy has become a kind of myth in India. Tolstoy’s name is widely known in that country, though most Indians have yet to come to know Tolstoy as a great Russian and European writer and to master his literary heritage.

Cooperation between Soviet and Indian scholars might prove fairly fruitful, in my opinion, in the study of Tolstoy. Their joint efforts will promote understanding between India and the USSR and provide a better knowledge of each other.

We must not flatter ourselves with the belief that our two countries know each other quite well and only have to maintain that high level of knowledge and inform each other of the latest in their life. As a matter of fact, we still know very little about each other and we still do not understand each other sufficiently well. The distinctions between our countries’ cultural traditions and history are so vast that genuine mutual understanding is no easy thing. A great deal is yet to be done by both sides to provide our two big countries with a better and fuller knowledge of each other. As I have noted above, Tolstoy can be a great help in these efforts. His name and heritage are a connecting link, pro­bably one of the major connecting links, between Russia and India. By extending their knowledge of Tolstoy, the Indians will get a better insight into our country, and we, for our part shall study the Indian perception (or, to be more exact, perceptions) of Tolstoy, and in this way enrich our ideas of India and at the same time be able to better grasp the world-wide significance of our great compatriot’s work.

When it comes to the Tolstoy studies in India, reference is first of all made to Mahatma Gandhi. Indeed, it is his correspondence with the Russian writer, his exchange of ideas with him and his reference to him as one of his teachers that have won Tolstoy particular significance in India: he has come to be considered one of the spiritual mentors of contemporary India (at least among certain circles).

Quite a few articles and books have been written on the subject of Tolstoy and Gandhi but they are for the most part enthusiastic and complimentary and seem to follow the style of the well-known works by the French writer Romain Rolland. All the authors are concerned, primarily, with the relationship between Tolstoy and Gandhi as regards their ideas: the similarity or difference of their religious and socio-political views and Tolstoy’s influence on Gandhi’s ideological evolution. This range of pro­blems is undoubtedly highly important, interesting and also offers numerous possibilities for research (precisely because in literature there prevailed the enthusiastic and complimentary approach rather than the scientific and analytical). I shall attempt to survey other aspects of the Tolstoy and Gandhi subject, which, in my view, have not yet been duly examined.

In view of the studies of Russian-Indian literary contacts conducted by the Gorky Institute of World Literature under the USSR Academy of Sciences, I was curious to know which works by Tolstoy were read by Gandhi during his lifetime and what opinions he expressed about them. I went through Gandhi’s autobiography and other works; it is gratifying that we now have a big collection of his works in eight-odd volumes in English (with excellent indexes).

In his autobiography written in 1925, Gandhi mentions only three works by Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, The Gospel in Brief and What then Must We Do? And without mentioning the title he also retells ideas from the article Why Do People Intoxicate Themselves directed against smoking and alcoholism.

It was in South Africa in 1893 that Gandhi for the first time read the treatise The Kingdom of God Is Within You in which Tolstoy probably gives the fullest account of his sicio­political views (including non-resistance to evil by violence). The book became his companion for years. In his autobiography, Gandhi wrote that Tolstoy’s book The Kingdom of God is Within You had literally captivated him and left a lasting impression; the book’s independent reasoning, profound morality and truth­fulness overshadowed the merits of all other books recommended by Mr. Coats (a friend of Gandhi).

In 1908 Gandhi re-read the book in Volksrust prison in Johannesburg. His Collected Works cite the inscription made by him on the prison copy of the book which he presented to his warder upon his release: “To Mr. G. Nelson. For his many kindnesses within the law... M.K. Gandhi.”

One of his most lengthy utterances about Tolstoy is to be found in his speech during his meeting with young people in Ahmedabad on September 10, 1928, on the occasion of the writer’s centenary. He said among other things: “ ...I would say that three men have had a very great influence on my life. Among them I give the first place to the poet Rajchandra, the second to Tolstoy and the third to Ruskin... I have not read as much of Tolstoy’s life as many others may have, and in fact I have not read very much of his writings either. Among his works the one which has had the greatest effect on me is The Kingdom of God Is Within You. Later I read some of his other works, but I cannot describe what effect they had on me. I can only say what effect his life as a whole had on me.”

Other works and letters by Gandhi indicate which of Tolstoy’s other works he read and found interesting and important.

In the letter to his friend Henry Polak in 1909, Gandhi recommended that he read Tolstoy’s articles “On Life” and “Confession” (“Confession” is also mentioned in his letter to Tolstoy on August 15, 1910). His book Hind Swaraj or The Indian Home Rule (1909) was supplemented by a list of recommended literature comprising twenty titles, six of which were Tolstoy’s works: The Kingdom of God Is Within You, What Is Art, The Slavery of Our Times, Letter to a Hindu, the article “The First Step” on vegetarianism and “How Shall We Escape?” (I have not established yet which work by Tolstoy is meant by this translated title). Gandhi himself translated Letter to a Hindu into Gujarati and published it in his paper Indian Opinion in South Africa in 1909. In 1910 Gandhi sent Tolstoy’s pamphlet The Relation of the sexes to his nephew and described it as “an invaluable book” in the covering letter. His “Instructions for Satyagrahis” in 1919 recommended reading, among other things, Tolstoy’s “Letter to Russian Liberals”. Gandhi often made reference to Tolstoy’s works which expounded the need for “bread labour”. As we see, we have so far mentioned only Tolstoy’s religious, philosophical and publicistic writings. As far as his fiction is concerned we can confidently refer to three of his “Stories for People”. God sees the Truth But Will Not Say It Soon, Tale About Ivan the Fool and How Much Land Does a Man Need? All three were retold by Gandhi in his native Gujarati (as translated from English. of course) and published in his paper Indian Opinion in the early 20th century.

The Tale About Ivan the Fool remained to the end one of Gandhi’s favourite works. Three days before his death, on January 27, 1948, he mentioned that very tale while talking to the American journalist Martin, explaining to him the idea of “non-violent resistance.” Some researchers of Tolstoy made the supposition that the Tale About Ivan the Fool was a Russian version of the Buddhist jataka about a prince who preached non-violence (Ahimsa). If that is really so (which is quite likely since Tolstoy read many jatakas), that means that the Indian story returned home in Russian adaptation to capture the Indian heart once again. The Tale was translated into many Indian languages, possibly not without Gandhi’s influence.

However, for mostof Tolstoy’s compatriots, as well as for most of his readers in other European countries, he is first of all author of the great novels War and Peace, Anna Kerenina and Resurrection. The first two are ranked as the greatest novels in world literature. A question naturally arises. What is the role played by Tolstoy’s novels in Gandhi’s spiritual world? And the answer is: practically none. I did not find a single mention of Tolstoy’s novels in Gandhi’s Collected Works.

In 1984, I discussed the matter with the eminent Indian writer Mulk Raj Anand who had come to the USSR to attend a conference. He had been personally acquainted with Gandhi and through him got to know Tolstoy’s writings. He told me that in 1926, Gandhi had given him Confession to read. He said that Gandhi had most probably not read Tolstoy’s novels and had not been interested in them. Subsequently, other Indian men of letters with whom I happened to talk on the subject told me the same thing.

I was at first surprised at what Anand had said but then I saw there was nothing to be surprised at. To begin with, Gandhi could have given credence to Tolstoy’s later self-opinion expressed, for instance, in Confession and many other writings. Secondly (and this is more essential), in his literary tastes. Gandhi belonged in many respects to traditional Indian culture. And, thirdly, Gandhi was predominantly a man of action (Karmayogi), and reading, especially reading contemporary fiction, was not at all his passion.

From his autobiography we learn that in his boyhood (his family ground was fairly traditional) young Mahatma came to like Ramayana by Tulsidas and Bhagavatpurana. Characteristically, he got acquainted with those classical writings not through reading but, traditionally, through hearing. Both Ramayana and Bhagavat­puranawere read aloud for Gandhi’s father when he was ill. Even at a mature age, Gandhi was fond of listening, not reading Ramayana and other sacred books. One of this favourite books was the religious and philosophical poem Bhagavatgitawhich is part of Mahabharata.

His autobiography also tells us that during his student years in Britain (1888-1891), he studied law but not the humanities. Neither the list of required subjects nor the range of his personal interests included British fiction, to say nothing of Western fiction as a whole, including Russian literature. When Gandhi was studying in Britain, Tolstoy was already widely known in the English-speaking world. The young Indian law student in London could read English trans­lations of War and Peace, Anna Karenina and others. But he practically read no Western fiction. His autobiography mentions perhaps most frequently Bhagavatgitaand cites many quotations from ancient Indian religious poets, but we would be searching in vain for quotations from European classics (which are found in plenty, for instance, in Jawaharlal Nehru’s autobiographical books).

To avoid misunderstanding, I would like to point out that all the above does not in the least belittle the grandeur of Gandhi’s personality. He simply belonged to a different, non-European culture, although he took in a good deal from European culture. We must bear in mind the wide gap that is dividing the various cultures even in the 20th century and how complicated and often unpredicta­ble the relationships between them can be. We are entranced, as it were, with the world’s growing unification in material culture (technology, communications, etc.) and we easily forget how disunited our world still is, how disunited humanity still is in spiritual and intellectual culture.

Thus, Russians might think that if Tolstoy as a novelist is unquestionably great for them, he is equally great for all other peoples. The fact that his novels are admired in Western Europe and America only corroborates that opinion. But we have kindred cultures here. In the case of India, we are dealing with transplanting (of sorts) a Russian plant to an exotic environment.

Gandhi’s selective and incomplete perception of Tolstoy is not merely a fact of his biography and an idiosyncrasy of his personality alone. A historian of culture sees in this fact a reflection of the more profound processes involved in the interaction of cultures in the 20th century, in the given case the interaction of Indian and European cultures, of Indian and Russian cultures.

Not only Gandhi but his Indian contemporaries better familiar with Western culture, had some difficulty in perceiving Tolstoy’s novels. This holds true even for Rabindranath Tagore who sought to grasp all the manifestations and achievements of the human mind. His attitude to Tolstoy actually offers a separate major and practically unexplored topic which is still to be tackled by both Soviet and Indian scholars. I shall only note here that treatment of Tolstoy and his works can serve as a test to determine the psychology and cultural orientation of a personality.

Much has been written and spoken about the distinctions between Gandhi and Nehru. It is, therefore, interesting to compare their attitudes to Tolstoy’s novels. While his novels were actually overlooked by Gandhi, they found a powerful response in Nehru. In one of his prison diaries Nehru wrote on April 4, 1934: “...Finished Tolstoy’s War and Peace today. An amazing book. Parts of it haunted me and I woke up in the middle of the night thinking of them.” Writing to his daughter on February 22, 1935, he advised her to read War and Peace and Anna Karenina among other books. In 1944, when he was again in prison he re-read War and Peace recorded his impressions (August 5, 1944): “It is a mighty book both in size and content.” In several of his letters from prison, he insistently asked his family to send him also Anna Karenina. “Ihave rather suddenly developed a desire to read it again,” he wrote on November 4, 1944.

Gandhi and Nehru represented different aspects of Indian consciousness, or, scientifically speaking, different sections of 20th century Indian society. Gandhi’s attitude to Tolstoy has undoubtedly been typical of the greater part of Indian society. This is borne out specifically by the history of Tolstoy’s writings translated into Indian languages.

His writings came to India and are still being widely dissemi­nated there in English translations. Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru read them only in English. As far as I know, even today the Indians who know English prefer to read Tolstoy in that language.

On the other hand, in the 20th century, his works have been translated also into Indian languages, which reflects in some measure the specific interest in Tolstoy among the broad Indian sections, among the millions who cannot read English. As it has turned out, it is Tolstoy’s stories (Stories for People and Tales for Children) and religious, philosophical and publicistic writings that have been given preference over his novels in translations into Indian languages. There are still no full translations of War and Peace, Anna Karenina or Resurrection in the major Indian languages. Thus, judging by the history of his translations, the attitude to Tolstoy among the Indian people is closer to that of Gandhi rather than to that of Nehru.

Tolstoy’s Stories for People and Tales for Children are highly popular in India. Since the 1930s some of his Stories for People have been used for reading lessons at Indian schools, for example, the story How Much Land Does a Man Need? re-told by Gandhi in Gujarati in the early 20th century. I know that Tolstoy’s Tales for Children as translated into Indian languages are recommended for primary reading in some Indian states.

All the above deserves serious attention from historians of culture, literary critics and other scholars. I shall only make a few more brief notes to conclude this article.

Why are Indians so interested in Tolstoy as a religious thinker? In my opinion, his religious quests have much in common with the quests of some prominent Indian religious reformers of the 19th and 20th centuries, from Raja Rammohan Roy to Gandhi. Tolstoy began with efforts to purify Christianity of its later extraneous features and to find the “initial” and “genuine” Christianity. Likewise, Raja Rammohan Roy, Dayananda Sarasvati and even Mahatma Gandhi, each in his own way, attempted to purify Hinduism. At the end of his life Tolstoy went farther and wanted to attain a universal religion going beyond Christianity and encom­passing entire man-kinds supreme spiritual achievements. In that, he is closer to, say, Keshobchandra Sen and, in a sense, to Ra­bindranath Tagore. There is also some similarity between Tolstoy’s later views and Ramakrishna’s teaching.

Both Tolstoy and the Indian religious thinkers sought univer­sality. Tolstoy’s stories concerned with general human values were able to surmount the barriers between the two cultures, something his novels failed to do for a long time. Soviet literary historians and the Soviet reading public regard Tolstoy’s stories as works of secondary importance. His novels for us overshadow his Stories for People. But the destiny of his short stories outside Russian culture should evidently make us treat them with greater attention.

Here is what Romain Rolland wrote about Tolstoy’s Stories for People; “Tolstoy, who wanted to create an art for all people, at once attained universality. His stories have had such success all over the world that will never end, because they are purified of all the transient elements of art; there is nothing in them but the eternal.”

Indeed, Tolstoy’s Stories for People have been appreciated not only in India. Thus, the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein, a celebrated philosopher of our century, read the stories as an officer on the Russian front during World War I and was captivated by them (he “discovered” Tolstoy’s novels somewhat later). He came to regard Tolstoy as a great writer due to his Stories For People.

Thus, Gandhi’s experience as a reader of Tolstoy, which at first glance seems incomplete and inadequate, may prove to hold the latent wisdom we have yet to grasp.