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DR. HEIMO RAU
the hard, between humility and love against pride and force seems to be here increasingly from year to year. I greet you as a brother and am happy to be in touch with you."
In his second letter of 4th April 1910 Gandhi enclosed a copy of his booklet “Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule”. Tolstoy read it and informed himself on Gandhi and classified him in a letter to Chertkov as “a man, who is very close to us, to me.” Gandhi in his third letter of 15th August 1910 reported on the initial stages of the Tolstoy Farm. Tolstoy was so enthusiastic that he dictated his answering letter the same day. The letter went via Chertkov to Gandhi. It is the longest in the entire correspondence and bears the date of 7th (20th) September 1910. Chertkov translated it into English and sent it to a friend in England who was supposed to forward it to Gandhı. This man was ill and posted it on 1st November. Thus it happened that Gandhi received the letter only several days after the death of Count Leo Tolstoy who died on 20th November 1910. The letter states:
"The longer I live, and specially now, when I keenly feel death approach, I would like to tell the others what I feel so distinctly and what is of importance to me---passive resistance is in reality nothing other than the teaching of love, which is not ruined by misinterpretations. This love is the highest and only law of human life.”
A very old man wrote this, a man with already one foot in the grave, to a person who stood just at the threshold of his career, his experiments with truth. It was a legacy. Tolstoy doubted that he could change himself and others, but Gandhi believed he could do so, and he proved it on India's stage.
East West Dialogue
How was this possible? The western reformers did not succeed in abandoning the use of force, since the idea of ahimsā was absolutely alien to their traditions and their contemporary society. This was not the case for Gandhi. He could revive
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