Introduction
If you were offended by any means, what you would do. Do you forgive the offender or you act violently towards him? The act you implement reflects your beliefs towards violence and non-violence. When hearing non-violence and peace, everyone associates it with Gandhi. However, the source from where Gandhi stemmed his peaceful movements did not spread as the spread of his name around the world. Gandhi derived his fundamental principle of love and non-violence from a Russian philosopher called Tolstoy. How these two great influencers became so close despite the geography distance between Russia and India. One of Tolstoy’s publications entitled ‘A Letter to a Hindu’ came into Gandhi’s hands by chance and it influenced him rapidly. Therefore, it triggered him to read more of Tolstoy’s writings. He was affected by some concepts and principles including free thinking, love, truth and non-violence, bread labor and non-possession.
Knowing Tolstoy
Before embarking on Tolstoy’s principles upon which Gandhi based his peaceful movement, how they knew each other should be revealed. Gandhi was studying law in India in the 1890s,…show more content… At the beginning, people were afraid to talk about anything marked religious. Religion was only a tool for people in power knowing that they would face no inquiries if they connected any violent act they wanted to achieve to religion. Although no religion in the world promotes violence, those people referred to it for their own sake. Tolstoy emphasized the concept of love and that all religions encourage love towards mankind. After this contradiction between the love that religion calls for and the violence that the people in power used under the religion’s name has become clearer, those people had to come up with a new excuse to allow violence and this excuse was represented in