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Literary Review
Crusader for peace
`Portrait of Tolstoy' by Ilya Efimovich Repin.
IT may be a cause of some surprise to many that more works of Tolstoy were suppressed in the Tsarist Russia than in the U.S.S.R. He had also been excommunicated by the Most Holy Synod and was kept under police supervision in the last phase of his life.
All this because he proved a zealous champion of some of the ignored doctrines of Christ, particularly the Master's advice not to resist evil. Tolstoy was for a total rejection of any form of retaliation even against blatant violence, if one were to call oneself a true follower of Christ. As he went on with his mission to wake up his countrymen to what he believed to be the basic philosophy of Christianity, he attracted the wrath of the orthodox establishments, both religious and political.
No wonder, for he even decried the concept of patriotism. "Patriotism was a necessity in the formation and consolidation of strong States composed of heterogeneous populations and needing defence against barbarians," he wrote. "But when Christian enlightenment has transformed those States from within, giving to them all the same basic principles, patriotism became sole obstacle to that union among nations for which Christian consciousness had prepared them. Patriotism in our day is a cruel tradition surviving from an outlived past." ("Christianity and Patriotism".)
Ironically, Tolstoy must have sounded less unrealistic in his own time than he would easily sound today. The fact that neither Christianity nor any other religion has been able to transform the human nature is a far greater cruel fact than the cruelty he sensed in patriotism.
Tolstoy was pleasantly surprised at discovering two stalwarts who preceded him, apart from the Quakers, in preaching similar ideas. They were William Lloyd Garrison and Adin Ballou. Tolstoy did whatever possible to popularise their words among his readers.
This compilation of Tolstoy's six essays on the theme of peace, dominated by his long treatise entitled "The Kingdom of God is within you", reveals the mind of a committed and uncompromising idealist who at times appears to be rather simplistic in his approach to social and psychological issues. But the solidity of his conviction cannot be suspected. One remembers his statement — almost his last — refusing to reconcile himself with the Russian Orthodox Church, a little before his death: "Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six."
The conscientious and cautious translator and compiler of this volume, Aylmer Maude, tells us: "Life, however, is so complex that it is difficult to state any moral principle emphatically, briefly and clearly, so that it shall be applicable in all cases. For instance at first it seems a sound rule to say that you should always speak the truth. But if an old man on his deathbed asks what his much-loved daughter is doing, it might be very cruel to tell him that she had just eloped with a chauffeur he strongly disapproved of. That objection to the principle is not readily met, but does not afford sufficient reason for rejecting the general injunction to tell the truth."
Tolstoy did not have the opportunity to apply his theory of non-violence to any extensive practice as Gandhiji had. The kind of experiment the latter made with non-violence, pledging almost the destiny of a subcontinent to his doctrine, was unprecedented in history. But at the last phase of a life devoted to an ideal with a vengeance, he admitted, while roaming the violence-ridden Noakhali on the eve of partition and independence, that his followers had been least prepared in their consciousness for acting according to the ideal they so vociferously professed to have accepted as their creed. Tolstoy was lucky in the sense that he had no occasion to feel disenchanted.
Any admirer of Tolstoy's major works would feel thankful to the great writer that he had not poured into his novels, in any pronounced manner, his strong personal ideas and preferences in regard to his religious faith. He is subtle and beautiful there — in that creative world of his. "All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love," he says in War and Peace — demonstrating his capacity<243>
for transforming his doctrine into art.
The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays, Leo Tolstoy, translated with an Introduction by Aylmer Maude, Rupa and Co. New Delhi, Rs. 195.
MANOJ DAS
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