Jesus, Gandhi, Tolstoy

"Shortly before his death in 1910, Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian author, wrote a letter to an admirer in South Africa. The letter asserted Tolstoy's belief in "the teaching of love," which Tolstoy found most completely embodied in the message of Christ. The recipient of the letter was Mohandas Gandhi, and the idea became reality in Gandhi's campaign of non-violence to oppose British rule in India. Inspired by the Sermon on the Mount, in particular, Gandhi used the most radical of tools - non-aggression - to stymie and ultimately overthrow the system of British colonial rule. By the time of Gandhi's martyrdom in 1948, the world had come to glimpse, if not appreciate, that revolutions based upon hope and non-violence, upon Christ's message of love and dignity, were difficult to repulse by the mechanisms of the State."