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Danny Wall

Tolstoy, Ruskin, Thoreau, and Gandhi: A Global Exchange of

Nonviolence

Gandhi’s nonviolence movements in British colonial India have frequently been attributed by

contemporary historians to the longstanding tradition of nonviolence entrenched in the Indian

religions and culture.1 However, much scholarship exists comparing this influence and the role of

romantic era Western literature on Gandhi’s life.2 Clearly, crediting Gandhi’s lifestyle, and

ultimately his practices of nonviolence, to one or the other presents great difficulty for historians;

Gandhi himself often expressed distaste with aspects of Western culture, while at the same time

criticizing traditional Hindu spirituality.3 Most historians have conceded that “Gandhi was

influenced not only by Eastern religions and traditions but also by Western thinkers, such as

Ruskin, Thoreau, and Tolstoy” – the extent to which Eastern traditions or the literature of the

West influenced Gandhi is a matter of debate, however.4

1 Historians often progress this school of historiography using Gandhi’s frequent mention of Hindu and Jain philosophies. For example, Gandhi once described himself as a sanatani, or a pure Hindu. As found in Rakhahari Chatterji, Gandhi and the Ali Brothers: Biography of a Friendship (New Delhi: SAGE Publications India, 2013), 7. In other cases, Gandhi has been cited diminishing the importance of Western education to the nonviolence movements in India. For the full context of the intricacies of Gandhi’s view on Western education, see Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 27 (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1999), 50.2 In contrast to the previous school of modern Indian historiography, this school tends to focus on Indian history from the scope of the Empire. This imperialist school, or the Cambridge School of Historiography (as it has come to be known), was established and furthered by the work of historians like John Andrew Gallagher, who innovated the Western view of Indian politicians, and made them appear as “skilled and ruthless practitioners” of politics, who were masters of manipulation – see John Darwin, “John Andrew Galagher: 1919-1980” (London: Proceedings of the British Academy, 2007), 71.3 For a detailed review of Gandhi’s complete works revealing his distaste with “classical Hindu spirituality of ascetics”, see Joseph S. Alter, Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 8.4 Sankar Ghose, Political Ideas and Movements in India (Calcutta: Allied Publishers, 1975), 78. Ghose describes the influence of Thoreau and Ruskin on Gandhi, but asserts that Tolstoy was Gandhi’s real champion of Western thinking.

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In this paper, I argue that Gandhi drew his ideas from a more broad global intellectual

exchange; it would be inadequate to reduce Gandhi’s ideas simply to the question of eastern or

western influence. The dominant schools of Indian historiography have asserted too much focus

on obsolete notions of eastern or western influence when looking at the origins of Gandhi’s

satyagraha. Contention aside, there is widespread agreement that Gandhi developed an affinity

for Western literature, and found intellectual “oases from which those who will may drink the

purest water of life”.5 In large part, Gandhi’s practices of nonviolence were as much the result of

western literature and thinkers appreciating eastern traditions as they were of eastern religions

and culture themselves. Therefore, it becomes more necessary to view Gandhi’s nonviolence

movements as the “culmination of the works of many men spread out over time and geographical

location”.6 Gandhi’s nonviolence movements did not originate solely as a result of a few isolated

western thinkers and their ideas, nor were they solely the outcome of a heritage of Indian

nonviolence. Rather, I contend that Gandhi’s movements were part of a larger global exchange

of culture and ideas, one which seized the stage of 19th and 20th century politics.

Opening this argument is impossible without first considering the merits and drawbacks of

each of the historiographical schools. The nationalist school of Indian historiography has often

criticized the Cambridge school for being too quick to link Gandhi’s nonviolence movements to

western influence. This school has cited Gandhi’s mention of himself as a sanatani, or pure

Hindu, to demonstrate Indian religious pressure on the Mahatma.7 Further scholarship has made

note of Gandhi’s personal relationship with “Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, Lala Lajpat Rai,

5 Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 31 (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1999), 294-295. As cited by Joseph S. Alter in Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 8.6 Scott Zuke, “Satyagraha: Tracking a Cultural Exchange” (New York: State University of New York, 2007).7 Rakhahari Chatterji, Gandhi and the Ali Brothers: Biography of a Friendship (New Delhi: SAGE Publications India, 2013), 7.

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and Swami Shraddhananda – the chief spokesmen of Hindu interests.”8 Certainly, Gandhi’s

relationship with Hindu leadership in India attests to his closeness with Hindu traditions of

nonviolence. In addition, Gandhi mentioned that it was “open to question whether Western

education would benefit Indians any way”, and added that “we were happy and prosperous in the

old days, without [Western] education.”9 In these ways, scholars have devised valid arguments

that Gandhi could have procured his concept of nonviolence without Western influence.

Led by historians such as John Andrew Gallagher, the scholars of the Cambridge school of

historiography have painted a far more cynical view of Gandhi’s interaction with Indian

traditions and religions. For example, the Cambridge school has frequently diminished Gandhi’s

Indian nationalism by contending Gandhi was only interested in gaining political allies and

“carefully nurturing a base for himself within Hindu organizations”.10 Gallagher was crucial in

developing the Cambridge school of historiography. For example, he played a role in skewing

the imperial view of Indian politicians, making them appear as “skilled and ruthless

practitioners” of politics, who were masters of manipulation.11 The Cambridge school often

treated Gandhi’s ideas as “the foibles of a crank”, and sought to disparage the power Gandhi had

actually possessed.12

Each of these historiographical schools has seemed to value some intrinsic quality of what

defines eastern or what defines western influence. The Achilles heel of these arguments is their

8 Loc. cit.9 Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 27 (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1999), 50.10 Chatterji, op. cit., 7. On the topic of Gandhi building a base for himself in Hindu political organizations, Chatterji cites David Hardiman, Gandhi: In His Time and Ours (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), 162-169. The ‘imperial’ school of thought, in regards to modern Indian historiography, has made frequent and often well-supported claims that the influence of Indian tradition on Gandhi was minimal and impressionistic. Many historians have departed from this school of thought in recent decades due to dated representations of Indian tradition and influence. While this school of thought still has much to offer, it is important not to underestimate the influence of Indian religious and cultural traditions on Gandhi and his nonviolence movements in South Africa and India.11 John Darwin, “John Andrew Gallagher: 1919-1980” (London: Proceedings of the British Academy, 2007), 71.12 Loc. cit.

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assertion that the boundaries of ‘east’ and ‘west’ can be easily defined. John Ruskin was English.

Henry David Thoreau was American. Leo Tolstoy was Russian. But post-Bolshevik Russia may

have had more in common with the east, at least initially, than the west. The line is even more

arbitrary when considering Gandhi’s mention that “three moderns have left a deep impress on

my life: Raichandbhai by his living contact, Tolstoy by his book, The Kingdom of God is Within

You, and Ruskin by his Unto This Last.”13 Raichandbhai was Indian, and his teachings on

Jainism certainly influenced the Mahatma. Gandhi drew influence for his nonviolence

movements from all corners of the globe, and it would be more beneficial to track the cultural

exchanges of 19th and 20th century intellectual movements, such as romanticism and

transcendentalism, as a global interaction that Gandhi was a part of. In this paper, I will

investigate this exchange by focusing on Gandhi and his relationship with three writers: John

Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy, and Henry David Thoreau within the scope of intellectual history.

The primary sources relevant to this study come from a variety of historiographical

approaches. Most importantly to this investigation is the Mahatma’s Autobiography and

Collected Works, accessed through the Gandhi Heritage Portal.14 Certainly, I will make use of

other primary sources, such as Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”. In line with approaching the

subject from the scope of global interaction, I will use primary sources from other world leaders

who lived at the time of Gandhi’s movements. For example, Theodore Roosevelt’s famous 1899

speech, “The Strenuous Life”15 and Vladimir Lenin’s Collected Works have proven useful.16

Pertinent to understanding how Gandhi fit into a more broad global intellectual exchange is a

quote by the American journalist, Webb Miller, who followed Gandhi’s movements in India, and 13 Usha Mehta, “Gandhi, Tolstoy, and Ruskin” (Bombay: The Indian Journal of Political Science, vol. 30, no. 4, 1969), 343.14 The Gandhi Heritage Portal is an online database comprised of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, compiled by Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust Foundation in Ahmedabad.15 Theodore Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life” (Chicago: Speech for the Hamilton Club, 1899).16 Vladimir Lenin, Lenin: Collected Works, vol. 15 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), 202.

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may have outlined the complexity of Gandhi’s satyagraha best when he wrote that “Gandhi

received back from America what was fundamentally the philosophy of India after it had been

distilled and crystallized in the mind of Thoreau.”17 This form of logic explains equally the

influence of John Ruskin and Leo Tolstoy on Gandhi as it does of Thoreau’s. Gandhi’s own

work reflects the influence of both eastern and western intellectualism.

Gandhi first encountered Ruskin’s writings in 1904, and was immediately drawn to Ruskin’s

message of common welfare. Ruskin was an English art critic who eventually procured a taste

for writing commentary on social and political issues. Ruskin’s influence on Gandhi was

significant enough that Gandhi embarked on partial translations of Ruskin’s works into

Gujarati.18 The Cambridge school may have been onto something in that, outside of empire,

Ruskin’s Unto This Last may have been the most powerful ‘western’ force acting on Gandhi,

which was likely the case because Ruskin had already drawn much inspiration from Indian ideas

Gandhi could relate to. Upon reading Unto This Last, Gandhi immediately “established the first

of his experimental settlements for simple living.”19 Gandhi even stated that the one book “that

brought about an instantaneous and practical transformation in my life was Unto This Last.”20

Certainly, Ruskin impacted Gandhi immensely, teaching him to live like a peasant, and imbuing

him with the idea that “a lawyer’s labor has the same value as the barber’s and that the life of

labor – that is, of the tiller of the soil … is the life worth living.”21

17 Webb Miller, I Found No Peace (Garden City Publications, 1938), 238-239.18 Ghose, op. cit., 80.19 Patricia M. Ball, review of Ruskin and Gandhi, by Elizabeth T. McLaughlin, (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1974).20 Mahatma Gandhi, Autobiography (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House), 229. As cited by Sankar Ghose in Political Ideas and Movements in India (Calcutta: Allied Publishers, 1975), 80.21 Loc. cit. At the time, this idea that the life of the laborer was honorable was commonplace in varying ideological environments. Theodore Roosevelt’s famous 1899 speech, “The Strenuous Life”, asserted that the hard work of American men would drive the same nation to a position of global power, and idealized the image of the laboring class. At the same time, the plight of the laboring class in Russia was nearing a boiling point that would soon explode in revolution. The view of noble hard work was not merely an isolated phenomenon. Gandhi learned about the “life of labor” from Ruskin at a time when much of the rest of the world was learning the same. It is no wonder Gandhi became a cause for fear in the British Empire, as his ideas were gaining ground in other places as quickly as in India.

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Gandhi also “derived considerable inspiration from Thoreau’s essays on civil disobedience.”22

Thoreau’s focus on the relationship between citizens and their government made a deep

impression on Gandhi; Gandhi even remarked that Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” “contained

the essence [of his] political philosophy, not only as India’s struggle related to the British, but as

to his own views of the relation of citizens to government.”23 The Mahatma described the

influence of Thoreau’s essays on civil disobedience in a letter correspondence with the English

author, Henry Salt.24 Gandhi wrote that “Civil Disobedience” was so “convincing and truthful

that I felt the need of knowing more of Thoreau.”25 It is with good reason that historians have

belabored Gandhi’s praise of Thoreau’s work.

Henry David Thoreau shared much intellectually with eastern literature and philosophy.

Thoreau did not have much experience with eastern literature in his earlier years. Arthur Christy

made the case that Thoreau did not read Indian literature early on, writing “it is a singular fact

that not a single Oriental volume appeared on the record of Thoreau’s undergraduate (1833-

1837) at the Harvard College library”26. Still, Thoreau began reading eastern literature shortly

after his undergraduate years. Frequently, “literary historians have … placed Thoreau’s first

acquaintance with eastern literature and philosophy in 1841”.27 Thoreau’s first experiences with 22 Ghose, op. cit., 80.23 Thoreau Society Bulletin No. 11 (April, 1945). As cited by George Hendrick in “The Influence of Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ on Gandhi’s Satyagraha” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The New England Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4, 1956), 462. Gandhi seems to be more often mentioned in writings about the influence of Thoreau than writings about Gandhi himself. Still, Thoreau’s influence on Gandhi has been belabored by historians. This article, published in 1956, opens by concluding that “the influence of Henry Thoreau upon Mahatma Gandhi [is now] universally recognized” in historiography. While the article implies more energy has been spent detailing the influence of other writers, such as Ruskin or Tolstoy on Gandhi, Hendrick writes that “almost all popular articles on Thoreau … devote at least one sentence to Gandhi’s indebtedness” to “Civil Disobedience”. 24 Joseph S. Alter, op. cit., 10 sqq. While Gandhi was in London, he read Henry Salt’s A Plea for Vegetarianism. Gandhi was already vegetarian at the time, but likely developed additional motivations for practicing vegetarianism that were “different from the brahmanical rationale for purity and Jain spirituality.”25 Henry S. Salt, Company I Have Kept (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1930), 100-101. As found in George Hendrick’s “The Influence of Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ on Gandhi’s Satyagraha” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The New England Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4, 1956), 464.26 Arthur Christy, The Orient in American Transcendentalism (New York, 1932), 188.27 David H. Albert, “Thoreau’s India: The Impact of Reading in a Crisis” (Chicago: American Philosophical Society, vol. 125, no. 2, 1981), 104.

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Indian intellectualism came when he was living with Ralph Waldo Emerson, another prominent

figure whose works left an impression on Gandhi. This supports the notion that the

transcendentalist movement, of which Thoreau and Emerson were crucial components, was

influenced directly by Indian traditions and culture. In this way, the influence of Thoreau on

Gandhi was not merely western or eastern - it was the product of both. Thoreau’s role in

Gandhi’s perceptions of satyagraha was the result of a global exchange of ideas.

Perhaps the most discussed thinker in regards to Gandhi is Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy was a

Russian writer whose pen influenced some of the greatest political movements of the 20 th

century. Ironically enough, Tolstoy’s role in the Bolshevik Revolution of his homeland was

belittled by Lenin himself, who stated “Tolstoy … could not possibly understand either the

working class movement and its role in the struggle for socialism, or the Russian revolution.” 28

That Leo Tolstoy’s work influenced Gandhi’s movements in India more than the movements in

Russia is a subject worthy of its own study. Still, Leo Tolstoy’s ideas impacted Gandhi’s pattern

of thinking and the development of the nonviolence movements in India. Gandhi connected with

Tolstoy immediately because of their shared focus on religion. The fact that Tolstoy was a

devout Christian and Gandhi was Hindu did not matter to Gandhi: he once said the goal of prayer

“should be that a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, and a Christian a

better Christian … I broaden my Hinduism by loving other religions as my own.”29 Historians

have argued that Tolstoy may have had the greatest impact on Gandhi because of his discourse

on religious principles, which was similar to Gandhi’s own religiosity.

28 Lenin, op. cit., 202.29 Mahatma Gandhi, Young India, 19 January 1929. As quoted in Sankar Ghose, Political Ideas and Movements in India (Calcutta: Allied Publishers, 1975), 79. Young India was a weekly journal published by Gandhi in English from 1919 to 1932.

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Before the Mahatma’s birth in 1869, the romanticism movement was already in full swing in

Europe and the Americas. The works of John Ruskin fit well into the umbrella of romanticism.30

The English philosopher Bernard Bosanquet claimed “Mr. Ruskin has pointed out with loving

appreciation the value and import of … the hills and plains and the cliffs and river-courses”. 31

Certainly, Ruskin’s romanticist writings would have appealed to a young Gandhi during his time

in England; Gandhi’s Hindu background led him to an appreciation of nature not unlike that of

the romanticist thinkers across Europe. Gandhi’s essentially romanticist ideals in regards to

nature were also influenced by Shrimad Rajchandra (or Raichandbhai), who was a prominent

Jain philosopher and contemporary of Gandhi. In his Autobiography, Gandhi stated “I have tried

to meet the heads of various faiths, and I must say that no one else has ever made on me the

impression that Raichandbhai did … his intellect compelled as great a regard from me as his

moral earnestness, and deep down in me was the conviction that he would never willingly lead

me astray and would always confide to me his innermost thoughts. In my moments of spiritual

crisis, therefore, he was my refuge.”32 The similarities of Rajchandra’s Jain philosophical

teachings to Gandhi and the romanticist ideas Gandhi found in reading the works of John Ruskin

paint a picture that supersedes boundaries of eastern or western influence. In large part, Gandhi

seems to have been attracted to these figures because of the ideas they presented, regardless of

where these concepts originated.

One common theme Gandhi found relatable was a mistrust of industrialism and machines.

This arguably comes from Gandhi’s religiosity and his beliefs that technology, and machines in

particular, were harmful to local communities. In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi makes a case against

30 John Theodore Merz, A History of European Thought in the 19th Century (New York: Dover Publications, 1965), 97-101 passim. 31 Bernard Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic (London: George Allen and Unwin, 2nd ed., 1904).32 Gandhi, Autobiography, op. cit., 44-45.

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railroads, for example, as “accentuating the evil nature of man.”33 Several writers possessed

similar views of industrialism to Gandhi, particularly those of the romanticism movement. John

Ruskin’s Unto This Last “questioned the values in English bourgeois society and industrialism,”

giving the Mahatma “a deeper awareness that the good of the individual was to be found in the

good of the community.”34 Gandhi found “certain ideas contained in several books by Leo

Tolstoy, Henry Thoreau, the Bible, and the Qur’an” practical to his movements, and they

“became part of his lifestyle as he reevaluated Indian and western European civilizations.”35

The transcendentalism movement that had sprung out of early 19th century America also

caught Gandhi in the grasp of global thinking. The foundations laid by writers such as Ralph

Waldo Emerson were passed immediately downward to equally successful figures like

Thoreau.36 The manner in which Gandhi’s political movements drew from Thoreau’s writings

plays to contradiction: Thoreau himself often expressed disgust with politics.37 This has led many

“political scientists and historians into brushing aside [Thoreau’s] contributions to political

philosophy”.38 Leo Tolstoy was another prominent transcendentalist. In fact, Tolstoy’s

transcendentalist work seems to have been as important to Gandhi as Thoreau, despite the fact

that “almost all popular articles on Thoreau … devote at least one sentence to Gandhi’s

indebtedness” to “Civil Disobedience”.39

33 Mahatma Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, as found in The Penguin Gandhi Reader, ed. Rudrangshu Mukherjee (New York: Penguin, 1996), 24.34 Thomas E. Hachey and Ralph E. Weber, Voices of Revolution: Rebels and Rhetoric (Marquette: Dryden Press, 1972), 304.35 Loc. cit.36 Albert, op. cit. Thoreau’s mentor was Emerson, and it was to Thoreau’s essays on “Civil Disobedience” that Gandhi’s nonviolence movements were, at least partially, indebted.37 Laura Dassow Walls, review of David M. Robinson, Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism and Philip Cafaro, Thoreau’s Living Ethics: “Walden” and the Pursuit of Virtue.38 Loc. cit. 39 See George Hendrick, “The Influence of Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ on Gandhi’s Satyagraha” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The New England Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4, 1956), 462.

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Yet, if Tolstoy’s work was so important for Gandhi, why was Tolstoy not effective in the

revolutions of Russia? Both Mahatma Gandhi and Karl Marx surely belonged to the same period

of global intellectual exchanges. In elementary terms, the answer, it would seem, is that Marx

and Gandhi were each attracted to different aspects of this global interaction. The historian

Vishwanath Prasad Varma described Gandhi by proposing that because “Gandhi was no

systematic thinker … he was neither a Shankara nor a Kant. Instead, he was akin to Socrates and

Buddha.”40 In contrast, Varma perpetuates that Marx was trained in the likeness of German

philosophers of the time, and was a believer in the “efficacy of logical reason”.41 Gandhi

acquired his motivations for satyagraha from a global aura of intellectual revolution. Where

Marx drew from the plight of the bourgeoisie and Zapata capitalized on the needs of the

agriculturists, Gandhi appealed to the masses of India with similar inspirations and different

methods.42 The contrasts between Gandhi and the movements of Communism elsewhere are

nowhere more clear than in the writings of the Indian revolutionary Communist, Manabendra

Nath Roy. Roy claimed “the social basis of Gandhism is cultural backwardness; its intellectual

mainstay, superstition … the Gandhist utopia … is a static society – a state of absolute social

stagnation.”43

Despite these fundamental differences between the revolutions in India, Mexico, Russia, and

elsewhere, it is clear that a broader form of intellectual revolution was at work in the minds of

the revolutionary leaders. Gandhi drew from both eastern and western influences. Marx, despite

40 Vishwanath Prasad Varma, “Gandhi and Marx: An Introduction to the Critique of the Political Philosophies of Mohandas Gandhi and Karl Marx” (Bombay: The Indian Journal of Political Science, vol. 15, no. 2, 1954), 116.41 Loc. cit.42 The Russian Revolution of 1917 was characterized by the unity of the bourgeois, or working class. The Mexican Revolution of 1910 was characterized by the rise of the agriculturists, led by Emiliano Zapata. In both of these cases, violence was a crucial part of the revolution’s success. Gandhi’s movements in India were singularly nonviolent.43 Manabendra Nath Roy, India’s Message: Fragments of a Prisoner’s Diary, II (Calcutta: 1950), 190-218. Cited in Ghose, op. cit., 429.

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being a firm follower of German philosophy, drew influence from a broad spectrum of both

practical and intellectual sources. Even Theodore Roosevelt, the notorious archetype of 20 th

century American politics, drew inspiration from Ruskin’s assertion “that the life of labor – that

is, of the tiller of the soil … is the life worth living”.44

Mahatma Gandhi was certainly influenced by his Indian heritage. To argue that Gandhi’s

relationship with Hindu leadership was merely a political ploy is naïve. To contend that Gandhi’s

Jain education and close relationship with the Jain guru Shrimad Rajchandra was impressionistic

and unimportant misses the point that Gandhi’s movement of satyagraha was more than “merely

an attempt to preserve the status quo [and prevent] the people from rising up in a violent

revolution”.45 Gandhi’s relationship with Hindu leadership seems to have been more than just

political, despite the work the ever-cynical Cambridge school of historiography has done to make

it appear as such.

In the same way, the role of European and American intellectuals in Gandhi’s cannot be

disparaged. The agglomeration of references to the intellectual greatness of figures such as

Ruskin, Tolstoy, and Thoreau in Gandhi’s Collected Works attests to this proposition. Gandhi

came across the literature of Thoreau, Ruskin, and Tolstoy relatively early on in his movements.

For example, “Gandhi may well have read Walden as early as 1906 … [and his attempts] to be

independent of machinery … were seemingly influenced by Walden”.46 Historians of the

nationalist school of Indian historiography have oft sought to reduce the influence of western

work on Gandhi by pointing out that these same western thinkers procured their concepts of

44 Gandhi, Autobiography, op. cit., 229.45 Ghose, op. cit., 429.46 Hendrick, op. cit., 467.

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romanticism and transcendentalism by looking at similar practices with longstanding history in

Indian traditions and religions.

Both of these arguments miss the most important point. Whether or not Gandhi developed his

ideas under the guise of western intellectual dominance is beside the point. The 19 th and 20th

centuries were times of enormous intellectual and ideological change across the globe. It is no

coincidence that literary movements of naturalism, romanticism, and transcendentalism appeared

around the same time in places great distances apart.47 Placing Gandhi, and other revolutionary

leaders, into a cycle of global intellectual exchanges does much to explain how Gandhi’s

movements in India could have been so influenced by Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is

Within You, while the Bolshevik movements in Russia were not. The debate over whether the

east or the west had more influence over the Mahatma has been unproductive in understanding

why Gandhi was attracted to aspects of intellectuals from across the globe. Gandhi was inspired

by a broad variety of works. Thoreau was American, Ruskin was English, and Tolstoy was

Russian. Gandhi was also inspired by the teachings of the Indian Raichandbhai. To a great

extent, Gandhi’s nonviolence movements were the result of a larger global exchange of culture

and ideas.

Notes (Primary)

Gandhi, Rajmohan. Mohandas. New Delhi: Penguin, 2006.

Gandhi, Mahatma. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 27. New Delhi: Publications Division,

Government of India, 1999.

Gandhi, Mahatma. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 31. New Delhi: Publications Division,

47 The naturalism movement, like the movements of romanticism and transcendentalism, was fueled by intellectuals. In the case of naturalism, writers like the Spanish-American George Santayana progressed the movement with realist views of society and commentaries on war.

13

Government of India, 1999.

Gandhi, Mahatma. Autobiography. Cited by Sankar Ghose in Political Ideas and Movements in India. Publication

information for Autobiography not found.

Gandhi, Mahatma. Hind Swaraj, as found in The Penguin Gandhi Reader, ed. Rudrangshu Mukherjee. Penguin

Publications, 1996.

Gandhi, Mahatma. Young India, 19 January 1929. Also cited by Sankar Ghose (see preceding entry).

Lenin, Vladimir. Lenin: Collected Works. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973.

Miller, Webb. I Found No Peace. Garden City Publications, 1938.

Roosevelt, Theodore. “A Strenuous Life.” Speech, Hamilton Club, Chicago, 10th April 1899.

Roy, Manabendra Nath. India’s Message: Fragments of a Prisoner’s Diary, II. Calcutta: 1950, 190. Cited in Ghose,

op. cit., 429.

Salt, Henry S. Company I Have Kept. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1930.

Thoreau Society Bulletin No. 11. April, 1945. Cited by George Hendrick in “The Influence of Thoreau’s ‘Civil

Disobedience’ on Gandhi’s Satyagraha”.

Notes (Secondary)

Albert, David H. “Thoreau’s India: The Impact of Reading in a Crisis.” American Philosophical Society, vol. 125,

no. 2 (1981): 104.

Alter, Joseph S. Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

14

Press, 2000.

Ball, Patricia M. Review of Ruskin and Gandhi, by Elizabeth T. McLaughlin, University of Leeds, 1974.

Bosanquet, Bernard. History of Aesthetic. London: George Allen and Unwin, 2nd ed., 1904.

Chatterji, Rakhahari. Gandhi and the Ali Brothers: A Biography of a Friendship. New Delhi: SAGE Publications

India, 2013.

Christy, Arthur. The Orient in American Transcendentalism. New York: 1932.

Darwin, John. “John Andrew Gallagher: 1919-1980.” Proceedings of the British Academy (2007): 71.

Ghose, Sankar. Political Ideas and Movements in India. Calcutta: Allied Publishers, 1975.

Hachley, Thomas E. and Weber, Ralph E. Voices of Revolution: Rebels and Rhetoric. Marquette: Dryden Press,

1972.

Hardiman, David. Gandhi: In His Time and Ours. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003.

Hendrick, George. “The Influence of Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ on Gandhi’s Satyagraha.” The New England

Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4 (1956): 462.

Mehta, Usha. “Gandhi, Tolstoy, and Ruskin.” The Indian Journal of Political Science, vol. 30, no. 4 (1969): 343.

Merz, John Theodore. A History of European Thought in the 19th Century. New York: Dover Publications, 1965.

Metcalf, Barbara and Thomas. A Concise History of Modern India. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Walls, Laura Dassow. Review of Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism, by David M. Robinson and

Thoreau’s Living Ethics: “Walden” and the Pursuit of Virtue, by Philip Cafaro.

Varma, Vishwanath Prasad. “Gandhi and Marx: An Introduction to the Critique of the Political Philosophies of

Mohandas Gandhi and Karl Marx.” The Indian Journal of Political Science, vol. 15, no. 2 (1954): 116.

Zuke, Scott. “Satyagraha: Tracking a Cultural Exhange.” (2007).

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