ractise what
he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He
commands attention.

[_19th November, 1909_] M. K. GANDHI

A LETTER TO A HINDU

By Leo Tolstoy

_All that exists is One. People only call this One by different names._
THE VEDAS.

_God is love, and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God
abideth in him._ I JOHN iv. 16.

_God is one whole; we are the parts._ EXPOSITION OF THE TEACHING OF THE
VEDAS BY VIVEKANANDA.

I

Do not seek quiet and rest in those earthly realms where delusions and
desires are engendered, for if thou dost, thou wilt be dragged through
the rough wilderness of life, which is far from Me.

Whenever thou feelest that thy feet are becoming entangled in the
interlaced roots of life, know that thou has strayed from the path to
which I beckon thee: for I have placed thee in broad, smooth paths,
which are strewn with flowers. I have put a light before thee, which
thou canst follow and thus run without stumbling. KRISHNA.

I have received your letter and two numbers of your periodical, both of
which interest me extremely. The oppression of a majority by a minority,
and the demoralization inevitably resulting from it, is a phenomenon
that has always occupied me and has done so most particularly of late.
I will try to explain to you what I think about that subject in general,
and particularly about the cause from which the dreadful evils of which
you write in your letter, and in the Hindu periodical you have sent me,
have arisen and continue to arise.

The reason for the astonishing fact that a majority of working people
submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very
lives is always and everywhere the same--whether the oppressors and
oppressed are of one race or whether, as in India and elsewhere, the
oppressors are of a different nation.

This phenomenon seems particularly strange in India, for there more than
two hundred million people, highly gifted both physically and mentally,
find themselves in the power of a small group of people quite alien
to them in thought, and immeasurably inferior to them in religious
morality.

From your letter and the articles in _Free Hindustan_ as well as from
the very interesting writings of the Hindu Swami Vivekananda and
others, it appears that, as is the case in our time with the ills of all
nations, the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching
which by