Tolstoy in India: Translating Aspirations across Continents

In the first half of the twentieth century, many Indians were agitating for their country’s freedom, resisting both British brute force and soft power, especially literature. English novels daunted Indian imaginations by setting ‘civilization’ on an unattainable pinnacle. However, Russian literature had the opposite effect. This essay will focus on how Lev Tolstoy’s writings, in translation, encouraged the Indian spirit. Tolstoy’s name was familiar to the politically conscious public due to his correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi which inspired South Africa’s first anti-apartheid movement. Tolstoy’s Russia, a vast, untamable, agrarian nation crisscrossed by railways and oppressed by its upper classes, mirrored India’s oppressed situation and galvanized its activists. Indian readers were invigorated by Tolstoy’s enduring ideas. Tolstoy’s writings made it clear that great art could stay true to one’s national and cultural experience and find a place within canons. This essay will explore the deep imprint his work left on the Indian consciousness, its pathways of circulation in translation and the implications for literary history in the early twentieth century.