When he first read The Kingdom of God Is Within You, recalled Gandhi years later, he was ‘overwhelmed’ by the ‘independent thinking, profound morality and the truthfulness of this book’.9 Tolstoy’s book reinforced his own heterodoxy, his stubborn insistence on forging a spiritual path for himself regardless of churches and creeds whether Hindu or Christian. Meanwhile, Gandhi was also rereading the Gita, which he saw less as a celebration of a ‘just war’ and more as a manifesto for ethical conduct, advocating indifference to love and hate, attachment and possession.10
