Tolstoy Farm was an

ashram An ashram ( sa, आश्रम, ) is a spiritual hermitage or a monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or a ...

initiated and organized by

Mohandas Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...

during his South African movement. At its creation in 1910 the ashram served as the headquarters of the campaign of

satyagraha Satyagraha ( sa, सत्याग्रह; ''satya'': "truth", ''āgraha'': "insistence" or "holding firmly to"), or "holding firmly to truth",' or "truth force", is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. Someone w ...

against discrimination against Indians in Transvaal, where it was located. The ashram, Gandhi's second in South Africa (the first was Phoenix Farm, Natal, in 1904) was named after Russian writer and philosopher

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

, whose 1894 book, ''

The Kingdom of God Is Within You ''The Kingdom of God Is Within You'' ( pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform rus, Царство Божие внутри вас, Tsárstvo Bózhiye vnutrí vas) is a non-fiction book written by Leo Tolstoy. A Christian anarchist philosophical trea ...

'', greatly influenced Gandhi's philosophy of

nonviolence Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...

Hermann Kallenbach Hermann Kallenbach (1 March 1871 – 25 March 1945) was a Lithuanian-born Jewish South African architect who was one of the foremost friends and associates of Mahatma Gandhi. Kallenbach was introduced to the young Mohandas Gandhi while they were b ...

, a Gandhi supporter, allowed Gandhi and seventy to eighty other people to live there as long as their local movement was in effect. Kallenbach suggested the name for the community, which soon constructed three new buildings to serve as living quarters, workshops, and a school. Sjt.pragji desai also helped in this program. There were no servants on the farm, and all the work, from cooking down to scavenging, was done by the inmates.

References

{{Leo Tolstoy Mahatma Gandhi Ashrams 1910 establishments in South Africa Tolstoyan movement

See also

References