  Many authors claimed that a large initial inhomogeneity prevents the onset of
inflation and therefore inflation takes place only if the scalar field is
homogeneous or appropriately chosen over the horizon scale. We show that those
arguments do not apply to topological inflation. The core of a defect starts
inflation even if it has much smaller size than the horizon and much larger
gradient energy than the potential, as long as the vacuum expectation value is
large enough ($\gtrsim0.3\mpl$) and the core is not contracting initially. This
is due to stability of false vacuum.
