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Road To Freedom

A Pinch of Salt!

On the stroke of midnight on 31 December, 1929, in Lahore, on the banks of the River Ravi, Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the tricolour and the Congress officially declared Purna Swaraj or total independence as its goal. The Congress called upon the people to observe 26 January as Independence day.
In the first week of March that same year, Gandhiji, in a letter to Viceroy Irwin conveyed his intention of breaking the much-hated salt law.
"�the whole revenue system has to be revised to make the peasant's good its primary concern. But the British system seems to be designed to crush the very life out of him. Even the salt he must use to live is so taxed as to make the burden fall heaviest on him, if only because of the heartless impartiality of its incidence�"
On 12 March after morning prayers, 78 satyagrahis left Sabarmati Ashram with Gandhiji in the lead. Their destination was the seashore at Dandi 200 miles away. Leaning on a lacquered, iron-tipped bamboo staff, one inch thick and 54 inches long, Gandhiji, then 61, walked briskly 12 miles a day. A horse accompanied the marchers in case the Mahatma needed to use it.
All along the route, people sprinkled water and threw leaves on the road to spread a carpet of green for the marchers. The national colours of green white and saffron were displayed prominently in all the villages on the way and Gandhiji stopped at each and every one of them to preach his message of non-violence and to urge the people to wear khadi and to give up the practices of untouchability and child marriage. He himself spun khadi every day for an hour even during his long march.
Gandhiji had an electrifying effect on the people he encountered on his way to Dandi. No less than three hundred headmen gave up their government jobs to express solidarity with his movement. Young men and women joined the marchers and by the time the marchers reached their destination on 15 April, their number had swelled to several thousand.
The satyagrahis spent that entire night in prayers. Early the next morning, accompanied by Sarojini Naidu, Gandhiji walked down to the sea. He had a dip in the water and then coming ashore bent down and picked up some salt from the beach. Sarojini Naidu cried out "Hail Deliverer!" and thus the man who himself had not used salt for 6 years, symbolically broke the salt law which stipulated that no one but the government had the right to make salt or gather salt from the beach thereby giving the government a monopoly on the manufacture of salt.
Following Gandhiji's example people along the coast, all over India, waded into the sea to collect sea water in a pan. The water was boiled to make salt. Volunteers sold this salt in towns and cities. The grains of salt picked up by Gandhiji were sold to the highest bidder, Dr. Kanuga, for Rs.1,600.
The police raided the Congress party headquarters in Bombay which had turned into a salt godown and arrested the volunteers who were making salt in pans on the roof.
In Tamil Nadu, Rajaji broke the salt law at Vedaranniyam. In Kerala; K. Kelappan broke the law at Payannur. The satyagrahis in Andhra set up sibirams or camps all along the route to the coast.
Satyagrahis walked all the way from land-locked Sylhet in Assam to Noakhali on the Bengal coast to make salt.
The police swung into action. Leaders were taken into custody. Those arrested included Jamnalal Bajaj, Gandhiji's sons Ramdas and Devdas, C. Rajagopalachari, Kelappan, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, B.G. Kher and K.M. Munshi.
Salt works were picketed or raided in some parts of the country.
At Wadala in Bombay, a 1500-strong mob broke the police cordon and carried away salt from a government godown. The Sanikatta Salt works in Karnataka was similarly raided. Satyagrahis protested non-violently at the Dharasan Salt Works in Gujarat. Sarojini had warned the satyagrahis that they would be beaten and urged them not to resist. "You must not even raise your hand to ward off a blow," she said.

As the satyagrahis approached the barbed wire stockade, Webb Miller, the correspondent of United Press who was covering the event reported, "Suddenly at a word of command, scores of native policemen rushed upon the advancing marchers and rained blows on their heads with their steel-shod lathis. Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whack of clubs on unprotected skulls.... Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing with fractured skulls or broken shoulders.... The survivors, without breaking rank, silently and doggedly marched on until struck down."
Satyagrahis came in wave after wave only to be struck down. Webb Miller was amazed. "Although every one knew that within a few minutes he would be beaten down, perhaps killed, I could detect no signs of wavering or fear."
They marched steadily, with heads up, without encouragement of music or cheering... The police rushed out and methodically and mechanically beat down the second column. There was no fight, no struggle; the marchers simply walked forward till struck down."
Reacting to Web Miller's eye- witness account, Louis Fisher wrote: "The British beat the Indians with batons and rifle butts. The Indians neither cringed nor complained nor retreated. That made England powerless and India invincible."
In the North West Frontier Province, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan led his band of non-violent Khudai Khidmatgars, popularly known as Red Shirts in the Civil Disobedience movement. For nearly one week Peshawar was virtually in the hands of the Red Shirts. The army was called in. To the shock and dismay of the army top brass, the soldiers of the Garhwali regiment refused to fire
on the unarmed crowd!
On May 4, Gandhiji was taken into custody underRegulation XXXV of 1827 which provided for detention without trial for an indefinite period. He was taken to Yeravada Central Jail in Poona where the jailer noted Gandhi's height as 5'5" and personal identification marks : a scar on the right thigh, a small mole on the right eyelid, and a pea-size scar below the left elbow. These identification marks would help the authorities find the prisoner should he ever escape from prison.
Of course, the prisoner had no intention of escaping. In a letter to the little children of his ashram, the prisoner wrote: "Little birds, ordinary birds cannot fly without wings. With wings, ofcourse, all can fly. But if you, without wings, will learn how to fly, then all your troubles will indeed be at an end. And I will teach you.
See, I have no wings, yet I come flying to you everyday in thought. You can also come flying to me in thought..."
Children in different parts of India both in towns and villages took out Prabhat Pheris or processions carrying the national flag and singing patriotic songs. To the police the tricolour was what a red rag is to a bull. Youngsters would run carrying the flag aloft. Their beloved Jawaharlal Nehru had declared in Lahore: "Remember once again, now that this flag is unfurled, it must not be lowered as long as a single Indian, man, woman, or child lives in India." At Bundur in Andhra Pradesh, Tota Narasaiah Naidu would not let go the flag until he fell unconscious, beaten by policemen. In Surat a group of children dressed in the national colours ran through the streets daring the police to catch them!
Ultimately the viceroy had Gandhiji released and signed a pact with him. The salient features of the pact : salt manufacture would be permitted on the coast and all prisoners would be released. Civil Disobedience would be called off and Congress would attend the next Round Table Conference in London to discuss the future of the country.
The significance of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact was not lost on the arch imperialist Winston Churchil. He felt revolted by "the nauseating and humiliating spectacle of this one-time Inner Temple lawyer, now seditious fakir, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceroy's palace, there to negotiate and to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor."
The days of submitting petitions were over. Now when an Indian leader called on the viceroy, it was to negotiate on equal terms!
After signing the pact, the Viceroy offered a cup of tea to the Mahatma, 'Thank you' said Gandhiji, taking out a little packet of salt he had brought. "I will put some of this salt into my tea to remind us of the famous Boston Tea Party."
What the Boston Tea Party was to the American War of Independence, the Dandi March was to India's struggle for independence.

Road To Freedom

A Pinch of Salt!

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