A hundred years before Gandhi, the liberal reformer Rammohan Roy had alerted the British Parliament to the vital importance of salt in the daily lives of the poor. In Bengal, the salt trade was controlled by the East India Company, which used its monopoly to malevolent effect, such that the commodity was four times as expensive as in England. The ‘dearth of salt’, wrote Roy, is ‘felt by the whole community’, with ‘poorer peasants’ in particular ‘ready to surrender everything else in order to procure a small proportion of this article’. Thus, ‘if salt were rendered cheaper and better, it must greatly promote the common comforts of the people’.17
That the state monopoly on salt was unpopular was known to the more sensitive members of the ruling race. In 1902, the Liberal politician Charles Dilke said the salt tax of the Government of India was ‘probably one of the worst ever levied in the civilized world’.18 Four years later, a young district officer in the Punjab called the monopoly ‘thoroughly iniquitous’. When peasants were caught by the police extracting salt from the saline soils of their own property, they were brought before this officer, who later wrote to his mother: ‘I had to convict, but I hated it.’19 In between these two statements, Gandhi, then in South Africa, had himself written that it was ‘a great shame’ that the British taxed salt in India, and demanded that ‘the tax should be immediately abolished’.20
In 1919, Gandhi had shelved the issue of salt in favour of a movement against the Rowlatt Act. Now, eleven years later, he had chosen to make it the centrepiece of a new countrywide movement against the colonial government. On 2 March, he wrote to the viceroy again, sending the letter through a young English Quaker named Reginald Reynolds. Gandhi gave Irwin advance warning of civil disobedience. While he had ‘the privilege of claiming many Englishmen as dearest friends’, remarked Gandhi, he regarded British rule as ‘a curse’, for, among other reasons, the ‘terrific pressure of land revenue’, the destruction of hand-spinning and other artisanal industries, and the absurdly high official salaries, with the viceroy himself paid more than five thousand times the average Indian income (by contrast, the British prime minister was paid only ninety times the average income).
Having spelt out the complaint, Gandhi then outlined the means of redressal. ‘If you cannot see your way to deal with these evils, and my letter makes no appeal to your heart,’ wrote Gandhi to the viceroy, then he would ‘proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can take, to disregard the provisions of the salt laws. I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man’s standpoint.’21
Irwin did not reply to Gandhi’s letter directly. He sent a two-sentence answer through his private secretary, conveying the viceroy’s regret that ‘you contemplate a course of action which is clearly bound to involve violation of the law and danger to the public peace’.22
The viceroy’s curt response seems to have been based on a note prepared for him by one of his officials. This argued that ‘salt does not appear, at first sight, to be a very promising field in which to inaugurate a campaign for the withholding of taxes….The most that would happen would be that relatively small quantities of bad salt would be sporadically produced….At the worst it is unlikely that the loss of revenue would be really serious.’
The note complacently recalled that ‘the agitation, stirred up by and among the politically-minded in regard to the raising of the Salt Duty in Lord Reading’s time, evoked singularly little response among the masses, who probably realize that there is a salt tax, and in normal circumstances neither feel nor resent its existence’.23
The viceroy’s scepticism about a popular movement based on salt was shared by more than one Congress leader. On 15 February, when the CWC met at Ahmedabad, Motilal Nehru dismissed a campaign around salt as ‘quixotic’. Jamnalal Bajaj suggested that instead of protesting against the salt tax, Gandhi should march—peacefully of course—towards the viceroy’s house in New Delhi.24
The CWC meeting started at 9 a.m. on the 15th, and at 4 p.m. a statement was issued to the press announcing a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience ‘for the purpose of achieving Purna Swaraj’. The statement did not mention the specific forms of protest, but this was indeed discussed and decided upon. After the meeting ended, Sarojini Naidu wrote to her daughter: ‘So the final decision is taken and salt is to be the issue! But no one seems particularly enthusiastic and everyone is more than a little doubtful how things will pan out.’25
Elegant and well bred, Mrs Naidu was by no means a natural satyagrahi. One who was, Vallabhbhai Patel, was ready and willing to join the fight. After the CWC meeting he toured Gujarat, telling village audiences that a dharmayudh, a battle of righteousness, of good against evil, ‘unprecedented in the history of the world will commence within a few days, and its beginning will be made in Gujarat. Those who are afraid of death should go on a pilgrimage and those who possess riches should go to foreign countries. Those who are true Gujaratis should not sit behind closed doors.’
In his speeches, Patel asked lawyers not to attend court, and students to stay away from government schools. Attacking the salt and land laws, he sarcastically commented that ‘only the air remained to be taxed’ by the government.26
V
On 7 March, Vallabhbhai Patel was arrested and sentenced to three months rigorous imprisonment for a speech in Borsad taluka in defiance of prohibitory orders. Reports of the arrest created a ‘great sensation’ in Ahmedabad. The textile mills in the city all closed down on the instructions of Anasuya Sarabhai, the president of the labour union.27 On the evening of Saturday, 8 March, Gandhi addressed a massive meeting in the city, attended by about 60,000 people, including many women. He praised Vallabhbhai Patel, whose ‘services to Gujarat, and more particularly to this city, exceed mine a thousand times’. If the government had ‘arrested and removed one Vallabhbhai’, he remarked, ‘you, the men and women of Ahmedabad, should take his place and work as his representatives’. His own aim was ‘to get the Salt Tax abolished. That is for me one step, the first step, towards full freedom.’28
Gandhi had now decided to break the salt laws. There were inland salt deposits near the town of Badalpur. But these were just a few days walk from Ahmedabad, whereas Gandhi wanted this to be a long march, or pilgrimage perhaps, where his leisurely progress would enthuse people along the way and attract wider publicity too. He finally decided to break the law at Dandi, a village by the sea where the retreating tide left drying pools of salt water.29
Gandhi’s choice was very likely influenced by the last of his satyagrahas in South Africa. There, Indians were prohibited from crossing provincial boundaries without explicit permission. In November 1913, Gandhi had led several thousand marchers across the border between Natal and the Transvaal, to draw attention to this particular law and to other forms of discrimination against Indians.30 Now, sixteen and a half years later, he would march to the sea to defy the salt law, thus bringing into sharp focus the more general hurt and injustice that Indians were subjected to under British rule.
Through his Gujarati paper, Gandhi issued instructions for the villages that would host them on the way. He asked them to provide the ‘simplest possible’ food, with ‘no oil, spices and chillies’, and, since the marchers were carrying their own bedding, merely ‘a clean place to rest in’. He also asked them to compile information on the religious composition of their village, the number of ‘untouchables’, the number of spinning wheels, the number of cows and buffaloes, and its educational facilities.31
On 11 March, the night before the march was to begin, ‘there was great excitement all over Ahmedabad city’. A crowd of people came to the ashram, many staying on the riverbank all through the night.32 Gandhi wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru: ‘It is nearing 10 p.m. now. The air is thick with the rumour that I shall be arrested during the night.’ To the Bengali khadi worker Satis Chandra Dasgupta, he wrote in a similar vein: ‘This may be my last letter—before my arrest at any rate. Tomor
row I feel they are bound to arrest me.’33
The police did not come to the Sabarmati Ashram that night. Gandhi awoke on 12 March a free man. He said his prayers, visited the ailing and elderly in the ashram, and gathered his walking companions around him. The group of seventy-eight included Manilal Gandhi from South Africa, and representatives from almost all parts of India. There were thirty-one marchers from Gujarat, thirteen from Maharashtra, lesser numbers from the United Provinces, Kerala, Punjab and Sindh, with Tamilnad, Andhra, Karnataka, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa sending one man apiece. The diversity was social as well as geographical, for among the chosen marchers were many students and khadi workers, several ‘untouchables’, a few Muslims and one Christian.34
Gandhi had got hundreds of requests from people wanting to join his party in the Salt March, but he chose to restrict himself to bona fide ashramites only. Women in the ashram were keen to come too, but Gandhi restricted the group to men alone.35 This was perhaps because in the India of the 1930s, mixed groups of men and women were rare in public, and would cause consternation among the orthodox.
At exactly 6.30 a.m. on 12 March, Gandhi and his companions walked out of the ashram and turned left. Outside the ashram, the line of admirers stretched all the way to Ellis Bridge. ‘Men and women, boys and girls, millionaires and mill-workers had come to see the beginnings of Gandhi’s march and to be part of it for at least some distance.’ The road was festooned with flags and buntings. As Gandhi walked past the line of people on either side of the road, he was showered with greetings, salutations, flowers, and even a large number of rupee notes.36
As the marchers left the city, the crowd behind them began to sag and thin. At ten-thirty, after three hours of walking, they reached their first stop, the village of Aslali, whose residents welcomed them with flags, flowers and the blowing of trumpets.
VI
Gandhi’s first speech on the march was at Aslali. ‘I can understand there being a tax on such things as the hookah, bidis and liquor,’ he remarked. ‘And if I were an emperor, I would levy with your permission a tax of one pie on every bidi….But should one levy a tax on salt?’37
On the second day, the 13th, the marchers halted at the village of Baweja. When he was handed over the information he had asked for on the hamlet, Gandhi told the villagers that he ‘was pained to read it. It is strange that a place so near Ahmedabad has zeroes against the columns for consumption of khadi, the number of habitual khadi-wearers and spinning-wheels at work.’ In the next village, Navagam, there was but one khadi wearer and one spinning wheel at work, this in a population of close to a thousand.38
On the third day, Gandhi walked nine miles. He was, a reporter accompanying the party noted, ‘suffering from rheumatism which became rather acute last night. He has been walking with great strain. For the major portion of this morning’s tramp Mahatmaji had to lean on the shoulders of two boys.’ A pony followed in case Gandhi wanted to use it; but he refused, despite repeated pleas, to ride on the animal.
The next morning, Gandhi seems to have recovered his strength, since he ‘marched on without stopping for a moment’. A press car followed the marchers. The journalists were chastised by onlookers, who asked whether they were not ashamed of themselves when the sixty-one-year-old Gandhi and his colleagues were walking and thus making the ground sacred under their feet. The scribes were compelled to get out of their car and walk.
That night, Gandhi’s party stopped at Dabhan, near the town of Nadiad. They had covered thirty-seven miles in the first four days of the march.39
As he walked towards the sea, Gandhi was attracting ever larger crowds. At Dabhan, he addressed a meeting held in the bed of a dry tank, with some 10,000 people in attendance. Among them were seven headmen, who presented their resignations to Gandhi as a mark of their own non-cooperation with the government. From Dabhan, Gandhi proceeded to Nadiad, where he addressed an even larger meeting, in the compound of a local religious sect. The crowd was estimated as being in excess of 40,000. People sat on the ground, and on ramparts of buildings and on trees.
Summing up the March so far, the Bombay Chronicle’s reporter observed:
Indescribable scenes of enthusiasm marked the progress of the march of the Swaraj Army on this fourth day….The rich and the poor, millionaires and mazurs [workers], ‘caste’ Hindus and so-called untouchables, one and all, vied with one another in honouring India’s great liberator….‘How can I have the “Darshan” of Bapuji’ was the only anxiety of everybody. All castes, creeds, religions and interests were merged into one irresistible wave of patriotism. All appeared a perfect Gandhi Raj. The authority of Government seemed to be almost non-existent….40
The party reached Anand on the 16th. The next day was Monday, Gandhi’s designated day of silence, and also now of rest. As he wrote to Mira on the 17th: ‘Today the fatigue of the past five days made me sleep five times during the day.’41
From Anand, the marchers proceeded to Ras, the village where Vallabhbhai Patel had been arrested. Here, Gandhi asked all students over fifteen, and all teachers, to join the movement. As he put it: ‘Wherever revolutions have taken place, that is, in Japan, China, Egypt, Italy, Ireland and in England, students and teachers have played a prominent role.’42
On the 19th night, the marchers crossed the river Mahi to enter Broach district. A boat had been arranged for Gandhi, but many of the others crossed on foot. The water was knee-deep, making it a ‘thrilling experience to the youths accompanying’ him. They slept on the other bank, and got up at dawn for prayers.
Gandhi had been on the road for a full week now. On 19 March, Jawaharlal Nehru joined the marchers. He spent the 20th morning with Gandhi, before carrying on to Baroda and Ahmedabad by car, taking with him articles written on the march by Gandhi in Gujarati and English, to be set into type at the ashram.43
In Gandhi’s absence, the ashram was kept going by the women, supervised by Mira. They tended the vegetable garden, swept and cleansed the rooms and courtyards, and gathered water from the well. One of the few men in the ashram was Mahadev Desai, left behind to edit Young India, answer letters coming in from all over India and the world, and recruit students for the movement. When a reporter dropped in to see him, Mahadev was at his twice daily exercise with the charkha.44
Back on the march—at a village named Dehwan, Gandhi was greeted by a 105-year-old woman, who put a red tilak on his forehead and told him to return only after he had obtained swaraj. The next night the party camped in a grove of banyan and mango trees. Twelve marchers had fallen ill ‘due to bad cooking arrangements’. Gandhi told them to proceed to Broach town to rest and recover, and then rejoin the march. His own stomach was clearly strong enough to withstand the village water and food.45
On the 23rd, the marchers reached a large village named Amod, whose roads were ‘dusty’, her houses ‘old and dilapidated’. But now there was ‘new life in the tortuous dingy lanes, new cheer on the faces of men and women who crowded in front of their houses to see Mahatmaji and his band to pass’.46
Two socialist activists had come down from Bombay to meet Gandhi at Amod. One, the feminist Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, hoped to persuade him that women must be encouraged to become satyagrahis and court arrest. Gandhi answered that ‘if impatient sisters will be a little patient, they will find ample scope for their zeal and sacrifice in the national struggle for freedom’.47
The second visitor was the trade unionist Yusuf Meherally. Meherally asked Gandhi how Muslims could be attracted to the Congress and thus ‘protected from the pernicious propaganda of communalists’. Gandhi answered: ‘The best way to increase Muslim interest in the Congress is for Congressmen to serve them. Convince them that the Congress is as much theirs as anybody else’s. My present programme—the breaking of the salt laws—should appeal to all the communities in India, for it affects them all alike.’48
On the 25th, Kasturba motored down from
Ahmedabad, to check on her husband and his health. He was fine, but some others were not. The number of invalids in the camp had risen to eighteen. Gandhi advised those still standing—or walking—to observe the rules of hygiene, to drink lots of hot water, and ‘above all, to have firm faith in God that he might give them strength to reach Dandi safely’.49
Reporting on the march thus far, a journalist with the Free Press of India remarked that the popular response in the towns and villages they had passed was ‘phenomenal’. All along the route, village headmen and petty officials had submitted copies of their resignation letters to Gandhi. In Ahmedabad, Kaira and Broach districts, ‘almost every house [was] giving one head for [the] country’s cause’. In this respect, Gandhi himself ‘beats all records by allowing all adults in his family to enrol’ for the satyagraha. With him on the march were his son Manilal and his grandson Kantilal. Ramdas and Devadas were expected to join soon, the latter with a group of Muslim students from Jamia Millia.50
On the evening of Friday, 28 March, Gandhi crossed into Surat district, using a specially constructed wooden bridge over the river Kim. He camped that night in a forest. The next morning, Gandhi marched on to a village named Esthan, where ‘32 men and 7 women of the untouchable class’ came to him ‘and took the vow to give up drink’.51
On Sunday, the 30th, Gandhi halted at a village named Bhatgam. The next day was a day of rest and silence. Ahead lay the city of Surat (where the East India Company had established one of its earliest factories), the town of Navsari (a stronghold of the Parsi community) and the seaside village of Dandi, where, if all went to plan, Gandhi would break the salt laws in a week’s time.
It was now two and a half weeks since Gandhi had left his ashram in Ahmedabad. The police reported that while Gandhi was ‘fatigued’ at the end of each day’s march, he continued to be ‘mentally vigorous’.52
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