Mahatma Gandhi

by Dennis Dalton

  As soon as Gandhi started his speech, his inner anguish started flowing. He asked how, when millions and millions of people in this country were not able to feed themselves even once in a day, we satyagrahis could indulge in such excesses. How could we attain swaraj? Lakhs of huts in lakhs of villages of India were drowned in darkness because no rupees could be found for even a small oil lamp. How could we burn petromax lamps? He asked repeatedly for someone to justify these actions. But everyone was very still on hearing such grief in his voice. His words pierced our hearts. One by one, all the petromax lamps were extinguished, the meeting was in darkness except for a small lantern burning near Gandhi.77

  No single episode is remembered more vividly by the marchers themselves than this incident at Bhatgam. In one indelible moment it made them all “turn the searchlight inward,” and summon greater discipline. One of the marchers could report forty-seven years later that “The lesson [of self-discipline] made such a very strong imprint on my life,” that it gave him a calling as a Lok Sevak (servant of the people).78 Pyarelal Nayar, who was at Gandhi’s side in Bhatgam, believed that in his twenty-eight years as his personal secretary, he never witnessed an act of self-criticism to lift a campaign to a higher sense of purpose. The effect on the satyagrahis, he recalled, was searing: “If Gandhi made clear anywhere at anytime his meaning of swaraj through satyagraha then it was that night in Bhatgam.” The very next morning Gandhi sensed this impact and said, “we are now on solid moral ground because of this purification.”79

  As Gandhi’s arrival at Dandi drew near, he pressed his attack on the Raj with increasing confidence. For it was clear by the beginning of April that the movement had not only caught on, but was also assuming unprecedented proportions in arousing mass sentiment. Enormous crowds were now appearing at Gandhi’s major meetings, and the nationalist press rhapsodized over this “tremendous success, to judge only from the swelling lists of volunteers pledged to join his campaign, the impatience even of woman volunteers to be active combatants, and from the steadily increasing number of resignations by Patels and other village officials…. Gandhiji’s ideas are now spread everywhere and cannot be banished or imprisoned. And if any Satyagrahi is imprisoned, the idea *of Satyagraha becomes ten times more potent and attracts ten times more volunteers.”80

  The government, then, was in a predicament, and another nationalist newspaper expressed succinctly the growing view of the Viceroy’s dilemma:

  To arrest Gandhi is to set fire to the whole of India. Not to arrest him is to allow him to set the prairie on fire. To arrest Gandhi is to court a war. Not to arrest him is to confess defeat before the war is begun …. In either case, Government stands to lose, and Gandhi stands to gain…. That is because Gandhi’s cause is righteous and the Government’s is not.”81

  Sensitive to both the government’s difficulty and the euphoric response of his audience, Gandhi turned on the heat in his speech at Surat on April 1:

  There is no alternative but for us to do something about our trouble and sufferings and hence we have thought of this salt tax. You may say it is a godsend. It is so beastly and inhuman that through salt the Government taxes even little children and young girls…. This is an inhuman law, a Satanic law. I have not heard of such justice anywhere in the world; where it prevails, I would call it inhuman, Satanic. To bow to an empire which dispenses such justice is not dharma but adharma [immorality]. A man who prays to God every morning at dawn cannot, must not, pray for the good of such an empire. On the contrary while praying or saying the namaai he should ask God to encompass the destruction of such a Satanic empire, such an inhuman Government. To do so is dharma82

  Gandhi now felt the force that the march had summoned and the Government’s difficulty. Whereas in the hours before the march he had anticipated his speedy arrest,83 now he wrote privately to his ashram: “So great is the power of nonviolence that they do not have the courage to arrest me.”84 Publicly he claimed that the movement had become irresistible because “There is the hand of God in this struggle” and “If Rama dwells in your hearts, it is easy to shake the foundations of not one but twenty empires more powerful than this one.”85

  On April 3, the marchers reached Navsari, railhead for Dandi, and a “royal reception” greeted them; as they walked through the streets a vast procession followed to the place where Gandhi addressed “a mammoth gathering numbering over 50,000…. Never before was such a large gathering witnessed by Navsari nor had the enthusiasm of people rose [sic] to such a high pitch.” A particular phenomenon, noted by the nationalist press and in government despatches alike, was that “women assembled in thousands” to applaud Gandhi and were taking an uncommon interest in the campaign.86 Jawaharlal Nehru recalled how at this moment he watched the transformation that occurred as his skepticism melted: “Salt suddenly became a mysterious word, a word of power,” “The abounding enthusiasm of the people…spreading like a prairie fire,” and “we marvelled at the amazing knack of the man to impress the multitude.”87

  Gandhi had set April 6 as the day when the salt law would be broken. He had done this, once again, for symbolic reasons. The day marked the beginning of “National Week,” first commemorated in 1919 when Gandhi conceived of a national hartal against the Rowlatt Bills. The symbolism of this day was stressed in the nationalist press:

  On the 6th of April, 1919, India discovered her soul. A grander revelation is not far off…. The campaign which Mahatma Gandhi inaugurates on the first day of the National Week is one which has never yet been witnessed in the history of mankind. For the first time a nation is asked by its leader to win freedom by itself accepting all the suffering and sacrifice involved. Mahatma Gandhi’s success does not, therefore, merely mean the freedom of India. It will also constitute the most important contribution that any country has yet made towards the elimination of force as an arbiter between one nation and another. It is, therefore, that the eyes of all the world are centered to-day on Dandi.88

  Gandhi was now nearing Dandi: “my Hardwar” as he called it, for the march had all along been for him ayatra or spiritual pilgrimage. His physical energy had amazed all those who witnessed the performance and as he approached Dandi “Gandhiji moved so quickly it seemed he was not walking but flying.”89 And so they flew into Dandi, a full twenty-four hours ahead of schedule, at 8:30 A.M., on April 5. Gandhi used the pause characteristically, to gather suspense. Press correspondents had assembled from all over India and the world and Gandhi directed his words now at a varied audience. He noted, first, that civil disobedience would commence the next morning and underscored the meaning of that timing: “6th April has been to us, since its culmination in the Jallianwala massacre, a day of penance and purification.” This year it would be marked by him with a bath in the sea. The nation should observe a day of “prayer and fasting.” And this penance would suitably prepare them all for the campaign of civil disobedience immediately following.90

  But Gandhi was also attuned to his world audience, and he directed an appeal now to the potential force of international opinion. This began by complimenting the Government of India for its commendable “policy of complete non-interference” in the march. Gandhi interpreted this policy, however, as meaning that “the British Government, powerful though it is, is sensitive to world opinion which will not tolerate repression of extreme political agitation which civil disobedience undoubtedly is, so long as disobedience remains civil and, therefore, necessarily nonviolent.”91 Throughout the march, Gandhi had made appeals to world opinion through the media: now, he gave special attention to this audience. In a “message to America” he insisted that sympathy was welcome but not sufficient: “What is wanted is concrete expression of public opinion in favor of India’s inherent right to independence…. if we attain our end through nonviolent means India will have delivered a message for the world.”92 Finally, Gandhi summed up in a sentence his appeal to the world from Dandi: “I want world sympathy in this battle of Right against Might.”93

  As d
usk fell on Dandi on April 5, the tiny village population (460) swelled to more than 12,000, and Gandhi addressed his last prayer meeting of the march. Now he turned back to his Indian audience, and his language again became laden with the familiar symbols. Dandi, he observed, had been his destination for the last twenty-four days, but now “our real destination is no other than the temple of the goddess of swaraj. Our minds will not be at peace till we have her darshan, nor will we allow the Government any peace.” Yet Dandi did mark the place where civil disobedience would commence, and this made it “a sacred ground for us, where we should utter no untruth, commit no sin…. Dandi was chosen not by man but by God…. This is God’s grace; let us remain unmoved and watch his miracles.”94

  Many of those who watched on the shore that early morning of April 6 did indeed believe that they were witnessing a miracle. After prayers, Gandhi walked to the water and declared: “This religious war of civil disobedience should be started only after purifying ourselves by bathing in the salt water.” Even this single sentence abounds with symbolism: civil disobedience, clothed in the garb of religious warfare, becomes purified through a special rite, bathing in waters of salt. By one account, as Gandhi and the marchers entered the sea at 6:00 A.M.:

  “Thousands of people followed him and so sanctified themselves, an extraordinary sight beyond description.” Finally, at 6:30, Gandhi stooped on the shore and picked up the symbolic salt and so offered civil disobedience. The deed was done. “With this,” he said, “I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.”95 A sweeping claim to be sure, but by the end of the year, more than 60,000 Indians (by government estimate) suffered imprisonment for committing an act no more or less than this.

  There was a sense now that the movement could never be stopped, and Gandhi acknowledged from Dandi what the march had achieved. “At present,” he wrote to Mahadev Desai on April 9, “my very thoughts have grown wings and they seem to have effect even when not expressed in speech or action. That is a fact.”96 On the fact and legend of the march, on the wings of Gandhi’s creative imagination, the Indian nationalist movement soared, elevated by symbolic forces, sustained by dramatic impact. During this twenty-four day event, from its opening at Sabarmati to its denouement at Dandi, India and an international audience had been treated to vintage Gandhi, and quintessential satyagraha. As Pyarelal remarked, “After Dandi, the world knew what swaraj was all about.”97

  One could also discover the meanings of swaraj and satyagraha as well as the legend of the salt march through a novel by Raja Rao called Kanthapura. Rao wrote the story in 1937 about how Gandhi’s movement came to the fictional village of Kanthapura, brought by a young student named Moorthy who conveys to the villagers each day the progress of the salt march:

  “Now,” said Moorthy “we are out for action…. Do you know, brothers and sisters, the Mahatma has left Sabarmati on a long pilgrimage, the last pilgrimage of his life, he says, with but eighty-two of his followers, who all wear khadi and do not drink, and never tell a lie, and they go with the Mahatma to the Dandi beach to manufacture salt. Day by day we shall await the news of the Mahatma, and from day to day we shall pray for the success of his pilgrimage, and we shall pray and fast and pour strength into ourselves, so that when the real fight begins we shall follow in the wake of the Master.”

  “Meanwhile, brothers and sisters, let us get strong…. Pray, brothers, pray, for the Mahatma is on the last pilgrimage of his life, and the drums are beating, and the horns are twirling, and the very sea, where he’s going to gather and shape and bring back his salt, seems to march forward to give him the waters of Welcome.”…Moorthy told us of the pilgrim path of the Mahatma from day to day; for day after day the Congress Committee sent him information,… he would tell us of the hundred and seventy Patels [local government officials] that had resigned their jobs—a hundred and seventy mind you—and of the thirty-thousand men and women and children who had gathered at the roadside, pots and beds and all, to have the supreme vision of the Mahatma, and the Britishers will leave India, and we shall be free,…And when the Monday evening came, we knew it would be the morrow, it would be at five the next morning that the Mahatma would go out to the sea and manufacture salt and bring it home, and we could not sleep and we could not wake, and all the night we heard the sea conches cry…. And the next day the White papers told us the Mahatma had taken a handful of salt after his ablutions, and he had brought it home, and then everybody went to the sea to prepare salt, and cartloads and cartloads of it began to be brought back and distributed from house to house with music and clapping of hands…. And so day after day men go out to the sea to make salt, and day after day men are beaten back and put into prison, and yet village after village sends its women and men, and village after village grows empty, for the call of the Mahatma had sung in their hearts, and they were for the Mahatma and not for the Government.98

  Raja Rao’s fiction dramatizes what in fact interviews with dozens of Indians directly involved in the salt satyagraha affirmed: an unprecedented act of mass civil disobedience empowered millions during that Indian spring when “the call of the Mahatma had sung in their hearts.”

  The March Ends and the Movement Expands, with a View to Inclusiveness

  Gandhi attempted, as soon as the march was over, to broaden the movement to include a wider range of groups and interests. His appeal extended to different social strata throughout India during the 1930–31 civil disobedience campaign, and this is evident, first of all, from the testimony of the British officials who struggled to cope with it. In the area of Gujarat touched by the march itself, there was a highly successful mobilization of groups. On April 28, three weeks after the march had concluded and its effects were being felt throughout the Bombay Presidency, Governor Frederick Sykes cabled Irwin:

  Hope entertained in many quarters that movement will be discredited must be abandoned. On the contrary, individuals and bodies of men hitherto regarded as sane and reasonable are day by day joining movement…because belief that British connection is morally indefensible and economically intolerable is gaining strength among educated Hindus, Gujaratis mostly, but others also.99

  On the same day, Sir Purshotamas Thakurdas, a critic of Gandhi and one of the Government of India’s confidential advisers, gave the Viceroy this judgment from Bombay:

  So great is the support to Mahatma Gandhi in this movement here, that the masses here, and in fact, anywhere, will not stand anything said against him publicly.100

  A month later Irwin reported to Wedgwood Benn, Secretary of State for India in London with a summary statement on the movement:

  All thinking Indians passionately want substantial advance which will give them power to manage their own affairs. However much they may deplore the civil disobedience movement, they feel at heart that it is likely to make British opinion more elastic…. Student classes are of course ready sympathizers…. The movement thus obtains a wider measure of sympathy than many would be willing to accord to it on merits, and in Bombay the commercial classes, largely Gujarati, have openly supported and are said to be financing it.

  The masses in the towns are emotional, ignorant, prone to believe any rumors and accept any promises. The influence of Gandhi’s name though it varies in different parts is powerful…. We think every European and Indian would tell you that he was surprised at the dimensions the movement has assumed, and we should delude ourselves if we sought to underrate it. Appraisement of its constituent factors might be assessed thus:

  Communist and Revolutionary: 5 per cent

  Gandhi’s declared and sincere Congress adherents: 30 per cent

  General Nationalist sympathizers, ignorant masses, and hireling volunteers: 50 per cent

  Commercial and economic discontent: 15 per cent101

  The accuracy of Irwin’s assessments may of course be questioned. However, these two reports are succinct representations of Government of India views on the movement’s impact in its initial phase. Sykes’s alarm at the way in wh
ich the campaign had affected “sane and reasonable” people indicates the inroads that had been successfully made into moderate opinion. Irwin’s report, in direct contradiction to his estimate of the movement’s potential in early March, indicates the degree of broad-based popular support he is willing to concede the campaign, admitting that “Communist and Revolutionary” elements may constitute only 5 percent of the base, while “general Nationalist sympathizers, ignorant masses and volunteers” constitute 50 percent.

  In the same report, Irwin expresses his special concern over support gained from women as a “new and serious feature.” In his autobiography Sykes remarks on the salt satyagraha, “Most remarkable of all was the attitude of the women. Many Indian ladies of good family and high intellectual attainments volunteered to assist in picketing and salt-making. Congress has no scruples in making use of them, knowing well the embarrassment which they would cause to the authorities.”102 An official Government of India report for 1930 affirms that an “unexpected” source of assistance for the movement came from the women. “Thousands of them many being of good family and high educational attainments suddenly emerged from the seclusion of their homes and in some instances actually from purdah, in order to join Congress demonstrations and assist in picketing; and their presence on these occasions made the work the police were required to perform particularly unpleasant.”103

  In fact, as Madhu Kishwar finds in her incisive analysis, Gandhi on Women, “The salt satyagraha marked a new high watermark of women’s participation in the movement.” The reasons for this, she observes, began with the issue of the salt tax: