Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  We are very weak, easily tempted. There are many lapses to our debit… Even today some were discovered…. In the light of these discoveries, what right had I to write to the Viceroy the letter in which I have severely criticized his salary which is more than 5,000 times over average income?…

  We are marching in the name of God. We profess to act on behalf of the hungry, the naked, and the unemployed… No labourer would carry such a load on his head. We rightly object to begar (forced labour). But what was this if not begar? Remember that in Swaraj we would expect one drawn from the so-called lower class to preside over India’s destiny.

  Even the intelligence officer taking down the remarks noted that the atmosphere became ‘electric’.19

  An ‘unlawful deed’ is multiplied. By now Sykes, the Bombay governor, wanted to arrest Gandhi, as did Alfred Master and Master’s superior in Ahmedabad, Joseph Garrett, but Irwin and his advisers hesitated. They had been informed that Gandhi’s blood pressure was ‘dangerous’ and his heart ‘none too good’ and that with the physical and mental load he was carrying he could die before reaching Dandi.20

  Also, some of his Indian friends, including, it seems, Vithalbhai Patel, the Central Assembly president, had told Irwin that the salt march, more humorous than dangerous, was bound to invite ridicule. Arresting Gandhi, on the other hand, would not only glorify him; it could trigger widespread unrest.

  So on 5 April, twenty-four days after leaving the ashram, Gandhi and his army reached Dandi without being arrested. Admitting that he had been ‘wholly unprepared for this exemplary non-interference’ from the government, Gandhi credited the policy to ‘world opinion which will not tolerate repression’ even of ‘extreme political agitation’ when that agitation remained nonviolent. But he did not think that ‘actual breach of the salt laws’ would be tolerated by the British.21

  Journalists from India and beyond had gathered in Dandi. For them Gandhi wrote out a crisp sentence: ‘I want world sympathy in this battle of Right against Might.’

  Early next morning, on the first day of National Week, Gandhi bathed in the ocean, stepped up to where the salt lay, scooped some of it up with his fingers, straightened himself, and showed what he had collected to the multitude around him. It was neither a large quantity nor very pure—the Raj’s police had done its best to clear the spot of clean salt.

  Yet the ‘unlawful deed’ had been done. Sarojini Naidu, who was present, addressed him as ‘Law Breaker’. A satyagraha had been executed, and in the days and weeks that followed, in one form or another, hundreds of thousands emulated it across India. The response was even larger than what Gandhi had hoped for. As Jawaharlal would later put it, ‘It seemed as though a spring had been suddenly released.’22

  The restraint that Gandhi had imposed on himself and his associates for six years—the retreat into ashrams, the focus on constructive work and on the evil of untouchability—had contributed to the power of the release. After the long self-suppression, satyagraha spread like ‘prairie fire’ (to use the second metaphor that Jawaharlal employed23) from Gandhi and his marchers to India as a whole.

  In hundreds of places across India, salt was illegally made, or carried, or sold, or bought. Often the action was en masse. In south Kheda’s coastal village of Badalpur, around 20,000 people illegally picked up salt on 13 April, under a full moon. By mid-June there were resignations in over half of Kheda’s villages: the district had de-recognized the Raj.

  Bengal witnessed a ‘spectacular’ march,24 and in the south Rajagopalachari led an army of 100 carefully selected satyagrahis on a 145-mile trek to Vedaranyam on the Bay of Bengal. Those providing food or accommodation to the marchers were harassed and in several cases imprisoned, but the populace supported C.R. On 30 April his marchers were able to defy the law, make salt and invite arrest. The officer who had tried to suppress the Vedaranyam march, J. A. Thorne, reported: ‘If there ever existed a fervid sense of devotion to the Government, it is now defunct.’25

  A bigger eruption occurred at India’s opposite end, in the far North-West. Offended by the arrest on 23 April of their beloved leader, Ghaffar Khan, hundreds of Khudai Khidmatgars protested in Peshawar, standing up to machine guns, horses and lathis. Ordered to open fire at a crowd of unarmed Pakhtuns in Peshawar’s Kissa Khwani Bazar, Indian soldiers of the Raj’s Garhwal Rifles disobeyed the order, staging their nonviolent revolt. For five days Peshawar belonged to the Khidmatagars, not to the British.

  The Raj’s response. Admitting ‘surprise’ at ‘the dimensions’ of the movement,26 Irwin and his officers curbed the press, banned Young India and Navajivan, banned the Working Committee and other Congress-affiliated bodies, and decided to rule through ordinances, bypassing the Central Assembly where Indian members, whether Swarajist or liberal, were increasingly sympathetic to the disobedience.

  Still leaving Gandhi and his band alone, the British imprisoned many elsewhere while also using physical force to recover illegal salt. Beatings were judged cheaper and more effective than jail terms. ‘Salt in the hands of satyagrahis represents the honour of the nation,’ Gandhi replied. ‘It cannot be yielded up except to force that will break the hand to pieces’ (Young India, 10 Apr. 1930).

  Another British tactic was to remove salt from expected sites of attack. Left free in Dandi but denied salt to collect, the original marchers felt frustrated. Some were permitted to go elsewhere to join or ignite defiance, but the majority remained around Gandhi, whose answer to the lull in Dandi was two-fold.

  Women come forward. Firstly, he permitted women to join the struggle. As Sykes, the Bombay governor bearing the brunt of the Salt March, acknowledged to the Viceroy, Gandhi’s meetings were drawing more and more women:

  There is no doubt that Gandhi has a great emotional hold as evidenced by the numerical support of his demonstrations and the popular enthusiasm, largely among the younger generation and increasingly amongst women and girls, which has been more than was expected.27

  In an article that appeared in Navajivan on 6 April, and in Young India four days later, Gandhi called ‘the impatience of some sisters to join the good fight’ a ‘healthy sign’ and added oft-to-be-quoted sentences about women and nonviolent action:

  To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman… If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage?… If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman (Young India 10 April 1930; 49: 57-9).

  Women, Gandhi said, could picket sales of liquor and foreign cloth. The idea was enthusiastically accepted at two meetings of women, one held at Dandi on 13 April and the other in Vijalpur on 16 April. Because of hurdles placed by the government, many women had to walk twelve miles to attend the Dandi gathering. Kasturba was present at these meetings, as also Karnataka’s Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya (her husband was Sarojini Naidu’s brother) and Gujarat’s Hansa Mehta (a Hindu), Mithu Petit (a Zoroastrian) and Amina Tyabji (a Muslim).

  On 27 April a letter went to the Viceroy, signed by twenty-eight women (Hindus, Muslims and Parsis), expressing opposition to the sale of liquor and foreign cloth. However, it was Gandhi who had drafted the letter. Among the signatories were the wife and sister of Ambalal Sarabhai, Maganlal’s widow, and Mahadev Desai’s wife.

  Raiding a salt depot. Conscious of the lull felt by the marchers, Gandhi scouted the area around Dandi (not hesitating to use a car for the purpose) and came up with his second riposte: a raid on three great salt heaps in a government depot in Dharasana, about twenty-five miles south of Dandi. Towards the end of April he announced at meetings with journalists that he would lead the raid on the depot.

  By this time thousands had been arrested across the land, including Jawaharlal, Jamnalal Bajaj, Ravishankar Vyas, Darbar Gopaldas and Mahadev Desai, and two of Gandhi’s sons, Ramdas, arrested not far from Dandi, and Devadas, who was ta
ken in Delhi for selling contraband salt. In addition, hundreds had been beaten because they did not let go of the salt in their hands. Peshawar had erupted, and C.R. and his 100 were closing in on Vedaranyam.

  The declaration of a raid by Gandhi was reported in Indian, British and American newspapers, and Irwin was bound to arrest the rebel-in-chief. Still, Gandhi wanted to inform the Viceroy directly of his intention. In an improvised hut in Karadi, where he was camping, five miles east of Dandi, Gandhi worked on a letter to Irwin until late on the night of 4 May. Unless the salt tax was removed and private salt-making allowed, he and his companions, Gandhi wrote, would ‘set out for Dharasana’ and ‘demand possession of the Salt Works’(49: 260-3).

  But Irwin was not waiting for a letter. About forty minutes after midnight, three officers (two British and an Indian), accompanied by between twenty and thirty rifle-carrying Indian policemen, entered the camp, walked quietly past marchers sleeping under stars and mango trees, and stepped inside Gandhi’s hut. By now sound asleep, with a marcher and a woman visitor sleeping on the floor on either side of his bedstead, Gandhi was woken up by lights flashed into his face.

  ‘Do you want me?’ Gandhi asked, even though he knew the answer. In response to another question, he was informed that his arrest was occurring under Regulation 25 of 1827, which authorized arrest without a trial. A new speech by him from the dock was not what the Raj wanted.

  By this time everybody was up in Karadi but prevented by the police from reaching close to Gandhi, who instructed grandson Kanti to prepare a bedroll he could take, and Valji Desai to send to Young India the nearly-completed letter for Irwin.

  ‘May I wash and brush my teeth?’ Gandhi asked the Raj’s officers. He could but should be quick, was the answer. In a few minutes Gandhi was ready, having also picked up a couple of taklis and a bundle of cotton slivers. As Tom Weber, the Salt March’s Australian researcher, puts it, it was ‘a cool and organized performance for an old man who had had less than two hours’ sleep’.28

  Obtaining the officers’ permission, Gandhi asked Pandit Khare to sing Vaishnava Jana, the bhajan with which the march had commenced. With head bowed and eyes closed the prisoner heard the song. Then he was removed. Fifty-eight years later, one of the Karadi men present at the arrest would break down while describing the scene .29

  The marchers had treasured their time with Gandhi, feeling that ‘they were something special’ to him. ‘I felt like a son to him’ or ‘He was like a father to me’ would be general memories, but there was also a feeling of being individually needed by Gandhi, e.g. to take care of his correspondence if Pyarelal was not around, or to assist if Gandhi had a problem with spinning.30

  Driven in a lorry to a level-crossing a few miles away, Gandhi was transferred there, in darkness, to the Frontier Mail, which made an unscheduled stop on its long journey from the North-West Frontier to Bombay. Some hours later, at 6.40 in the morning of 5 May, the Frontier Mail made another unscheduled halt north of Bombay, just short of Borivli.

  Swiftly and quietly, Gandhi was removed to a Buick and driven all the way to Yeravda jail in Poona, a journey of 125 miles, but not before being greeted by two American journalists who had correctly guessed that the Buick and the British soldiers they had noticed around the rail track north of Borivli were meant for Gandhi. He recognized the journalists and gave them, on being asked, a short message for Americans: they should ‘study the issues closely and judge them on their merits’.31

  A doctor accompanied the police party that took Gandhi to Yeravda, where goat’s milk was made available for him, and he was allowed to spin and use a sewing machine as well. He expressed appreciation, but others could not help thinking that Gandhi had been arrested under cover of darkness by rulers who feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet.

  Marchers arrested. As had been arranged, the Muslim jurist, Abbas Tyabji, who was seventy-five and owned a flowing snow-white beard, took over the leadership of the marchers, who were joined also by Jugatram Dave. On the morning of 12 May, after being blessed by Kasturba and Mrs Tyabji, the marchers set off for the Dharasana salt depot. After they had walked a few minutes, several hundred policemen surrounded the marchers and ordered them to turn back. Though some thought that refusal could invite fire, all shouted that they were not turning back.

  They were arrested and sentenced: Tyabji for six months’ simple, Dave for six months’ rigorous, and the rest for three months, except for four adjudged to be minor, who were cautioned and let off, and who promptly joined another party planning to raid Dharasana.

  Here the salt heaps were successfully defended by a cordon of ditches and barbed wires and by twenty-six rifle-holding soldiers and about 400 policemen, commanded by six British officers. On 21 May Sarojini Naidu, Manilal Gandhi, Imam Bawazeer and Pyarelal led around 2,500 satyagrahis in an attack that fetched headlines across the world even if no salt was collected.

  Successive columns wading through ditches and trying to reach the barbed wires were attacked with iron-tipped lathis. Scores were brutally hit in the head and shoulders but not one raised a hand against the police. The ground where they fell was soon blood-soaked. So were the blankets in which first-aid satyagrahi teams removed the injured to a ‘hospital’ tent nearby.

  World learns of Dharasana. Present at the scene and watching, an American correspondent, Webb Miller of the United Press, sent a graphic report that created a worldwide sensation:

  Slowly and in silence the throng commenced the half-mile march to the salt deposits. A few carried ropes for lassoing the barbed-wire stockade… As the throng drew near the salt pans they commenced chanting the revolutionary slogan, Inquilab Zindabad (Long Live the Revolution)…

  Suddenly, at a word of command, scores of native police rushed upon the advancing marchers and rained blows on their heads with their steel-shod lathis. Not one of the marchers raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like nine-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls…

  Then another column formed… They marched steadily with heads up… The police rushed out and methodically and mechanically beat down the second column… The blankets used as stretchers were sodden with blood…

  The Gandhi men altered their tactics, marched up in groups of twenty-five and sat on the ground near the salt pans, making no effort to draw nearer… Finally the police became enraged by the non-resistance… They commenced savagely kicking the seated men in the abdomen and testicles…32

  Beating was still preferred to jailing, but several were arrested, including Naidu, Manilal, Imam Bawazeer and Pyarelal. Turning up at Dharasana, Vithalbhai Patel, who had seen the logic of events and resigned his presidency of the Central Assembly, declared:

  All hope of reconciling India with the British Empire is lost for ever… I cannot understand how any government that calls itself civilized could deal as savagely and brutally with nonviolent, unresisting men as the British have this morning.

  Vithalbhai’s comment, too, was sent out to the world by Miller. Little salt was captured in Dharasana, but, as J.C. Kumarappa claimed in Young India (29 May), ‘Our primary object was to show the world at large the fangs and claws of the Government in all its ugliness and ferocity. In this we have succeeded beyond measure.’33 A Christian from the Tamil country, Kumarappa was a Columbia-trained economist who had recently joined the Gujarat Vidyapith as a professor.

  Smaller raids and beatings continued for a few more days, and a Gujarat Congress report would claim that in all 2,699 volunteers were sent into the field, 1,333 wounded, and four died of injuries.

  Sense of independence. A bigger raid took place in Bombay city on 1 June, targeting salt pans in Wadala. Around 15,000 assembled in support, and a number, including women and children, ‘splashed through slime and mud to reach the salt pans’.34 This time a large quantity of salt was collected. There were lathi charges on the crowd, the infantry too was called, and numerous arrests made, but Bombay was
experiencing a sense of independence.

  Visiting the city, the British journalist and Labour Party leader, H.N. Brailsford, wrote of the Congress’s boycotts, marches and rallies:

  More sober and orderly meetings I never saw… The speeches were certainly what lawyers call ‘seditious’, but they were never incitements to disorder. Invariably they preached nonviolence… When the speakers talked, the more devoted members of the audience, men as well as women, would take out the little hand-spindle, the takli, and twist it placidly and indefatigably as they listened.35

  In Delhi, Harry Haig, home secretary to the Government of India, privately conceded that the Congress seemed to run the streets of Bombay, noting that the numbers and discipline involved in Congress marches and ‘the brushing aside’ of police control of traffic ‘have combined to produce a vivid impression of the power and success of the Congress movement’.36

  Elsewhere, too, the Raj’s prestige slipped, if not as dramatically. It slipped despite bans on several units of the Congress, despite large-scale arrests, and despite ten ordinances that Irwin promulgated between mid-April and mid-December, exercising an ‘arbitrary rule… wielded by no previous Viceroy’.37

  When Jawaharlal was arrested, his father became acting president of the Congress. When, in June, he too was arrested, Motilal Nehru named Vallabhbhai Patel, whose release came at the end of June, to the chair. By this time even Malaviya, always wary of confrontation, had resigned from the Central Assembly. On his request, Vallabhbhai nominated Malaviya to the Congress’s illegal Working Committee.

  Patel also asked ‘every house in the country to be the office of the Congress committee, and every individual to be the Congress in himself’.38 At the end of July, Vallabhbhai, Malaviya, and several others were arrested in Bombay for refusing an order to disperse. Released but rearrested in December 1930, Patel named Rajendra Prasad to succeed him as acting Congress president.