The Salt Satyagraha

The Salt Satyagraha

The Salt Satyagraha movement was one of the most defining moments of The Indian freedom Struggle. It was one rare time in which the whole of the India was united in a common cause; the struggle, though non-violent, had gained such a tremendous intensity that ultimately culminated in the freedom of our country from the British. In this essay, we shall have a glimpse of how the Salt Satyagraha was initiated and how it became a national movement.

The Salt tax imposed by the British came upon like a huge blow upon the Indian mass. Salt, which had always been traditionally manufactured, had now to be purchased. The British rule stating that the sale or production of salt by anyone other than the British Government was a criminal offence, outraged the Indian mass. The fact that one has to pay money and taxes for salt while it was abundantly available in India struck the poor people of India, many of whom used to earn their living mainly by manufacturing salt.

The Salt Satyagraha also gave Mohandas Gandhi a proper platform to communicate with the Indian mass, which had been a long standing problem in the country’s freedom movement. Since all the people in India had been affected by the Salt Laws, the people no longer hesitated to come forward to join the movement, since technically; they had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

In an effort to amend the Salt Tax without breaking it, Mohandas Gandhi appealed to the Viceroy Lord Irwin on March 2^nd pleading with him to amend the law. He had also added that if his request went unheeded then, Gandhi, along with the co-workers of the Sabarmati Ashram “to disregard the provisions of the Salt Law”.

On receiving no reply to his requests Gandhi made an evening speech at The Sabarmati Ashram, to a group of more than ten thousand listeners. He had anticipated that the British would first arrest him, but then he had already chosen Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarojini Naidu, as the leaders.

The historic march commenced on the very next day, i.e. on 12^th of March. Gandhi started out with about seventy nine followers from the Sabarmati Ashram, and the group enlarged rapidly as more and more people came forward to join him in the ranks. At one point the entire procession ranged over more than two miles on the road. After the exhausting march two hundred and forty miles for twenty four days, Gandhi and his followers reached Dandi, a small seaside place on the west coast of India. The night when they arrived in Dandi was spent in fasting and prayer. Early in the next morning, Gandhi alone walked out to the sea, and picked up a handful of mud and salt mixture. That mixture was then boiled in sea water to produce that very commodity that every Indian was banned to produce – salt.

It was as if a signal was sent up through out the country, a signal that the entire nation was waiting for with bated breath. On receiving Gandhi’s clarion call, millions of people came forward to join him in that violation of that Salt Law. Soon salt was being produced illegally all over the country and almost all the Indians were buying them. Soon the British Government swooped into action. One night, when Gandhi and a few of his followers were sleeping under a mango tree, a group of heavily armed police force came suddenly and arrested Gandhi. As per the orders of Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu, Jawaharlal Nehru and the other prominent leaders of the country took over the leadership of the Salt Satyagraha.

This movement against the British was one of the finest demonstrations of defiance without violence. At the heavily protected salt depots, the volunteer groups would come; and row upon row of unarmed satyagrahis would advance towards the salt depot. The police force would then advance upon them and beat that unarmed group mercilessly with steel covered truncheons. The satyagrahis would moan with pain and collapse with broken limbs and shoulders, yet none of them even raised a hand to defend themselves from the merciless onslaught of the British.

There was another effect of the Salt Satyagraha – the launch of the civil disobedience movement. This movement called for a total boycott of all the government institutions and called for people to violate all government rules. This movement soon died down due to the arrest of the prominent leaders and the eruption of communal violence in the different parts of the country.

The Salt Satyagraha failed to achieve its objective: neither the Salt Laws were relaxed and nor were the atrocities against the Indians stopped. However the movement has its own significance; it was indeed the stepping stone to a mass revolution that would lead to our freedom from the British