A Pinch of Salt Rocks An Empire

Chapter - 1

They had been walking for more than three weeks. Day after day, they had trudged over the flat, dry countryside turned brown and dusty by the hot summer sun. And now they stood on the sea shore, at the village of Dandi, with the waves of the Arabian Sea lapping the beach.
They were the 'law-breakers' and that was where they were to break the law, forbidding them to make salt or even pick it up for their use from the deposits left by the sea.
Their leader was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known all over India as Gandhiji or Mahatma Gandhi. The Dandi march was a part of the movement he called Satyagraha or the pursuit of truth.
Twenty-four years earlier, in South Africa, where he was then living, his satyagraha had forced the government to repeal the law forcing Indians in the Transvaal to register themselves and carry certificates bearing their finger prints to prove that they had the right to live in that country.
In India, he was applying the same tactics of defying the authority of the alien British Government in a peaceful, non-violent way and refusing to co-operate with it.
The British had come to India 330 years earlier, landing at the port of Surat, hardly 50 Kilometers from Dandi, where Gandhiji and his followers stood on April 5, 1930, ready to begin the struggle against them.
It was to trade that the British came, but they stayed to rule. In 1599, the East India Company was formed in London to trade with the East and in 1600 a small ship commanded by Captain Hawkins dropped anchor at Surat. A few years later the British went to the court of the Mughal Emperor, Jehangir, in Agra. The Emperor welcomed Hawkins and gave the East India Company permission to trade and to have trading depots north of Bombay.
The trade was profitable and the company prospered. When the Mughal Empire became weak in the 18th century and was on the point of breaking up, the East India Company started taking part in local politics and soon became powerful. By the early 19th century the British were ruling large portions of India. From the very beginning, there was resistance to their rule. In 1857, there was an armed uprising against the British but it was suppressed. The British Government then abolished the East India Company and took upon itself the administration of India.
Though Indians were not reconciled to foreign rule, Gandhiji and other leaders were loyal to the British during the first World War, thinking that after the war the government would be sympathetic to their demand for freedom. Instead, when the war ended, the government tried to suppress the freedom movement. In protest Gandhiji and the Indian National Congress decided to have a countrywide hartal on April 6, 1919. All over India shops were closed, people did not go to work, factories were shut and classrooms empty.
On April 13, 1919, in spite of the ban on meetings, a large and peaceful crowd collected at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. The army had been brought in to control the situation and General Dyer decided to teach the crowd a lesson. He ordered firing and several hundred people were killed or wounded.
The country was outraged and Gandhiji gave the call for non-cooperation and civil disobedience. He also asked the people to give up wearing foreign cloth and start using rough cotton khadi made of yarn spun by the charka, the wooden spinning wheel. This would not only undermine Britain's economic power ― but also give employment to the poor in the countryside.
Gandhiji traveled widely, visiting villages, towns and cities. Everywhere crowds gathered to see him and hear him. His simplicity, austerity and saintly life won him love and admiration.
He told the people that, if India was to win freedom, they would have to give up using foreign cloth. At every meeting, Gandhiji would ask people to take off articles made of foreign cloth that they were wearing and make a bonfire of these. Many would obey him, taking off their shirts, trousers, ties and hats and throwing them in a heap at his feat. They would then set the pile ablaze.
Those were stirring times. All over India piles of foreign cloth were burnt and people swore to wear khadi. Thousands of people were arrested and meetings and processions broken up by force. But not all the satyagrahis had learnt the rules of peaceful civil disobedience and non-cooperation. Violence broke out. To Gandhiji, non-violence was all important and he called off the agitation.
Soon afterwards, he was arrested and sentenced to six years' simple imprisonment. But, because of ill health, he was released before the end of the term. While in jail, Gandhiji had time to work out his future programme. He realized that for freedom to be worthwhile it was necessary to abolish poverty and social evils.
He outlined a programme to reconstruct the village economy, giving employment to all. For this, he thought it necessary to restore hand spinning and hand weaving in the villages. He wanted the abolition of the caste system and untouchability, removal of the disabilities of women, ending of social evils like child marriage and elimination of insanitary conditions.
He also realized that the British were trying to divide the people on communal lines and decided to work for Hindu-Muslim unity.
While Gandhiji was busy with these reforms, younger leaders like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru found the pace of progress towards independence too slow. Gandhiji agreed with them and said, "Unless India has Dominion Status by December 31, 1929, I must declare myself an Independence-wallah.'
Dominion Status meant that India would have self-government like Australia and Canada without severing her links with Britain.
Though Gandhiji held no office in the Indian National Congress, the party fighting for India's freedom, its leaders followed his advice and guidance. On December 31, 1929, the Congress declared that Dominion Status was not enough. Nothing less than 'Purna Swaraj' complete independence, would  do. They decided that January 26 would be celebrated as Purna Swaraj Day.
On January 26, 1930, public meetings were held all over the country. A resolution drafted by Gandhiji was read. It said:
"We believe that it is the right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life...We recognize, however, that the most effective way of gaining our freedom is not through violence. We will, therefore, prepare ourselves by withdrawing as far as we can all voluntary association from the British Government and will prepare for civil disobedience, including non-payment of taxes. We are convinced that, if we can but withdraw our voluntary help and stop payment of taxes without doing violence even under provocation, the end of this inhuman rule is assured."
Gandhiji retired to his ashram by the Sabarmati river near Ahmedabad to plan a campaign that would make India free. He knew, and everyone else knew, that he would be directing the coming civil disobedience movement. He wanted the people to rise against the government but, at the same time, remain non-violent.
That was not easy. The people were tired of British rule and there was violence in the air. A terrorist exploded a bomb under the train in which the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, was returning to Delhi. The Viceroy was not hurt, but it showed the mood of the people. Gandhiji condemned the attack and requested the people to be non-violent and follow his constructive programme.
Rabindranath Tagore, the poet, visited Gandhiji at the Sabarmati ashram and asked him what he was planning for the country. Gandhiji could only say, "I am thinking night and day, but I do not see any light coming out of the surrounding darkness." He had to find an issue which would rouse everyone, one which would make the evil and injustice of the government clear to everyone.
For six long weeks he thought over it and then he heard his 'inner voice' telling him to defy the salt law.
This was a stroke of genius. Gandhiji himself had no use for salt - he had given it up a few years earlier. But, by basing the campaign for independence on this issue, he made it easy for the people of not only this country but of all countries of the world to understand the justness of his cause and the injustice of British rule.
But the Viceroy scoffed at "Mr. Gandhi's crazy scheme of upsetting the government with a pinch of salt."