Explain the importance of salt march of gandhi ji as a symbol to unite the nation
Answers
Sachin Bandi answer is very good.
Gandhiji was very intelligent in understanding the masses and he had super-human leadership qualities where he could communicate easily for a massive illiterate nation of diverse religions, beliefs, languages whose citizens were under 1000 years of perennial and perpetual slavery.
He has always connected his political moment to the most common activities of the common man, such that the defiance is replicable by common males and females, the defiance act is well understood by international media particularly with a single photo, the defiance act is understood without any oral explanation to commoners. You can find these three qualities in all his political moments. This connects the commoners to be with the leader, replicate what the leader does, create media impact and as well as convey other groups and induct into defiance without much of verbal communique. Now, just imagine all this when electricity was not available across India, not much of media except for few news papers where the majority readers always cheered the English and prayed gods for a fast collapse of freedom struggle.
salt, being the most essential component which is used daily by everyone in India. Also, it was taxed by the ruling English government for long, the Dandhi march was not an immediate response for some salt tax. It depicted something much more important.
Indian Independence moment was generally called as “Home Rule” or “Self Rule”. The Salt March canvassed to produce salt locally and not buy salt from mandi’s where the government taxes them as food provision. This self production of salt symbolically represented Self Rule or Home Rule capability for India by Indians. Likewise all his political moments were reminders of we Indians capability to manage, administrate and govern our country well, this is particularly important since many educated Indians who were government bureaucrats were against independence, many Muslim leaders, virtually all Kings(princely states), most of the feudal lords (zamindars) were pleading the governor general of India to continue English rule and not to give freedom.
With the above context, we have to see Gandhijji’s political making of situations which stood in time till date.