Main Even s leading to salt march and civil disobedience
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EVENTS LEAD TO SALT MARCH:
Britain’s Salt Act of 1882 prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, a staple in their diet. Indian citizens were forced to buy the vital mineral from their British rulers, who, in addition to exercising a monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt, also charged a heavy salt tax. Although India’s poor suffered most under the tax, all Indians required salt.
Mohandas Gandhi and Satyagraha
After living for two decades in South Africa, where Mohandas Gandhi fought for the civil rights of Indians residing there, Gandhi returned to his native country in 1915 and soon began working for India’s independence from Great Britain. Defying the Salt Act, Gandhi reasoned, would be an ingeniously simple way for many Indians to break a British law nonviolently.
Gandhi declared resistance to British salt policies to be the unifying theme for his new campaign of “satyagraha,” or mass civil disobedience.
Salt March Begins
On March 12, 1930, Gandhi set out from his ashram, or religious retreat, at Sabermanti near Ahmedabad with several dozen followers on a trek of some 240 miles to the coastal town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea. There, Gandhi and his supporters were to defy British policy by making salt from seawater. All along the way, Gandhi addressed large crowds, and with each passing day an increasing number of people joined the salt satyagraha. By the time they reached Dandi on April 5, Gandhi was at the head of a crowd of tens of thousands. He spoke and led prayers and early the next morning walked down to the sea to make salt. He had planned to work the salt flats on the beach, encrusted with crystallized sea salt at every high tide, but the police had forestalled him by crushing the salt deposits into the mud. Nevertheless, Gandhi reached down and picked up a small lump of natural salt out of the mud—and British law had been defied. At Dandi, thousands more followed his lead, and in the coastal cities of Bombay (now called Mumbai) and Karachi, Indian nationalists led crowds of citizens in making salt. Civil disobedience broke out all across India, soon involving millions of Indians, and British authorities arrested more than 60,000 people. Gandhi himself was arrested on May 5, but the satyagraha continued without him.
On May 21, the poet Sarojini Naidu led 2,500 marchers on the Dharasana Salt Works, some 150 miles north of Bombay. Several hundred British-led Indian policemen met them and viciously beat the peaceful demonstrators.
The incident, recorded by American journalist Webb Miller, prompted an international outcry against British policy in India.
EVENTS LEAD TO CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE:
The Congress declared that if the government did not accept a constitution based on the dominion status within a year, it would adopt ‘Purana Swaraj’ as its goal.
In 1929, having a meeting with Ramsay Macdonald, the Prime Minister of England, Lord Irwin returned to India and declared that the object of the British Government was to grant India dominion status. But the Prime Minister under pressure of the conservative leaders, failed to keep his promise. When Gandhiji met Lord Irwin in December 1929, the latter refused to make any commitment regarding dominion status.
In utter despair Gandhiji said, ‘I have burnt my boat’. The country became prepared to fight for ‘Purana Swaraj’.
According to Amales Tripathi, the main cause of the Civil Disobedience movement was worldwide economic depression during the period 1929-1930. Young leaders of the Congress became impatient for a movement. The revolutionaries were not sitting idle. The organizations of the works and the peasants gathered strength under organizations of the workers and the peasants gathered strength under the leadership of the communists. All these events led Gandhiji to feel the necessity of launching Civil Disobedience movement.The Civil disobedience movement started with Gandhiji’s historic ‘Dandi March’. Gandhiji walked 240 miles through villages of Gujarat. He reached Dandi on 6 April 1930. He inaugurated the Civil Disobedience movement by picking up a handful of salt. Gandhiji and other prominent leaders were arrested. Their arrest led to a mass demonstration. In Peshawar, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan took an active role.
