Background To Salt Satyagraha
Background To Salt Satyagraha
Background To Salt Satyagraha
The Salt Satyagraha was a mass civil disobedience movement initiated by Mahatma Gandhi
against the salt tax imposed by the British government in India. He led a large group of people
from Sabarmati Ashram on 12th March 1930 till Dandi, a coastal village in Gujarat, to break the
salt law by producing salt from seawater.
By 1930, the Congress Party had declared that Poorna Swarajya or complete
independence was to be the sole aim of the freedom struggle.
It started observing 26 January as Poorna Swarajya Day, and it was decided that civil
disobedience was to be the means employed to achieve it.
Mahatma Gandhi was asked to plan and organise the first such act. Gandhiji chose to
break the salt tax in defiance of the government.
Some members of Congress were skeptical of the choice and other Indians and the
British dismissed this choice of salt with disdain.
The then Viceroy, Lord Irwin was hardly perturbed by the threat of a salt protest and the
government did nothing to prevent the salt march from taking place.
But Gandhiji’s choice of using salt was nothing short of brilliant because it touched a
chord with every Indian.
It was a commodity required by all and the poor people were hurt because of the salt tax.
Indians had been making salt from seawater free of cost until the passing of the 1882
Salt Act that gave the British monopoly over the production of salt and authority to
impose a salt tax. It was a criminal offence to violate the salt act.
Gandhiji also hoped to unite Hindus and Muslims as the cause was common to both
groups.
The salt tax accounted for 8.2% of the British Raj revenue from tax and Gandhiji knew
that the government could not ignore this.
The course of the Salt Satyagraha
Around 60,000 people including Gandhiji himself were arrested by the government.
There was widespread civil disobedience carried on by the people. Apart from the salt
tax, other unpopular tax laws were being defied like the forest laws, chowkidar tax, land
tax, etc.
The government tried to suppress the movement with more laws and censorship.
The Congress Party was declared illegal. But this did not deter the satyagrahis who
continued the movement.
There were some incidents of violence in Calcutta and Karachi but Gandhiji did not call
off the movement, unlike the previous time with the non-cooperation movement.
C Rajagopalachari led a similar march on the southeast coast from Trichy to Vedaranyam
in Tamil Nadu. He too was arrested for making salt.
K Kelappan led a march in the Malabar region from Calicut to Payyanur.
There were similar marches and salt was produced illegally in Assam and Andhra
Pradesh.
In Peshawar, the Satyagraha was organised and led by Gandhiji’s disciple, Khan Abdul
Ghaffar Khan. In April 1930 he was arrested. Khan’s followers (called Khudai
Khidmatgars) whom he had trained in Satyagraha had gathered in a marketplace called
the Qissa Khwani Bazaar. There they were fired at by the British Indian Army despite
being unarmed.
Thousands of women also took part in the Satyagraha.
Foreign clothes were boycotted. Liqueur shops were picketed. There were strikes all
over.
On May 21, 1930, there was a protest against the Dharasana Salt Works by peaceful non-
violent protestors led by Sarojini Naidu. The police lathi-charged the protestors brutally
and it resulted in the deaths of 2 people with several others being injured. This event was
reported in the international media and there was a condemnation of British policies
followed in India.
The British government was shaken by the movement. Also, its non-violent nature made
it difficult for them to suppress it violently.
This movement had three main effects:
It pushed Indian freedom struggle into the limelight in western media.
It brought a lot of people including women and the depressed classes directly in touch
with the freedom movement.
It showed the power of the non-violent Satyagraha as a tool in fighting imperialism.
Gandhiji was released from prison in 1931 and he met with Lord Irwin who was keen to
put an end to the civil disobedience movement and the media attention it had caught.
As per the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, the civil disobedience movement would be ended and
Indians, in return, would be allowed to make salt for domestic use. Lord Irwin also agreed
to release the arrested Indians. Gandhiji attended the Second Round Table Conference in
London as an ‘equal’.
Drawbacks of Salt Sathyagraha
The movement did not procure any major concessions from the government.
Muslim support was limited.
Candidates preparing for the exam can go through the video to know in detail about Indian
History between the period 1930 to 1935.