Salt

by Mark Kurlansky

  Most of India, since ancient times, had a history of modest salt taxes. In Orissa, the Maratha, the ruling caste of much of pre-British India, levied a small tax on salt transported commercially in the province. The trade was so extensive that they could earn a substantial profit on this moderate tax and avoid a higher one that would damage the competitive price of Orissa salt. In return for this source of revenue, they looked after the promotion and prosperity of the salt trade. The Maratha rulers’ attitude toward Orissa was reminiscent of a Chinese proverb: “Governing a state is like cooking small fish. It has to be done with a very light touch.”

  The British practiced this light touch neither in governance nor in cooking. In the late eighteenth century, Cheshire was increasing its salt production and aggressively hunting overseas markets. The empire was expected to provide these markets. Yet Liverpool salt could not compete with the price and quality of Orissa salt. In 1790, when the British requested permission to buy all the salt made in Orissa, Raghuji Bhonsla, the Maratha governor of Orissa, turned down the offer, realizing that the British were trying to eliminate Orissa salt in order to maintain British salt at an artificially high price. But when the British had their offer rejected, they simply banned Orissa salt in Bengal.

  Since the border that Orissa shared with Bengal was a thick jungle, difficult to patrol, the first effect of the new ban was to create well-organized bands of salt smugglers. Inexpensive contraband salt from Orissa so flooded Bengal that the British salt still could not compete there. In 1803, in the name of fighting contraband, the British army occupied Orissa and annexed it to Bengal.

  On November 1, 1804, by proclamation, Orissa salt became a British monopoly. The private sale of salt was completely prohibited. Those who had salt in their possession had to sell it to the government immediately at a fixed price. The transport of salt was forbidden. Even provisioning a ship with enough salt for the crew during a voyage had to be done under strict British supervision. Within ten years, it became illegal for salt to be manufactured by anyone other than the British government. A system of well-paid informants was established to prevent clandestine salt trading.

  The earliest resistance in Orissa came from coastal chieftains, Zemindars, whose privilege and authority were undermined by the destruction of the salt industry. Before the British, the malangis in northern Orissa had been under control of the Zemindars, who had earned a good profit selling the salt made by malangis for meager wages. Workers had paid a high rent to the Zemindars for the use of coastal salt flats and manufactured salt on their own. Part of that rent had been providing for all of the salt needs of the Zemindars’ households free of charge.

  Still, salt workers had lived considerably better than after the British monopoly in 1804. The British advanced money to malangis against future salt production, and the malangis got deeper and deeper in debt and eventually were forced to work for the British producing salt to pay off their debt—virtual slaves to the British salt department. Thousands died every year from epidemics, especially cholera.

  From the beginning, the Zemindars had obstructed British salt policy and urged the malangis, whom they controlled, to be uncooperative. The malangis began making their own salt illegally, and hundreds were arrested. In 1817, there was a rebellion in which malangis attacked saltworks and salt offices and chased away agents.

  After this uprising failed, the locals gave up on open resistance but engaged in underground salt manufacture and trade. Some families supported themselves on illegal salt making.

  BACK IN ENGLAND, it was well known that the Indians were angry with British salt policy. It was even mentioned in a cookbook:

  One of the greatest grievances of which the poor man can complain is the want of salt. Many of the insurrections and commotions among the Hindoos, have been occasioned by the cruel and unjust monopolies of certain unworthy servants of the East India Company, who to aggrandize their own fortunes have often times bought up, on speculation, all the salt in the different ports and markets.—Mary Eaton, The Cook and Housekeepers Complete and Universal Dictionary, 1822

  In the early nineteenth century, to make the salt tax profitable and stop the smuggling, the East India Company established customs checkpoints throughout Bengal. In 1834, a zealous commissioner of customs, G. H. Smith, was appointed, and in his twenty years in office he expanded the system into a “Customs Line” around Bengal. Salt had to pay a duty to cross this line. He was able to get taxes dropped on a series of lesser items, including tobacco, so that customs officers could concentrate on salt smuggling. Customs officers were given that always disastrous combination of broad powers and low pay. They received bounties for confiscated salt and had unchecked authority to search, seize, and arrest. Not surprisingly, bribery and other forms of corruption were widespread. In the 1840s, in its enthusiasm for enforcing this line, the East India Company constructed a fourteen-foot-high, twelve-foot-thick thorn hedge on the western side of Bengal to prevent the entry of contraband salt. After the British government took over following the 1857 “mutiny,” as the uprising was labeled, the Customs Line grew until it snaked arbitrarily 2,500 miles across India from the Himalayas to Orissa. The hedge was expanded into a spiky gnarl of prickly pear, acacia, and more benign plants such as bamboo. It was impenetrable except for periodic gateways guarded by customs agents. By 1870, the Customs Line, largely dedicated to the enforcement of the salt tax, employed 12,000 people.

  AT FIRST, HAVING complete control, the British wanted to produce Orissa salt and sell it in Bengal at their prices. They cleared jungle land in the coastal region to extend the salt-producing area. But British salt merchants became concerned about competition for sales in the Bengal market and lobbied Parliament to repress salt production in Orissa. In 1836, duties on domestic production were made equivalent to duties on imported salt, and from then on the government did not care if salt was local or imported because it earned the same revenue on both.

  The local salt, fighting its way through a cumbersome and complicated bureaucracy, could not compete. It did not sell as fast and had to be stocked in warehouses near Calcutta and therefore risked being embezzled. The British colonial administration responded by limiting Orissa production, even closing some centers, saying that Orissa salt was of inferior quality and had a higher cost of production. In 1845, the colonial government ordered the annual production of salt to be reduced by an amount equal to half the previous year’s total production.

  The commissioner of Orissa, A. J. M. Mills, wrote to the colonial administration warning that reducing salt production would turn the peasants of Orissa against the British, for in the salt areas the people knew of no other economic activity.

  EVEN IN THE best of times, the malangis lived hard lives in villages adjacent to salt fields. Men, women, and children—families worked the salt fields together. Some men traveled from distant villages, leaving their families behind, and lived five months of the year in temporary huts near the saltworks.

  The British charged malangis for any salt lost during transportation or from inadequate storage, even though transport and storage had nothing to do with salt workers. Salt agents tried to impress on the government the need to raise payments to salt makers, but instead the government, wishing to discourage production, periodically lowered the rate.

  The British policy was to preserve the jungles near the salt lands as sources of fuel wood. Since these forests had been reduced to clear land for salt production, they had an unusual concentration of tigers, bears, and leopards, and eventually the malangis were so terrified of the jungle that many refused to enter to cut fuel. In the 1846 season alone, twenty-two malangis were killed by tigers. The salt and the revenue departments both offered rewards for the heads of wild animals. Though the reward was considered substantial, it did not produce enough kills to significantly reduce the wildlife.

  In 1863, the British government announced its intention to stop local salt production and instructed salt agents to end salt manufacture as
soon as possible. The abandonment of salt manufacture led to a famine in Orissa in 1866. The greatest loss of life in the famine was among the malangis, because they had no crops of their own to fall back on for food. Government policy also caused a salt shortage in Bengal.

  The British responded to the crisis by starting their own plant to make kartach salt. The object was to furnish locals with cheap salt while providing them with jobs. It was so successful that Liverpool salt could not compete, and so, in 1893, the government closed down the plant. Outperforming British salt was against the rules.

  Once the plant was closed down, the malangis starved, while salt, their traditional cash crop, was lying at their feet in sparkling crusts, waiting to be picked up and sold. But even scraping salt off the surface of the flats was a severely punishable offense. The people of Orissa were forbidden from any activity connected with salt making. They left their starving wives and children and went to other parts of India looking for work, living in crowded, unsanitary conditions as they struggled to earn enough from menial labor to send some money to their families. In time, the malangis disappeared from Orissa, and anyone there who was poor was now deprived of salt.

  THE FIRST PUBLIC meeting in India to protest salt policy took place in Orissa in February 1888, organized by the Utkal Sabha political party in Cuttack, a river port on the River Mahanadi. It was pointed out that impoverished Indians had a tax burden thirty times greater than did people in England. The tax on salt was termed “an unjust imposition of an imperial character,” because the taxed salt was all imported from abroad. The government was urged to raise the income tax and save money by discontinuing the recruitment of people from abroad to the Indian civil service. These savings, the protesters at the Orissa meeting argued, would compensate the government for the loss of salt tax revenue.

  In the early twentieth century, British salt policy was attacked in provincial legislatures throughout India. In 1923, to balance the budget, the government proposed doubling the salt tax. The Indian Legislative Assembly refused to support this proposal. But the British approved it anyway by decree from Viceroy Lord Reading. In 1927, the Legislative Assembly voted to halve the salt tax— though many had called for its complete abolition. The British government did not comply.

  In the Indian Legislative Assembly of 1929, Pandit Nilakantha Das, a member from Orissa, demanded the revival of salt making in Orissa and a repeal of the salt tax. The government argued that the salt tax was the only contribution to the state that poor people ever made.

  The British government was not taking the issue seriously. Lord Winterlon, the undersecretary of state for India, assured the British government that there was no reason for concern about the salt issue. Not everyone in England agreed. In British Parliament, Sir Henry Craik argued that the salt tax was causing serious hardship in India and that this hardship was leading to civil unrest. Some suggested that the revenue from the salt tax was not worth the threat that unrest posed to the British Empire. Labour members warned that the salt tax could be leading them into another Irish situation in India.

  In 1930, Orissa seemed near open rebellion.

  And so, contrary to popular belief today, it was not an entirely original idea to focus rebellion on salt, when that idea was seized upon by an entirely original man named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

  GANDHI WAS BORN on October 2, 1869, at Porbandar, a small west coast town, capital of a princely state of the same name, on the Gujarat peninsula, not far from the Rann of Kutch. This is one of the reasons that, when he wanted to stage a salt rebellion, he chose this region and not Orissa on the opposite coast. Gandhi said that he felt closest to the salt makers of Gujarat.

  When he was growing up in Porbandar, malangis were not a part of his immediate world. He belonged to the Vaisya caste, the number three caste, below the ruling classes but above workers. Gandhi means “grocer,” but Mohandas’s grandfather, father, and uncle had all served as prime minister to the Prince of Porbandar. It was a small state, and its rulers exercised petty and arbitrary authority over the people while serving British rulers obsequiously. The humble house where Mohandas was born, still standing on the edge of town, testifies to the lack of wealth and position of a Porbandar prime minister. Mohandas’s marriage, which was arranged when he was thirteen, lasted for the next sixty-two years. Despite his enduring reputation for living a life of simplicity and self-denial, he did not come to this easily and struggled in his youth with uncontrolled appetites, both sexual and gastronomic. In violation of his family’s religious code, he experimented with meat eating, hoping it would make him large and strong like the carnivorous English.

  Gandhi was a tiny man of peculiar passions and eccentric theories about sexual desire, diet, and bodily functions. Well into old age he conducted “experiments” with young women he asked to lie naked with him through the night to test his resolve to abstain from sex. He displayed a mischievous sense of humor. It is said that when asked what he thought of Western civilization, he replied, “I think it would be a great idea.”

  But Gandhi did not preach the superiority of Eastern culture. He said, “It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than an American Rockefeller.”

  He was influenced not only by his Hindu upbringing but by Jainism, which forbids the killing of any creature and whose priests wear masks over their mouths to ensure that they do not accidentally inhale an insect and kill it.

  He traveled abroad, studying law in London. Visiting Paris, he gave his impression of the new Eiffel Tower: “The Tower was a good demonstration of the fact that we are all children attracted by trinkets.”

  In South Africa he became the leader of a movement to secure civil rights for Indians. Imprisoned for his efforts, he read Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience in the appropriate setting—a jail cell. Along with Buddhist and Jainist writings, Thoreau was to have an enormous influence on him. He was struck by Thoreau’s assertion: “The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”

  His adversaries continually underestimated him because it seemed improbable that millions would follow such an odd man. Gandhi’s approach to civil disobedience was always nonviolence, but he objected to the phrase “passive resistance.” It was not enough to be nonviolent. The adversary had to be opposed in such a way that he would not feel humiliated or defeated. He said that the opponent must be “weaned from error.” Seeking a name for his brand of resistance, he took a suggestion from his cousin, Maganlal Gandhi: sadagraha—firmness in a good cause. Mohandas changed sada to satya, which means “truth.” Gandhi would resist with satyagraha—the force of truth, a force that, he said, would lift both sides.

  In all he did, Gandhi displayed an inner confidence. He was certain that his cause was right, and because it was right it would prevail. His quiet self-assurance made him a man of constant surprises—making sudden decisions and steering unexpected courses of action. When World War I broke out, this pacifist who fought British colonialism announced his support for the British war effort, thereby completely confusing his followers. Just when he appeared to be denouncing the Industrial Revolution and its machinery, he suddenly confessed his affection for Singer sewing machines. “It is one of the few useful things ever invented, and there is a romance about the device itself.” Louis Fischer, his biographer who knew him personally, wrote, “A conversation with him was a voyage of discovery: he dared to go anywhere without a chart.”

  The other most famous Indian of his day, Nobel Prize–winning novelist Rabindranath Tagore, a tall and eloquent aristocrat, is credited with giving Gandhi his famous title, mahatma, the great soul, or as he put it, “the great soul in beggar’s garb.”

  IN 1885, THE Indian National Congress was founded in Bombay by mostly high-caste intellectuals, including even a few Englishmen. Originally, some were even in favor of continuing British rule. But gradually they became the leading force in the independence movement. It was Gandhi who made
the Indian National Congress and the cause of Indian independence a mass movement. One of the primary tools in accomplishing this metamorphosis was the salt satyagraha, the salt campaign.

  The idea of a salt satyagraha had its beginnings in the 1929 Indian National Congress session in Lahore. While salt had become a burning issue in a few regions, it was not at the time a national issue, and despite a smoldering rebellion in Orissa and a few other places, most of Gandhi’s colleagues were barely aware of it. Many in the Congress, even those closest to Gandhi, were baffled by his idea of focusing the independence movement on salt. But Gandhi argued that it was an example of British misrule that touched the lives of all castes of Indians. Everyone ate salt, he argued. Everyone, in fact, except Gandhi himself, who had renounced the eating of salt and at the time had not touched it in six years.

  On March 2, 1930, Gandhi wrote to Lord Irwin, viceroy of India:

  If you cannot see your way to deal with these evils and my letter makes no appeal to your heart, then on the twelfth day of this month I shall proceed with such co-workers of the ashram as I can take, to disregard the provisions of the salt laws. I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man’s standpoint. As the independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land, the beginning will be made with this evil. The wonder is that we have submitted to the cruel monopoly for so long.

  The viceroy expressed his regret at Gandhi’s decision to break the law.

  The ashram to which Gandhi referred was in Gujarat, across the Sabarmati River from the city of Ahmadabad. It was an ashram for satyagrahis—people committed to the force of truth—and Gandhi had pointed out to his followers when they settled there that they were conveniently located close to the Ahmadabad jail, where they would be spending much of their time. The prophecy was accurate.