Moreover, unlike defiance over land revenue, a salt defiance would not cost peasants their land or cattle. The British had indeed yielded over land revenue in Bardoli, but that was because the Bardoli satyagraha had been carefully disconnected from any campaigns for Swaraj. Now Swaraj was the central goal, and the British would not be merciful. Looking for a fight that would not ruin participants, Gandhi picked on salt.
It had long been germinating in his mind. Almost forty years earlier, as a student in London in 1891, he had spoken of ‘salt, a heavily taxed article’. In 1909 his Hind Swaraj had referred to it; and he had mentioned it on numerous other occasions. It was a question, moreover, that Naoroji and, later, Gokhale had raised. Thanks to the salt tax—the simplest and most regressive form of taxing every Indian, including the poorest—British salt was easy to sell in India, and the government of India obtained two per cent of its revenue.
Also, salt was a powerful emblem, featuring in proverb, scripture and everyday speech, and the only inorganic thing that all humans ate. It preserved, disinfected, embalmed.
Salt could cause harm too, of course—we have found Gandhi himself experimenting with salt-free diets, if always to return to its moderate use. But that did not detract from salt’s symbolism, or the tax’s iniquity.
Clarity about salt changed Gandhi. Thereafter, an observer thought, Gandhi spoke at ashram prayer-meetings with ‘a peculiar glow in his look and voice, as of one pregnant with inspired inner thought and prayer’.4
For several days he kept the idea to himself and some close colleagues. Confidentiality was essential for preparation and also for preventing premature arrests. But several associates were informed in February, including Mahadev, Vallabhbhai, Mohanlal Pandya and Ravishankar Vyas, and the last three were asked to select a route for the march and its destination on the shore, where salt would be illegally collected.
Letter to the Viceroy. In the last week of February Gandhi spelt out guidelines for a satyagraha without mentioning that it would be over salt. And in a letter to the Viceroy written on 2 March (but not made public for a week or so) he listed the removal of the salt tax as one of eleven demands the British would have to concede if they did not want to face satyagraha. After repeating the indictment of a ‘four-fold’ ruination, he demanded
1) Total prohibition, 2) A better rupee/shilling ratio, 3) Halving of land revenue, 4) Abolition of salt tax, 5) Halving of military expenditure, 6) Reduction in official salaries, 7) Tariffs on foreign cloth, 8) Reservation of coastal shipping for Indian ships, 9) Release of political prisoners save those convicted for murder or attempted murder, 10) Abolition of the Criminal Intelligence Department or control over it by elected representatives, and 11) The right of Indians to licensed firearms.
The writer is revealed as a formidable nationalist far removed from the image of an ascetic plying his spinning wheel. This ahimsa advocate is not willing to give up any Indian right, not even the right to a gun. Equally, the list reminded Indians that their fight was for more than a pair of words (‘complete independence’)—it was for a better life for the common Indian.
Addressed to ‘Dear Friend’, Gandhi’s demands were couched in nonviolent language, yet the letter was even stronger than the one sent ten years earlier to Chelmsford. Irwin was reminded, among other things, of the huge salary he was drawing from Indian revenues.
Gandhi sent the letter not by post but by the hand of a young British sympathizer who was in the ashram at the time, Reginald Reynolds. Gandhi claimed that by choosing Reynolds as his messenger he had ‘forge[d] a further check upon myself against any intentional act that would hurt a single Englishman’.5
‘My ambition,’ Gandhi told the Viceroy in the letter, ‘is no less than to convert the British people through nonviolence and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India’ (48: 366). There was no reply from Lord Irwin, but on 12 March Gandhi received a four-line letter from Cunningham, the Viceroy’s secretary, stating that Lord Irwin ‘regrets to learn that you contemplate a course of action which is clearly bound to involve violation of the law and danger to the public peace’ (48:367).
On 5 March, from the ashram prayer ground, Gandhi made the first public announcement about the choice of salt. His political colleagues were shocked. Neither Jawaharlal nor his father was impressed, and a displeased Vallabhbhai stayed away from early planning meetings called by Gandhi.
The truth was that in February 1930 no part of India was agitating over the salt tax, which seemed a minor irritant to educated Indians, including many of Gandhi’s associates. Indulal Yagnik, for example, spoke dismissively of striking ‘the fly of the salt act’ with the ‘sledge hammer of satyagraha’.6
There was chuckling in British and pro-British circles. ‘Let Gandhi soon eat his own salt,’ was one remark. After Gandhi announced his plan, The Statesman, Calcutta’s British-owned journal, wrote:
It is difficult not to laugh, and we imagine that will be the mood of most thinking Indians. There is something almost childishly theatrical in challenging in this way the salt monopoly of the Government.7
Destination, route, and marchers. After reconnoitring southern Gujarat, Mohanlal Pandya and Ravishankar Vyas selected a coastal village in Surat district, Dandi, where waves from the Arabian Sea usually left layers of salt, as the destination for the marchers. Dandi was more than 200 miles south from the ashram and close to Bardoli. Pandya and Vyas also proposed villages and towns in Kheda, Bharuch and Surat districts that the satyagrahis should walk through on their way to Dandi.
Gandhi vetted the list, picking villages where he thought he could (a) draw officials away from the Raj, (b) promote khadi and sanitation, (c) attack untouchability, and (d) advance Hindu-Muslim friendship. But the route and destination were not announced until 9 March.
He was equally particular that only the disciplined and the committed would march. Since they would be defying laws in pursuance of Gandhi’s tough letter to the Viceroy, they were bound to invite arrest, perhaps for long terms. Beatings were likely and death could not be ruled out. Fifteen years after its founding, the Satyagraha ashram would show whether it lived up to its name.
Its members were bound to vows, to one another, and to Gandhi, who had seldom failed to spend time with the ashram’s sick or laugh with the young ones. Differences existed among ashramites, and bickering too, but they had become a family. Narayan, son of Mahadev Desai, would later recall that if some in the ashram lost a dear one, ‘more soothing than Bapu’s words would be the way he came to them and embraced them. It was as if he was absorbing their agony into his own heart. If away, Bapu would write to them daily.’8
However, for his march Gandhi would not accept the very young, the old, those with heavy family responsibilities, or women—the last because it would not be chivalrous to use women as a shield.
Guidelines. He laid down detailed rules for the marchers. They should be willing to suffer unto death, cause no violence, injury or insult to British rulers or their Indian servants, and refrain from swearing or cursing. They should neither salute nor insult the Union Jack. If a communal fight appeared likely to start, the satyagrahis should intervene and prevent it.
When arrested, they should obey prison rules and not demand special facilities from the authorities or maintenance for dependents from the Congress. But they should refuse to shout slogans like ‘victory to the government’ or eat food that was unclean or rudely served.
At this time the roughly 200-strong ashram community had ‘reached its zenith of physical energy and moral strength’, Mira would write. ‘Every morning and evening Bapu spoke in the prayers, and an atmosphere of uplifting inspiration filled the air.’9
Sensing a strong response from beyond the ashram as well, Gandhi expected an early arrest and left clear instructions for ‘When I am Arrested’. Vallabhbhai, whose doubts were short-lived, would lead the marchers in Gandhi’s absence.
Once the idea of a salt attack was announced (5 March), the British debate
d whether to put Gandhi away immediately or when he actually violated the Salt Act. Arresting now would add to his prestige and provoke an instant reaction. It would be cleverer to let his weird plan flop before arresting him. The British assumed, too, that a coastal corner of Kheda district, where Vallabhbhai’s fellow Patidars were firm foes of their rule, would be the chosen site.
Vallabhbhai arrested. On 7 March, Vallabhbhai, who was passing through the Kheda village of Ras, was arrested there, to his and Gandhi’s surprise. After he had agreed, following pressure from Ras’s residents, to address them, officials tailing Patel handed him an order not to speak. By this time thousands had gathered to hear him. When Patel said he would speak to them, he was arrested. Alfred Master, collector of Kheda and the district magistrate, sentenced Patel for three months.
On 8 March Gandhi addressed 50,000 incensed Indians on the banks of the Sabarmati, said that his ‘right hand’ had been removed, and asked the audience to pledge themselves to ‘follow Sardar Vallabhbhai to jail, or win complete independence’, but ‘only if you have the strength to act upon’ the pledge. Thousands raised their hands in affirmation.10
On 9 March Gandhi announced that in three days he and more than seventy others would begin a march to the Surat coast and hope to reach there early in April, in time for observing the National Week, as the April 6-13 period had been called from the time of the stir that culminated in Jallianwalla on 13 April 1919.
By now hopes were high. On 10 March, when over 2,000 attended the ashram’s evening prayers, Gandhi explained the strength and subtlety of satyagraha:
Everyone is on the tip-toe of expectation, and before anything has happened the thing has attracted world-wide attention… Though the battle is to begin in a couple of days, how is it that you can come here quite fearlessly? I do not think anyone of you would be here if you had to face rifle-shots or bombs…
Supposing I had announced that I was going to launch a violent campaign, not necessarily with men armed with rifles, but even with sticks or stones, do you think the Government would have left me free until now? Can you show me an example in history, be it England, America or Russia, where the State has tolerated violent defiance of authority for a single day? But here you know that the Government is puzzled and perplexed.
And you have come here because you have been familiarized by now with the idea of seeking voluntary imprisonment… Supposing ten men in each of the 700,000 villages in India come forward to manufacture salt and to disobey the Salt Act, what… can this Government do? Even the worst autocrat you can imagine would not dare to blow regiments of peaceful civil resisters out of a cannon’s mouth (48: 395-6).
Yet he knew he would soon be jailed, and death too was possible. He and the other marchers were stepping out of the ashram for good, to return, if alive, only after India was free. On the evening of 11 March he said:
Even if the Government allows me to march tomorrow morning, this will be my last speech on the sacred banks of the Sabarmati. Possibly these may be the last words of my life here…
But let there be not a semblance of breach of peace even after all of us have been arrested… Let no one commit a wrong in anger. This is my hope and prayer. I wish these words of mine reached every nook and corner of the land… I shall eagerly await the news that ten batches are ready as soon as my batch is arrested.
After his arrest, he said, Jawaharlal, the Congress president, would advise, but regional commanders were already in place, including Rajagopalachari in the south, Rajendra Prasad in Bihar, J.M. Sen Gupta in Bengal, Ghaffar Khan in the Frontier, Mahadev Desai for Gujarat outside the march route. If the commanders were arrested, the battle would throw up new leaders, Gandhi said.
THE MARCH
In the early morning of 12 March, joy and sadness, pride and fear, and prayer songs marked the departure of Gandhi and seventy-eight (or, by another count, eighty) others.11 Pyarelal, thirty, and thirty-five-year-old Chhaganlal Joshi (the ashram’s manager after Maganlal’s death) walked just behind Gandhi. The rest represented fifteen Indian provinces, with Gujarat offering the largest number and Maharashtra the next highest. There were two Muslims, a Christian, and four ‘untouchables’ in the mainly Hindu band.
Arriving from South Africa, Manilal, now thirty-eight, joined the party, as did Kanti, Harilal’s twenty-year-old son. Pandit Narayan Khare, forty-four, the ashram’s music teacher, was also a marcher, carrying his tanpura, even though his boy Vasant had died of smallpox a few days earlier. At thirty-five, Valji Desai, translator into English of some of Gandhi’s writings, was a senior member. A Gujarati studying in America, Haridas Muzumdar, twenty-five, and Kalelkar’s sons, Satish, twenty, and Bal, eighteen, were among the many youngsters in the group, the youngest being sixteen-year-old Vithalal Thakkar.
All the marchers received garlands and tilak from young girls. Those bidding farewell recalled settings-forth from history and the epics, and many among the tens of thousands who crammed Ahmedabad’s streets cried, thinking they were seeing the marchers for the last time.
Kasturba pressed a tilak on Gandhi’s forehead and garlanded him with handspun yarn. Kalelkar gave him a bamboo staff. Precisely at 6.30 a.m. the march commenced. Jawaharlal, who was present, wrote:
Today the pilgrim marches onward on his long trek. Staff in hand, he goes along the dusty roads of Gujarat, clear-eyed and firm of step, with his faithful band trudging along behind him. Many a journey he has undertaken in the past, many a weary road traversed. But longer than any that have gone before is this last journey of his, and many are the obstacles in his way. But the fire of a great resolve is in him, and surpassing love of his miserable countrymen. And love of truth that scorches and love of freedom that inspires.12
All the marchers wore khadi and most donned a simple white khadi cap. Everyone including Gandhi (who did not wear the cap) carried a shoulder-bag containing a bedroll, a change of clothes, a takli for spinning, a diary and a drinking mug. His pocket-watch hanging conspicuously from the waist, Gandhi, now sixty-one, was the oldest walker of the lot but also the most experienced and indeed among the quickest, though suffering from blisters and fatigue. Throughout the long march of around 220 miles,13 most of the others struggled to keep up with him.
This marching army was also a moving ashram: its general (or father) required of each marcher that he would daily pray, spin and write into a diary, which Bapu could ask to read. With Gandhi continuing to write numerous letters a day and several articles a week, it was a mobile office as well.
Gandhi also spelt out, ahead of the march, what he expected from a village en route: the simplest food (which the marchers were ready to cook); clean space for sleeping; and ‘an enclosed space for the satyagrahis to answer calls of nature’. Inside the leader who hoped (by picking up salt) to liberate India and convert England was a researcher as well. Gandhi asked that at each halt the following information should be kept ready for him:
The village population (how many ‘women, men, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsis, etc.’); the ‘number of untouchables’ and the education, if any, they were getting; the number of boys and girls in the village school, if one existed; the number of cattle, of spinning wheels, and of khadi-wearers; the amount and rate of land revenue; the size of any common grazing ground; the consumption of salt (Navajivan, 9 March 1930; 48: 392-3).
Arrangements were not left wholly to chance. Eighteen students of Ahmedabad’s Gujarat Vidyapith went ahead of the marchers to help hosts organize spaces for cooking, sleeping and praying, and to help dig latrine trenches. Selected by Kalelkar, the Vidyapith vice-chancellor, these oft-unnoticed members of the Arun Tukdi (Sunrise Unit) were not only crucial to the march’s efficiency; they were also alternate marchers, ready to replace arrested ones.
Many places en route gave a hugely enthusiastic response. Some towns (including Nadiad, Borsad, Bharuch and Surat) emptied into ‘festooned streets sprinkled against dust’14 when the marchers passed through, and often there were immense meetings.
In several villages along the way, but also elsewhere in Gujarat, functionaries resigned their jobs with the Raj and aligned themselves with ‘the movement’. Buoyed by the indications, the AICC swiftly and briefly met in Ahmedabad (21 March), asked provincial units across India to prepare defiance, and authorized presidents of all Congress committees, national, provincial, and local, to nominate successors. ‘Chains of command [were] forged and battle plans mapped out.’15
But a few villages on Gandhi’s route were cautious, in part because of his stand over the ‘untouchables’. At the village of Dabhan (15 March), Gandhi ‘walked straight through the village past the temple and the village square’ to the quarters of the ‘untouchables’, where ‘he drew water from the well and bathed’, embarrassing but also challenging his high-caste reception committee, who had not expected Gandhi to draw water even from their ‘pure’ well: a servant should perform that sort of task.16
In Gajera (21 March) Gandhi asked the caste Hindus welcoming him to let the ‘untouchables’ of the village join the gathering. Most did not mind, and the ‘untouchables’ sat down along with the rest, but some high-caste women left.17
Asked, in the village of Ankhi (21 March), about nonviolent ways of treating an oppressive officer, Gandhi answered that both compassion and sternness had a place. Any official found in distress, white or brown, even someone like General Dyer, had to be quickly helped, but an arrogant officer abusing his power should ‘get neither food nor drink, neither a bed, nor matches, nor even fodder for his horse’.18
Two things troubled Gandhi on the evening of 29 March. One, he heard that Muzumdar, the ‘American’ student in the party, had accepted an offer of ice cream at an earlier halt. Two, he had seen some marchers goad a servant who carried on his head a heavy petromax lantern to walk faster. After arrival that night in Bhatgam, Gandhi expressed his ‘scorching truth’:
Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People Page 44
