Exactly 95 years ago, on March 12, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) and 78 supporters began a nearly 400km march called the Salt March to protest the British colonial salt tax and salt monopoly.
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| Mahatma Gandhi (left) and Indian poet and political activist Sarojini Naidu on the Salt March in Western India, March 1930. (Source: Getty Images) |
The Salt March is a typical example of the philosophy of non-violence (Satyagraha) advocated by Mahatma Gandhi, one of the great leaders of the Indian independence movement. He believed that peaceful civil disobedience could create social and political change, becoming a powerful tool of struggle against British colonial rule (1858-1947).
“Great Soul”
Mahatma Gandhi, whose real name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, Gujarat, Western India. He came from a middle-class family with a tradition of respecting morality and the law. From a young age, Gandhi showed perseverance, honesty and compassion.
In 1888, he went to England to study law at the University of London. After returning, he practiced law. In 1893, Gandhi went to Natal (South Africa) to work, directly experiencing racism and injustice towards the Indian community, contributing to shaping his later non-violent struggle ideology.
In 1915, Gandhi returned to India and quickly became one of the most influential leaders of the independence movement, transforming the Congress Party from a middle-class organization into a mass movement. He initiated and led many large-scale nonviolent campaigns that directly challenged British colonial rule, including the Salt March (March 12, 1930 - April 6, 1930) to protest the salt tax, attracting tens of thousands of participants.
He also played a central role in the Quit India Movement of 1942, which called for the immediate withdrawal of Britain from India. Gandhi's steadfast leadership and the pressure from the movement forced Britain to grant independence to India on August 15, 1947. Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948, but his ideas and legacy live on, inspiring freedom movements around the world.
In 1994, German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) praised Gandhi: “Generations to come will scarcely believe that such a man ever walked the Earth in flesh and blood,” while the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) called the leader of the country of the Ganges “Mahatma” (Great Soul), showing respect for his role in the independence movement, liberating the country.
The shocking march
In 1882, the British colonial government enacted the Salt Act, which monopolized the production and distribution of salt in India, and imposed high taxes, making it difficult for the poor to access this essential commodity. Indian journalist and scholar Abhay Charan Das (1844-1896) wrote about the injustice of the salt tax on workers in his work The Indian Ryot (1881): “The wage-earners have a fixed income of only 35 rupees a year... They cannot buy more than half of what they need.” Since the 19th century, Indians have protested against the salt tax.
In 1903, while in South Africa, Gandhi wrote an article about the salt tax in The Indian Opinion , a newspaper he founded, about the injustice of the salt tax. He emphasized: “Salt is an essential part of our daily diet. It can be said that the increasing incidence of leprosy in India is due to the lack of salt.”
In 1909, in Hind Swaraj – an important work presenting the views on self-rule and non-violence, Gandhi continued to call on the British government to abolish the salt tax.
On March 2, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi wrote a letter to Lord Irwin, the British Viceroy of India (1881-1959), describing the devastation of the subcontinent under British rule and making 11 demands. He warned that he would launch a civil disobedience movement if the British colonial government did not meet these demands. In response to the colonial government's silence, Mahatma Gandhi decided to launch a movement called the Salt March to break the
Salt Act.
In his book 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns (2014), American researcher David M. Gross stated that while many Indians may not understand abstract political ideals, the salt issue is very close and easy for them to understand. According to Dennis Dalton, Professor Emeritus at Barnard College, Columbia University, repealing the Salt Act easily attracted popular support.
On March 12, 1930, at the age of 61, Mahatma Gandhi and 78 of his followers left the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and began a 385-km walk to the coastal village of Dandi. Mahatma Gandhi pledged not to return until the Salt Act was repealed. During the 24-day journey, he held public talks, preached about civil disobedience, and urged people to join him. The crowd grew, attracting everything from peasants to intellectuals, and by the time they reached Dandi, it had grown to more than 50,000 people.
Foreign journalists followed his journey closely. In January 1931, The Times named Gandhi its “Person of the Year 1930,” while The New York Times reported on the Salt March. Mahatma Gandhi asserted: “I want the sympathy of the world in this battle against power… We are acting on behalf of the hungry, the naked, the unemployed.”
On April 6, 1930, Gandhi and his followers took a handful of natural salt from the sea, symbolically breaking the Salt Act. The Indian poet and political activist Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) hailed him as “The Man Who Broke the Salt Act,” while the American journalist Louis Fischer (1896-1970) described in his book “The Struggle of Gandhi” that: “To pick up a handful of salt to defy the mighty and become a criminal… required the imagination, the dignity, and the performance spirit of a great artist. It appealed to the uneducated peasant as well as the intellectual critic.”
The Salt March inspired millions of people across India to rise up and reclaim the right to produce salt, breaking the British colonial government's monopoly, even though tens of thousands were arrested, including Mahatma Gandhi (May 4, 1930).
In his autobiography Toward Freedom (1936), India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) described the impact of the Salt March: “It was as if a spring had suddenly burst forth… As we saw the enthusiasm of the people… We marveled at the miraculous talent of one man to inspire a crowd and lead them to organized action.” American journalist Webb Miller (1891-1940) documented the nonviolent resistance of the simple, gentle Indian people. According to the history website History, Miller's documents appeared in 1,350 newspapers around the world, leading to strong international opposition to the British colonial rule in India.
On March 5, 1931, under pressure from non-violent struggles and international public opinion, the British colonial government and Mahatma Gandhi signed the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, which required the government to release political prisoners, return confiscated land, and recognize the coastal people's right to make salt. In return, Mahatma Gandhi stopped the civil disobedience movement and participated in the round table conference.
Although it did not bring about major political change, the round table conference was one of the important outcomes of the Salt March, when the British government was forced to invite Indian representatives to the negotiating table. Viceroy Lord Irwin admitted: “We have failed to contain this movement. If the British government does not convene a round table conference, I will resign.”
Echoes of history
Mahatma Gandhi's spirit of nonviolence and the Salt March left a deep mark on many struggles around the world.
The 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner, American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) applied this philosophy to the civil rights movement in the United States, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, with notable campaigns such as the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-1956) and the Selma to Montgomery march (1965). South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), who won the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, also applied Gandhi's non-violent ideology in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, contributing to the end of racial segregation and becoming the first black President of South Africa (1994-1999)...
Today, Gandhi’s ideas of nonviolence continue to inspire many modern movements. Pakistani women’s education activist Malala Yousafzai, winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, has used her peaceful struggle to defend the right to education for girls in Pakistan and around the world.
The Salt March was one of the most iconic events of the Indian independence movement and inspired movements around the world. It demonstrated that when the masses are organized and led, they can challenge even the mightiest empires, as Mahatma Gandhi himself once stated: “The greatest strength of a people lies not in their weapons, but in their non-violence and unity.”
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