The march began on 12 March 1930. Gandhi left Sabarmati Ashram at 6.30 am, accompanied by 79 satyagrahis.
Mahatma Gandhi’s march to Dandi to break the salt tax drew international attention. For the first time his picture appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
The march began on 12 March 1930. Gandhi left Sabarmati Ashram at 6.30 am, accompanied by 79 satyagrahis. Thirty came from Gujarat, thirteen from Maharashtra, seven from UP, six from Kutch, three from Punjab, one from Sind, four from Kerala, three from Rajputana (Rajasthan), one from Andhra, one from Karnataka, one from Tamil Nadu, two from Bombay, one from Bihar, one from Bengal, one from Utkal, one from Fiji, one from Nepal. Two Muslims and one Christian also joined the March.
The distance from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi was 220 miles. On the march Gandhiji passed through forty cities, towns and villages. As the march proceeded tens of thousands came to see and hear the Mahatma. At night he slept in pre-selected places.
The Bombay Chronicle reporter observed, “Indescribable scenes of enthusiasm marked the progress of the march of the Swaraj army on the fourth day…the rich and the poor, millionaires and mazdors, ‘caste’, Hindu and so called untouchables, one and all, vied with one another in honouring India’s great liberator… How can I have ‘Darshan’ of Bapuji was the only anxiety of everybody. All castes, creeds, religions, interests were merged into one irresistible wave of patriotism. All appeared a perfect Gandhi Raj. The authority of Government seemed to be almost non-existent…”
On 1 April, Gandhi reached Surat. In the evening he addressed a meeting of a hundred thousand people.
During the march he wrote dozens of letters, made fifty speeches, gave six press interviews.
Rajmohan Gandhi, in his masterly biography of his grandfather, Mohandas writes about what transpired on 5 and 6 April. “Gandhi and his army reached Dandi without being arrested. Admitting that he had been ‘wholly unprepared for this exemplary non-interference’ from the government, Gandhi credited the policy to ‘world opinion which will not tolerate repression’ even of ‘extreme political agitation’ when that agitation remained non-violent.”
Early next morning, on the first day of National Week, Gandhi bathed in the ocean, stepped up to where the salt lay, scooped some of it with his fingers, straightened himself and showed what he had collected to the multitude around him. Journalists from India and abroad had rushed to Dandi, to report on one of the most dramatic and historic events in Gandhi’s life. For the journalists Gandhi wrote, “I want World sympathy in this battle of Right against Might.”
All over India salt was illegally made, sold and purchased, Rajmohan continues, “Often the action was en masse. In south Kheda’s coastal village of Badalpur, around 20,000 people illegally picked up salt on 13th April… In the south Rajagopalachari led an army of 100 carefully selected satyagrahis on a 145-mile track to Vedaranyam on the Bay of Bengal. Those providing food or accommodation to the marches were harassed and in several cases imprisoned, but the people supported C.R (Rajaji). On 30th April his marches were able to defy the law, make salt and invite arrest. The officer who tried to suppress the Vedarahyam march, J.A Thorns, reported ‘If there existed a fervid sense of devotion to the government it is now defunct’.”
The most comprehensive book on the Salt March has been written by Thomas Weber, an Australian academic. He had been researching and writing on Gandhi for twenty years. He had visited India several times. In 1983 he came with the intention of writing a book on Gandhi’s march to Dandi to break the salt law, imposed by the British in the 1880s. Weber book is 543 pages long with many illustrations.
What did Dandi march achieve? Here is Weber’s answer:
“Perhaps one of the best gauges of success of the Salt March is the way it has entered popular mythology. Talking to those old enough to remember the heady days of 1930, the consistent response is that the event transformed the feeling in the country from one of pessimism to revolution, that nothing which could now be said about those times could possibly capture the intense sense of drama and drama that surrounded the event, that the movement changed the country before and after the Dandi March was not the same.”