Today, The Grandma has been reading about one of the greatest demonstrations of non-violence protest of the recent history, the Salt March, the act of non-violent civil disobedience in colonial India led by Mahatma Gandhi.
The Salt March, also known as the Salt Satyagraha, Dandi March and the Dandi Satyagraha, was an act of non-violent civil disobedience in colonial India led by Mahatma Gandhi.
The twenty-four-day march lasted from 12 March 1930 to 5 April 1930 as a direct action campaign of tax resistance and non-violent protest against the British salt monopoly.
Another reason for this march was that the Civil Disobedience Movement needed a strong inauguration that would inspire more people to follow Gandhi's example.
Gandhi started this march with 78 of his trusted volunteers. The march spanned 390 km, from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, which was called Navsari at that time, now in the state of Gujarat. Growing numbers of Indians joined them along the way. When Gandhi broke the British Raj salt laws at 6:30 am on 6 April 1930, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the salt laws by millions of Indians.
After making the salt by evaporation at Dandi, Gandhi continued southward along the coast, making salt and addressing meetings on the way. The Congress Party planned to stage a satyagraha at the Dharasana Salt Works, 40 km south of Dandi. However, Gandhi was arrested on the midnight of 4–5 May 1930, just days before the planned action at Dharasana.
More information: History
The Dandi March and the ensuing Dharasana Satyagraha drew worldwide attention to the Indian independence movement through extensive newspaper and newsreel coverage.
The satyagraha against the salt tax continued for almost a year, ending with Gandhi's release from jail and negotiations with Viceroy Lord Irwin at the Second Round Table Conference. Although over 60,000 Indians were jailed as a result of the Salt Satyagraha, the British did not make immediate major concessions.
The Salt Satyagraha campaign was based upon Gandhi's principles of non-violent protest called satyagraha, which he loosely translated as truth-force.
Literally, it is formed from the Sanskrit words satya, truth, and agraha, insistence. In early 1930 the Indian National Congress chose satyagraha as their main tactic for winning Indian sovereignty and self-rule from British rule and appointed Gandhi to organize the campaign.
Gandhi chose the 1882 British Salt Act as the first target of satyagraha.
The Salt
March to Dandi, and the beating by British police of hundreds of
non-violent protesters in Dharasana, which received worldwide news
coverage, demonstrated the effective use of civil disobedience as a
technique for fighting social and political injustice.
The satyagraha teachings of Gandhi and the March to Dandi had a significant influence on American activists Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, and others during the Civil Rights Movement for civil rights for African Americans and other minority groups in the 1960s.
The march was the most significant organized challenge to British authority since the Non-cooperation movement of 1920–22, and directly followed the Purna Swaraj declaration of sovereignty and self-rule by the Indian National Congress on 26 January 1930.
It gained worldwide attention which gave impetus to the Indian independence movement and started the nationwide Civil Disobedience movement which continued till 1934.
At midnight on 31 December 1929, the Indian National Congress raised the tricolour flag of India on the banks of the Ravi at Lahore. The Indian National Congress, led by Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, publicly issued the Declaration of sovereignty and self-rule, or Purna Swaraj, on 26 January 1930.
On 5 February, newspapers reported that Gandhi would begin civil disobedience by defying the salt laws.
The salt satyagraha would begin on 12 March and end in Dandi with Gandhi breaking the Salt Act on 6 April.
Gandhi chose 6 April to launch the mass breaking of the salt laws for a symbolic reason -it was the first day of National Week, begun in 1919 when Gandhi conceived of the national hartal (strike) against the Rowlatt Act.
On 12 March 1930, Gandhi and 78 satyagrahis, among whom were men belonging to almost every region, caste, creed, and religion of India, set out on foot for the coastal village of Dandi, Gujarat, 385 km from their starting point at Sabarmati Ashram.
The Salt March was also called the White Flowing River because all the people were joining the procession wearing white khadi.
More information: ThoughtCo I & II
According to The Statesman, the official government newspaper which usually played down the size of crowds at Gandhi's functions, 100,000 people crowded the road that separated Sabarmati from Ahmadabad. The first day's march of 21 km ended in the village of Aslali, where Gandhi spoke to a crowd of about 4,000. At Aslali, and the other villages that the march passed through, volunteers collected donations, registered new satyagrahis, and received resignations from village officials who chose to end co-operation with British rule.
As they entered each village, crowds greeted the marchers, beating drums and cymbals. Gandhi gave speeches attacking the salt tax as inhuman, and the salt satyagraha as a poor man's struggle. Each night they slept in the open. The only thing that was asked of the villagers was food and water to wash with.
Gandhi felt that this would bring the poor into the struggle for sovereignty and self-rule, necessary for eventual victory.
Thousands of satyagrahis and leaders like Sarojini Naidu joined him. Every day, more and more people joined the march, until the procession of marchers became at least 3 km long.
Mass civil disobedience spread throughout India as millions broke the salt laws by making salt or buying illegal salt.
Salt was sold illegally all over the coast of India. A pinch of salt made by Gandhi himself sold for 1,600 rupees, equivalent to $750 at the time. In reaction, the British government arrested over sixty thousand people by the end of the month.
What had begun as a Salt Satyagraha quickly grew into a mass Satyagraha. British cloth and goods were boycotted. Unpopular forest laws were defied in the Maharashtra, Karnataka and Central Provinces. Gujarati peasants refused to pay tax, under threat of losing their crops and land. In Midnapore, Bengalis took part by refusing to pay the chowkidar tax.
The British responded with more laws, including censorship of correspondence and declaring the Congress and its associate organizations illegal.
None of those measures slowed the civil disobedience movement.
More information: Non Violent Liberation Strategy
then they fight you, then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi
No comments:
Post a Comment