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FREEDOM MOVEMENT
Eternal India
encyclopedia
DANDI MARCH - 1930
MAHATMA BREAKS
SALT LAW
His Son and Lieutenants
Arrested
Maharashtra Volunteers
Begin Campaign At Juhu
Gandhiji's Appeal for
Nation-Wide Mass
Civil Disobedience
The Bombay Chronicle, 7 April, 1930
“NAMAK KA KAYADA TOD DIYA”
Gandhji breaking the Salt law at Dandi
The 1930s saw the freedom struggle
take many steps ahead. The decade began
with the second non-co-operation movement;
it ended with the beginning of the Second
World War and the Congress ministries in the
provinces resigning as a protest against India
being involved in the war without her consent.
The labour movement also gained a foothold
in the political thinking in the country.
Communist
newspapers
like
Kirti,
Mazjdur, Kisan, Spark
and
Kranti
spread in the
towns. January 1930 was a month of high en-
thusiasm in India. The session of the Congress
ended on January 1.
Jawaharlal Nehru, as president of the
Congress, hoisted the tri-colour flag of Indian
independence on the bank of the Ravi at Lahore.
On January 26, the Independence Day was
observed. On the same day the people all over
India took the
'Pledge of Independence
The pledge was, "We believe that it is the
inalienable right of the Indian people...to have
freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil...so
that they may have full opportunities of
growth.... if any government deprives a people
of these..., the people have a further right to
alter it or to abolish it. The British Govern-
ment in India....deprived the Indian people of
their freedom...exploited the masses and ru-
ined India economically, politically, cultur-
ally and spiritually. We believe, therefore,
that India must sever the British connection
and attain Purna Swaraj....
“We recognise that the most effective way
of gaining our freedom is not through
violence...We will, therefore... withdraw all
voluntary association from the British
Government, and will prepare for civil
disobedience.... We are convinced that they
would ensure the end of inhuman rule. We,
therefore, hereby solemnly resolve to carry
out the Congress instructions issued from time
to time for... establishing Puma Swaraj."
On 2nd March 1930, Gandhiji sent a
letter to the Viceroy listing out the wrongs
done to India, holding the British rule to be a
curse. He gave an ultimatum that in the ab-
sence of a positive response from the Viceroy,
he would proceed to violate the salt laws. The
letter again went unheeded. The Viceroy's Pri-
vate Secretary regretted that Gandhiji was
contemplating a course of action clearly bound
to involve violation of law and danger to the
public peace.
Gandhiji wrote,
'On bended knees I asked for bread
and received a stone instead.... The
only public peace the Nation knows is
the peace of the prison-house. India is
a vast prison-house. I repudiate this
law and regard it as my sacred duty to
break the mournful monotony of com-
pulsory peace that is choking the heart
of the Nation'.
Gandhi started the civil disobedience by
walking from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi to
make salt on the seashore in defiance of the
salt-law regulations. He covered the distance-
of 241 miles in 24 days from March 12 (1930)
to April 6. Gandhi was accompanied by 78
followers through the Gujarat villages to
Dandi on the sea coast.
National consciousness was electrified
when Gandhiji began his Dandi March. One
important aspect here was the entry of women
into the civil disobedience movement. In the
Young India
on 30th April, Gandhiji had
appealed to Indian women to take up spinning
yarn on the charka, and to come out of their
household seclusion and picket shops selling
foreign goods or liquor and Government insti-
tutions.
Gandhi's plan was a grand conception
and it was superbly executed with a consum-
mate skill. The slow march by itself from
village to village, roused the entire country-
side to a realistic sense of the coming struggle
for swaraj contemplated by the Congress. As
wide publicity was given in the press to every
detail of the march and display of the unique
devotion to Gandhi and enthusiasm for the
cause he had espoused, among the masses, the
story of the
'Pilgrims Journey to Dandi'
worked
up the feelings of the country as a whole, such
as nothing else could.
Meanwhile, through the summer heat of
April and May 1930, the rank and file volun-
teers defied the salt laws. This march aroused
intense enthusiasm throughout its route and
attracted a tremendous amount of publicity,
both in India and abroad.
The villagers flocked from all sides
sprinkled the roads, strewed leaves on them,
and as the marchers passed, sank on their
knees. Over three hundred village headmen
gave up their jobs. Early in the morning of the
sixth of April, Gandhi and his party dipped