Salt March

Also called: Dandi March, Salt Satyagraha, Civil Disobedience Movement

Defying the British salt monopoly, Gandhi walked some 390 km from his ashram to the seaside at Dandi and made salt from seawater, signalling civil disobedience across India.

Britain held a monopoly on salt in India and taxed it, so even the poorest paid the salt tax. Gandhi chose this issue, which everyone could understand, as the symbol of civil disobedience. On 12 March 1930 he left the Sabarmati Ashram at Ahmedabad with 78 companions and, speaking in village after village, walked for 24 days to reach the shore at Dandi on 5 April. When he picked up natural salt on the beach the next morning in breach of the law, people all along the coast made salt and refused British goods and taxes.

Britain jailed some 60,000 people, Gandhi among them, and foreign reporters’ accounts of unarmed marchers being clubbed down by police won worldwide sympathy. The Gandhi–Irwin Pact of 1931 ended the campaign, and Gandhi attended the Round Table Conference in London but returned with nothing. The Salt March became a symbol of non-violent resistance and a mass movement in which women took part in large numbers.