Far ahead of him were the other seven members of his team – the Arun Tukdi or Sunrise Army. Like Dinu, they were volunteers from the Gujarat Vidyapith in Amdavad, abandoning life as college students for a few weeks to join Gandhiji in the fight for freedom from British rule. Two of them, designated leaders of the group, were teachers at the Vidyapith and a few years older than the boys. There were two such Tukdi in total, each alternating between villages along the route, so as to cover more ground.
Well, the others were volunteers. Dinu was only here because his father thought it would “make a man of him”.
“Go, Dinkar,” he’d said. “Serve Bapu; make your bapu proud; make a man of yourself.” Then he had laughed out aloud, as if he didn’t think Dinu could do any of that, and his brothers had joined in the jeering.
Bapu meant father in Dinu’s mother tongue, Gujarati. It was also the word every person in India used to refer to Gandhiji. He was currently on a march, walking from his ashram in Amdavad, down the western coast, through tiny villages and towns, to defy a British law that taxed the most common of all household elements – salt. Salt making, an ancient tradition followed all along the coast, was now forbidden to Indians, who were forced to buy the mineral at exorbitant rates.
Over the course of three weeks, Bapu and a team of about eighty men from across India were walking from village to village, speaking to people along the way about the fight for freedom. In a few days, this walk would end at the seashore, where Bapu planned to defy the British empire’s laws by gathering salt from the beach. And the site for this act of defiance?
Dandi.
Bapu’s work was important, but Dinu was hardly built for living in villages, building shelters and cooking. After all, the Tukdi had a daunting job. They had to travel ahead of the marchers, making arrangements for them in each village identified as a rest stop. They were to travel by whatever means they could arrange – train, bullock cart, boat – to each village where they were to organize the setting up of shelters for the marchers dig toilet trenches and ditches where required, lay roads, arrange for food and water – anything needed to ease the marchers’ stay. They were expected to cook their own meals in case the village found it difficult to feed them.
The Tukdi, unless offered accommodation, were to set up and manage their own shelter outside the village. They were to accept only a very frugal meal from the villages they were guests in, and supplement these with gram and jaggery rations that Ghulam would dole out daily. They were to go around the village, encouraging people to spin, handing out spindles to anyone showing an interest, and urging them to boycott British-made goods. “You cannot be a burden on our poverty-stricken brethren,” Bapu had said. “We cannot do to them what the British are doing to our nation.” Any free time they had was to be spent in prayer, spinning and keeping a diary of their daily experiences, thoughts and reflections.
A sharp pain flared up Dinu’s leg as he bore down on the stiff, squeaky pedals of Moriarty. It was one of several cycles they had rented from a shop outside Navsari station, to cover the last leg of their journey, about five kos, roughly sixteen kilometres. The shopkeeper had refused to take a paisa in rent when they told him they were with Bapu. “Bring me back news of Bapu when you return them,” he had said. “That will be my payment.”
But he had also shaken his head when he heard where they were headed.
“Rasto bau kharab chhe,” he had said, gloomily. “The road is very bad.”
Excerpted with permission from A Demon in Dandi, Lavanya Karthik, Duckbill.
