Today is the 85th anniversary of the Dandi march, Gandhi’s programme of direct action against the British, which sparked off the Civil Disobedience Movement. The Raj taxed salt heavily and was a visible symbol of the colonial state intruding into the lives of every Indians. The aim of the Dandi March was to defy this tax and make salt illegally, thus undermining the government.
Early in the morning of March 12, 1930, the Mahatma and 78 other members of his ashram in Sabarmati set out to hike cross-country across Gujarat to the coastal village of Dandi. The 390-km journey took 24 days to complete and was carefully planned to create maximum impact in the global media. Gandhi in his first statement on reaching Dandi said: “The British Government, powerful though it is, is sensitive to world opinion."
Even as the global media lapped this unique protest up, The Statesman, a British-owned newspaper was acerbic about this “childishly theatrical” challenge to the Raj using the somewhat obscure Salt Tax: “It is difficult not to laugh, and we imagine that will be the mood of most thinking Indians.” Two “thinking Indians” who agreed with The Statesman were Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel who, along with many other Congress leaders, didn’t really think making such a big issue of salt would suit the Indian public’s tastes.
Electrified India
With the 20/20 vision that hindsight provides, it can be comprehensibly said that they were all wrong: Gandhi’s genius for having a finger on the nation’s pulse was reaffirmed. By the time he reached Dandi, the Mahatma’s train of supporters was 3.2 km long and the mood of the nation was electric. On April 6, when he waded into the sea and picked up a handful of mud – colonial officials had, in a fit of pique, removed all the actual salt beforehand – the Salt Satyagraha started with a bang.
Congress workers were encouraged to make sat illegally but then, to up the ante, satyagrahis also raided government salt works. One of those salt works raided was in Wadala, then a suburb of Mumbai.
Wadala has today been enfolded into the city. It is an eclectic mixture of modern gated communities, older low-rise buildings and slums and contains within it the monorail: Mumbai’s grand homage to poor civic planning. After spending Rs 1,100 crore on it, the monorail is running empty, an impressive feat in a city as crowded as Mumbai.
Surrounded by flyovers and high-rises are Wadala’s salt pans (although soon, there might only be high-rises). They can even be seen on Google Maps, as bright white squares on the “Earth view”. The squares are shallow artificial ponds, dried out in the sun for workers to dredge salt out of.
Epicentre of the Salt Satyagraha
The Wadala salt pans were the epicentre of the Salt Satyagraha, raided almost daily by Gandhians aiming to spirit away some salt without paying any tax. Many raids would feature crowds that were tens of thousands strong. On the May 18, 1930, the Bombay Congress Bulletin reported a successful raid and for good measure poked the British on their failure to stop the satyagrahis: “The police and particularly the excited sergeants cut a ridiculous figure trying to chase little boys or their more grown up compeers who easily escaped with the salt they had taken away.”
Furious, the next day the British responded with force. The Congress Bulletin reported:
Police violence on unarmed protestors was a common feature of the movement (a feature inherited seamlessly by Independent India). At the Dharasana Salt Works in Gujarat, the world learnt of the police’s brutality on unarmed protestors via an American correspondent, Webb Miller of the United Press. His vivid report of the incident describing, amongst other things, “the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls” created a global furore and was, 50 years later, even featured as a dramatic scene in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi.
Gandhi-Irwin Pact
A year after the movement had begun, however, the satyagrahis were growing weary. Gandhi, therefore, entered into an agreement with the Viceroy, Lord Irwin to call off the movement in return for a release of all political prisoners. Gandhi also agreed to participate in the second Round Table Conference to discuss India’s future constitution. While the British did not concede anything major – India was still a colony and even the salt tax was still in place – the political mobilisation and delegitimisation of the Raj caused by the satyagraha was significant.
While colonial power, naturally didn’t concede Gandhi’s demands, ironically, neither has modern India: India still taxes salt production. In other words, going to, Dandi, and simply walking off with some salt is still illegal.
It isn't like attempts weren’t made to end the salt tax: in April 1, 1947, Nehru’s interim government did abolish the salt duty. Once the patriotic rush of blood to the head had subsided, however, more prosaic worries of administration took over. As the website of the Salt Department points out, seemingly, without irony: “After abolition of duty on salt, a question arose how to meet expenses for maintaining salt department. [The] Government of India imposed a cess on salt in the nature of excise duty with effect from April 1, 1947 which was subsequently regularised by enacting salt cess Act, 1953.”
Salt cess still exists
The salt cess still exists and goes to meet the expense of the Salt Department, which once upon a time manufactured a large proportion of India’s salt, thought that function has now been mostly taken over by the private sector. The department’s primary function today is that of a landlord, leasing out large tracts of land to make salt: Mumbai itself has 5,000 acres of salt pans.
Not only is the cess and the continued existence of the Salt Department somewhat ironic in a nation that reveres the Mahatma as its primary founding father, it also makes little economic sense. In 2013-'14, the Salt Cess collected came up to Rs 3.3 crore, but the expenses of the Salt Department were almost nine times greater: Rs 27.2 crores.
As far back as 1978, The High Level Salt Enquiry Committee had recommended removing the cess but nothing happened. There was a new ray of hope when the newly installed Modi government moved to repeal 36 obsolete laws. But the Salt Cess hasn’t, as of yet, faced the chopping block. In the 2015 Budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hopes to collect Rs 4.1 crore from the white mineral.
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Early in the morning of March 12, 1930, the Mahatma and 78 other members of his ashram in Sabarmati set out to hike cross-country across Gujarat to the coastal village of Dandi. The 390-km journey took 24 days to complete and was carefully planned to create maximum impact in the global media. Gandhi in his first statement on reaching Dandi said: “The British Government, powerful though it is, is sensitive to world opinion."
Even as the global media lapped this unique protest up, The Statesman, a British-owned newspaper was acerbic about this “childishly theatrical” challenge to the Raj using the somewhat obscure Salt Tax: “It is difficult not to laugh, and we imagine that will be the mood of most thinking Indians.” Two “thinking Indians” who agreed with The Statesman were Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel who, along with many other Congress leaders, didn’t really think making such a big issue of salt would suit the Indian public’s tastes.
Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Electrified India
With the 20/20 vision that hindsight provides, it can be comprehensibly said that they were all wrong: Gandhi’s genius for having a finger on the nation’s pulse was reaffirmed. By the time he reached Dandi, the Mahatma’s train of supporters was 3.2 km long and the mood of the nation was electric. On April 6, when he waded into the sea and picked up a handful of mud – colonial officials had, in a fit of pique, removed all the actual salt beforehand – the Salt Satyagraha started with a bang.
Congress workers were encouraged to make sat illegally but then, to up the ante, satyagrahis also raided government salt works. One of those salt works raided was in Wadala, then a suburb of Mumbai.
Wadala has today been enfolded into the city. It is an eclectic mixture of modern gated communities, older low-rise buildings and slums and contains within it the monorail: Mumbai’s grand homage to poor civic planning. After spending Rs 1,100 crore on it, the monorail is running empty, an impressive feat in a city as crowded as Mumbai.
Surrounded by flyovers and high-rises are Wadala’s salt pans (although soon, there might only be high-rises). They can even be seen on Google Maps, as bright white squares on the “Earth view”. The squares are shallow artificial ponds, dried out in the sun for workers to dredge salt out of.
Epicentre of the Salt Satyagraha
The Wadala salt pans were the epicentre of the Salt Satyagraha, raided almost daily by Gandhians aiming to spirit away some salt without paying any tax. Many raids would feature crowds that were tens of thousands strong. On the May 18, 1930, the Bombay Congress Bulletin reported a successful raid and for good measure poked the British on their failure to stop the satyagrahis: “The police and particularly the excited sergeants cut a ridiculous figure trying to chase little boys or their more grown up compeers who easily escaped with the salt they had taken away.”
Furious, the next day the British responded with force. The Congress Bulletin reported:
WADALA RAID – LAWLESSNESS AND BRUTALITY – As soon as the satyagrahis entered the prohibited area the excise policemen fell upon the satyagrahis and began to belabour them. One had his skull fractured; one satyagrahi was so severely thrashed that he fell down unconscious. They dealt him seven lathi blows and continued beating him even though he was unconscious. After performing their meritorious work, the assaulters put a finishing touch to their law and order business by throwing the wounded satyagrahis like dogs out of the salt pans into the muddy soil outside.
Police violence on unarmed protestors was a common feature of the movement (a feature inherited seamlessly by Independent India). At the Dharasana Salt Works in Gujarat, the world learnt of the police’s brutality on unarmed protestors via an American correspondent, Webb Miller of the United Press. His vivid report of the incident describing, amongst other things, “the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls” created a global furore and was, 50 years later, even featured as a dramatic scene in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi.
Gandhi-Irwin Pact
A year after the movement had begun, however, the satyagrahis were growing weary. Gandhi, therefore, entered into an agreement with the Viceroy, Lord Irwin to call off the movement in return for a release of all political prisoners. Gandhi also agreed to participate in the second Round Table Conference to discuss India’s future constitution. While the British did not concede anything major – India was still a colony and even the salt tax was still in place – the political mobilisation and delegitimisation of the Raj caused by the satyagraha was significant.
While colonial power, naturally didn’t concede Gandhi’s demands, ironically, neither has modern India: India still taxes salt production. In other words, going to, Dandi, and simply walking off with some salt is still illegal.
It isn't like attempts weren’t made to end the salt tax: in April 1, 1947, Nehru’s interim government did abolish the salt duty. Once the patriotic rush of blood to the head had subsided, however, more prosaic worries of administration took over. As the website of the Salt Department points out, seemingly, without irony: “After abolition of duty on salt, a question arose how to meet expenses for maintaining salt department. [The] Government of India imposed a cess on salt in the nature of excise duty with effect from April 1, 1947 which was subsequently regularised by enacting salt cess Act, 1953.”
Salt cess still exists
The salt cess still exists and goes to meet the expense of the Salt Department, which once upon a time manufactured a large proportion of India’s salt, thought that function has now been mostly taken over by the private sector. The department’s primary function today is that of a landlord, leasing out large tracts of land to make salt: Mumbai itself has 5,000 acres of salt pans.
Not only is the cess and the continued existence of the Salt Department somewhat ironic in a nation that reveres the Mahatma as its primary founding father, it also makes little economic sense. In 2013-'14, the Salt Cess collected came up to Rs 3.3 crore, but the expenses of the Salt Department were almost nine times greater: Rs 27.2 crores.
As far back as 1978, The High Level Salt Enquiry Committee had recommended removing the cess but nothing happened. There was a new ray of hope when the newly installed Modi government moved to repeal 36 obsolete laws. But the Salt Cess hasn’t, as of yet, faced the chopping block. In the 2015 Budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hopes to collect Rs 4.1 crore from the white mineral.