Dandi March: 12th March- 6th April, 1930

This day, 84 years ago began the Dandi March. This is the story of its evolution, based on the writing of Narayan Desai, from the book My Life is my Message.

He had decided that there should be more experiments in non-violence as the country witnessed sporadic incidences of violence between 1927-1930. Mahatma Gandhi believed that if one could lengthen the line of non-violence, then the line of violence would automatically become shorter even without being actively erased.

Once he was given the leadership of the Congress at Lahore, the country was excited for the Civil Disobedience movement. Assembled journalists were eager to know what strategy he would be adopting next. Gandhi told them that as soon as God helped him comprehend, he would make the announcement. They accused him of being a wily person, who wanted to spring a surprise on the government.  Gandhi said, ‘I know no trick other than truth”. He told this even to Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, who had also asked him the manner in which he was going to do that.  

He then wrote a letter to Lord Irwin, the Viceroy with 11 points to take some action to convince them if their intention was to give India the dominion status. He said only if they take some of these steps, it will convince them that they were really inclined to give India their independence. The fourth point was about salt. He received no response and was told that the Viceroy did not want to meet Gandhi to which he said that when I asked for rotis, they gave me stones in return.  And thus he announced that he would be breaking the salt-tax law (It was a tax on the food that people ate, on the agriculture that they did, the cattle they owned, and most cruelly it was a tax on the poorest of the poor. The production cost of twenty kilos of salt was about 10 pie, while the tax on it was 20 annas, that is 2400%. Then there was the Salt Act which gave wide ranging powers of seizure, detention, search and arrest to the salt revenue officer. By taking it on, Gandhiji had made injustice to the poor central to the struggle for freedom)  by going on a 24 day 240 mile (390 km) march  to the sea shore in Dandi, a small village on the coast of Saurashtra.   

On the night between 11^th and 12^th March, the whole of the Sabarmati Ashram was awake as they were sure Gandhi would be arrested before the march began; the only person sleeping was Mohandas Gandhi. Why worry about what is going to happen the next day? Let me sleep now, he said and so he slept.

At 6 am on the 12^th, Kasturba applied tilak to three generations together and bade farewell to her husband Mohandas Gandhi, her son, Manilal Gandhi and her grandson, Kantilal Harilal Gandhi, then to the other 76 marchers. Then the march began with  'Vaishnava jan to’ and the Ramdhun, ‘raghupati raghava rajaram’! The march was a way of awakening the people. Pilgrims were not new for the people of India. For thousands of years the country had seen her great men go on pilgrims. 

Gandhi and his band of marchers reached the shores of Dandi at 7:30 pm on April 5^th and on the morning of April 6^th as he bent down to lift a fistful of sand he broke the salt-tax law. Haridas Majumdar, his young associate from his days in South Africa, wanted a message for a friend in New York. Gandhiji wrote his now world famous message: ‘I want world sympathy in this battle of Right against Might.’