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KF5JRV > TODAY 12.03.19 13:30l 57 Lines 3089 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 32625_KF5JRV
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Subj: Today in History - Mar 12
Path: IW8PGT<IR2UBX<IZ3LSV<IW0QNL<JH4XSY<N3HYM<KF5JRV
Sent: 190312/1127Z 32625@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.18
On March 12, 1930, Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi begins a
defiant march to the sea in protest of the British monopoly on salt, his
boldest act of civil disobedience yet against British rule in India.
Britain’s Salt Acts prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt,
a staple in the Indian diet. Citizens were forced to buy the vital
mineral from the British, who, in addition to exercising a monopoly over
the manufacture and sale of salt, also exerted a heavy salt tax.
Although India’s poor suffered most under the tax, Indians required
salt. Defying the Salt Acts, Gandhi reasoned, would be an ingeniously
simple way for many Indians to break a British law nonviolently. He
declared resistance to British salt policies to be the unifying theme
for his new campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience.
On March 12, Gandhi set out from Sabarmati with 78 followers on a
241-mile march to the coastal town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea. There,
Gandhi and his supporters were to defy British policy by making salt
from seawater. All along the way, Gandhi addressed large crowds, and
with each passing day an increasing number of people joined the salt
satyagraha. By the time they reached Dandi on April 5, Gandhi was at the
head of a crowd of tens of thousands. Gandhi spoke and led prayers and
early the next morning walked down to the sea to make salt.
He had planned to work the salt flats on the beach, encrusted with
crystallized sea salt at every high tide, but the police had forestalled
him by crushing the salt deposits into the mud. Nevertheless, Gandhi
reached down and picked up a small lump of natural salt out of the
mud–and British law had been defied. At Dandi, thousands more followed
his lead, and in the coastal cities of Bombay and Karachi, Indian
nationalists led crowds of citizens in making salt. Civil disobedience
broke out all across India, soon involving millions of Indians, and
British authorities arrested more than 60,000 people. Gandhi himself was
arrested on May 5, but the satyagraha continued without him.
On May 21, the poet Sarojini Naidu led 2,500 marchers on the Dharasana
Salt Works, some 150 miles north of Bombay. Several hundred British-led
Indian policemen met them and viciously beat the peaceful demonstrators.
The incident, recorded by American journalist Webb Miller, prompted an
international outcry against British policy in India.
In January 1931, Gandhi was released from prison. He later met with Lord
Irwin, the viceroy of India, and agreed to call off the satyagraha in
exchange for an equal negotiating role at a London conference on India’s
future. In August, Gandhi traveled to the conference as the sole
representative of the nationalist Indian National Congress. The meeting
was a disappointment, but British leaders had acknowledged him as a
force they could not suppress or ignore.
India’s independence was finally granted in August 1947. Gandhi was
assassinated by a Hindu extremist less than six months later.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
email: KF5JRV@ICLOUD.COM
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