Learning How to Salt March

I believe we will need a Salt March of our own. The original Salt March was organized by M.K. Gandhi after he issued India's Declaration of Independence in 1930. In contrast to the events that followed the American Declaration of Independence, Gandhi wanted to fulfill the demands of India's declaration nonviolently. Toward that end he organized the Salt March to Dandi.

Gandhi used the Salt March to illustrate the senselessness of British rule over Indians.

Occurring  throughout low-lying coastal zones of India, salt was readily accessible to laborers who were instead forced to pay money for a mineral which they could easily collect themselves for free (Jack 235). Moreover, Gandhi's choice met the important criterion of appealing across regional, class, and ethnic boundaries. Everyone needed salt, and the British taxes on it had an impact on all of India. (source) (emphases added)

At the time, it was illegal for Indians to make salt; indeed the sale or production of salt by anyone but the British government was a criminal offense punishable by law. Gandhi, at age 61, led a procession of marchers, who walked over 200 miles, to the coast, where Gandhi made salt from seawater, an act for which he was arrested.

While the Salt March took place in 1930, Indian Independence was not achieved for another seventeen years, in 1947. But the Salt March forced the British to negotiate directly with Gandhi (the first time they did so with an Indian) and gained Gandhi respect from other Indian leaders, such as Nehru, who understood the symbolic emancipation the Salt march represented. (source)

Comments

[truthisgold]

Excellent idea! We need to remember and practice the examples set by Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King and all of those who have succeeded in effecting change through nonviolent initiave.