Mahatma Gandhi: The Salt March

Mahatma Gandhi: The Salt March Esther David

Many years ago, the government of Great Britain took control over the country of India.

The British made it illegal for Indians to collect, produce, or sell salt. They also forced Indians to pay a salt tax. This harmed the people of India for many years. Salt became very expensive and it was difficult for Indians, especially poor people, to buy the salt they needed.

Anyone who produced or sold salt in India, except for the British, could be imprisoned for six months.

The Indian leader Gandhi, and many others, said the salt tax and the restrictions on salt production were unfair. They decided to protest against them. Gandhi said, "Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life."

Salt is important because it makes food taste good, but more importantly, salt is essential for health.

In 1930, Gandhi organized a march from the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, to the seaside village of Dandi, in the south of Gujarat. It started with just seventy-eight people.

The marchers were called freedom fighters because they struggled not only against unfair laws but for Indian freedom from British rule.

Along the two hundred and forty miles from Ahmedabad to Dandi, thousands of people from all over India joined the march. They protested British rule, the high salt taxes, and the unfairness of not being allowed to produce and sell their own salt.

Gandhi and his followers walked about twelve miles a day and reached Dandi in three weeks. He called it "a battle of right against might."

At the end of the march, Gandhi picked up some grains of salt from the seashore and made a pledge: "With these crystals of salt, I am going to shake the foundation of the British Empire."

With the Salth March, Gandhi had launched the Civil Disobedience Movement against the British Empire.

Soon after, eighty thousand Indians, along with Gandhi, were jailed.

But the British administration eventually freed Gandhi and invited him to London to discuss reforms in India.

News of Gandhi's Salt March spread around the world. It proved to be a turning point in the history of India's independence movement. India finally gained independence from Britain in 1947.

With his simple act of standing up against injustice, Gandhi changed the world.

He showed that while each person might be as small and powerless as a grain of salt, if people of courage and conviction worked together, they could make an enormous difference.