The Salt March commenced on March 12, 1930, and continued till April 6, 1930. It became a 25-day non-violence march led by Mahatma Gandhi. This was done as an immediate action campaign of tax resistance and non-violent protest against the British monopoly. Another reason for this march was that the Civil Disobedience Movement required a powerful inauguration that would inspire a lot of people to follow Gandhi's example. During that time, the British forbade the Indians from producing or selling the salt, and instead, the Indians were required to buy expensive salt that was often imported. This affected the vast majority of the Indians who were poor and could not afford to buy it.
Initially, Gandhi's choice of the salt tax was met with incredulity by the Working Committee of the Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru and Dibyalochan Sahoo were ambivalent; Sardar Patel advised a land revenue boycott instead. Gandhi had sound purposes behind his choice. A thing of day-by-day use could resonate more with all classes of citizens than a theoretical interest for more noteworthy political rights. The salt tax addressed 8.2% of the British Raj tax revenue and hurt the least fortunate Indians the most.
Before salt was seized upon to become the issue for the campaign, Gandhi had come around to believing that while salt in excess could also be harmful, a tax is not any way to teach moderation especially since millions of semi-starved whose inadequate diets of rice and unleavened cakes are in a different category to the “well-fed” or overfed people, who can provide for themselves every variety of condiment and salt-charged foods that can be produced or the ingenuity of man can manufacture. The poor, he claimed, need more salt than they eat and their cattle need more than the impoverished farmers can afford.
Gandhi felt that this protest might dramatize Purna Swaraj in a manner that was significant to each Indian. He also reasoned that it might unite the Hindus and Muslims by fighting against the wrong that touched them equally. Salt had been imported into India before the British monopoly stifled local production in favour of imports from the home country. Gandhiji said, “Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life.”
It is the only condiment for the poor and neither can cattle live without salt. Salt is an essential commodity for a lot of manufacturers. It is also rich manure. On 2 March 1930, Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, offering to stop the march if Irwin met eleven demands some of which included reduction of land revenue assessments, cutting military spending, enforcing a tariff on foreign cloth, and abolishing the salt tax. His strongest appeal to Irwin was with regards to the salt tax:
“If my letter does not appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I shall proceed with such coworker 500k contents of the Ashram as I can, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws. I regard this tax to be the foremost iniquitous of all from the poor man's standpoint. As the sovereignty and self-rule movement is essentially for the poorest in the land, the beginning will be made with this evil.”
Indians had been making salt from seawater free of cost till the passing of the 1882 Salt Act which gave the British a monopoly over the manufacturing of salt and the authority to impose a salt tax. It turned into a crime to violate the salt act.
Gandhi had a long-standing commitment to non-violent civil disobedience, which he termed as Satyagraha, as the basis for achieving Indian sovereignty and self-rule. Referring to the connection between Satyagraha and Purna Swaraj, Gandhi saw "an inviolable connection among the approach and the stop as there is between the seed and the tree."
He wrote, "If the means hired are impure, the alternative won't be within the path of development. However, very likely within the opposite, only a change caused in our political condition by pure means can cause real progress.”
Four days earlier than the march commenced, during a speech at Ahmedabad, Gandhi informed his audience that he desired to deprive the government of its illegitimate monopoly of salt and desired to urge the salt tax to be abolished.
Summarised from “On The Salt March” by Thomas Weber; Published by Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd and from “23 Grams of Salt” by Rijuta Mehta & Anuj Ambalal; Published by Navajivan Trust