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 Editorials | Opinions | April 2005 
Mahatma's Forgotten March
 J. Sri Raman - t r u t h o u t
| | After a 26-day, 241-mile trek across a difficult terrain, the marchers reached the coastal village of Dandi. |
On April 6, interested television-watchers in India may witness the re-enactment of a historic event. To some of them, the repetition may appear a tragedy; to others, a farce.
The tragedy is that the Dandi March of Mahatma Gandhi is only a dim national memory today. The farce is that many of those celebrating the 75th anniversary of the event cannot be further from an awareness of its spirit and significance.
April 6, 1930, marked the culmination of the Dandi March or the Salt Satyagraha (or Truth Force, as Gandhi called his non-violent campaign). On March 12, he had set out with a 78-strong band from his ashram (retreat) in Sabarmati, Gujarat, on the Indian freedom movement's first campaign on a common person's issue. Common salt became the stake in this uncommon struggle.
The 60-year-old leader had chosen the British salt law as a symbol of colonial oppression and injustice. He set out to break the Salt Law, which gave the British rulers the monopoly over manufacture and sale of salt and put the vital mineral almost above the poor Indian's reach. Before starting the march, he wrote to British Viceroy Lord Irwin: "I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man's standpoint. As the Independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land, the beginning will be made with this evil."
After a 26-day, 241-mile trek across a difficult terrain, the marchers reached the coastal village of Dandi. Here, Gandhi stooped to conquer, as he scooped up a tiny bit of salt in powerfully symbolic defiance of an iniquitous law and the imperial might behind it.
The gesture inspired a gigantic tide of popular protest against the law across the land. Tens of thousands of common Indians filled the British jails in India, after similarly violating the law, braving police batons without retaliation, in an unbelievably amazing response to Gandhi's appeal.
"My life," said the Mahatma, "is my message." Especially so, to me and to many others, are two episodes of an epic life - the Dandi March and the martyrdom of January 30, 1948, when Gandhi fell to a fascist bullet for preaching Hindu-Muslim brotherhood. The two defining moments carried a single, indivisible message.
Long after Dandi, Gandhi was to recall how an "inner voice" revealed to him the path he sought, at a moment when the movement seemed to have lost direction. He was groping for an issue that would galvanize the Indian people as a whole, despite growing tensions, especially religious-communal ones. In an inspired flash, he found his answer in an issue that concerned the salt of the Indian earth.
The anti-fascist significance of the march has been all but forgotten. Those retracing Gandhi's steps over the last 25 days are passing through a Gujarat that witnessed a grisly anti-minority pogrom in 2002 - one that they did precious little to counter, let alone prevent.
The march, which placed the poor majority of India center-stage, also pitted them against militarism. Count this, too, among the forgotten facts about the barefoot campaign that shook the British Empire. Talking of a "fistful of salt" as the symbol of India's freedom, in a statement during the march, Gandhi told the people: "Let the fist be broken, but let not the precious salt be surrendered." He tried to teach the people that guns cold be answered with their grim resolve.
The prophet, though honored by the poor at home, has posthumous critics here in plenty. My last tribute to the Mahatma in these columns elicited angry responses from many Indian readers. Let me assure them: I am no 'Gandhian' of the kind that gets their goat, and not a follower of any of his fads. As any fair reading of his life should show, however, his non-violence was no fad. It was a militant 'no' to militarism.
The critics often sound like the friends of Vivan, son of Gandhi's great-grandson Tushar Gandhi, who mooted the idea of re-enacting the march. Vivan, an eighth-standard student, complained to a reporter covering the current march: "My friends keep irritating me. They call me Gandhi and, as a joke, they will slap me on one cheek and ask me to show the other."
The Mahatma never showed "the other cheek" in meek submission to injustice, but only as a challenge to militarist might. It is Vivan's juvenile friends whom we hear in jingoist defense of the Gujarat carnage or other flagrant displays of communal fascism. It is the same taunt that is thrown at those who want India to make peace with Pakistan, even by taking unilateral initiatives.
It is also the ridicule reserved for those who want the land of the Mahatma to be liberated from nuclear militarism. The sad irony of the Dandi anniversary celebrations is that the marchers of today include many who never tire of the mantra of "the minimum credible nuclear deterrent."
India awaits another Dandi - a mass movement that puts the focus of the country's politics back on the cause of the people as well as peace.
A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). |
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