THE SALT YOU BOUGHT THIS MORNING— AND THE TAX THAT TOPPLED AN EMPIRE

Across India the Civil Disobedience Movement surged. Gandhi himself was arrested on May 5, but the protest did not end with him.

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Under the East India Company, salt became a lucrative source of revenue. In 1759 (two years after Plassey) the Company seized saltworks near Calcutta, suddenly doubling land rents and transit fees on salt transport.

These inequities made salt a flashpoint. In India's hot climate salt was not a luxury but a necessity, and even educated leaders questioned taxing it. By 1930 Mahatma Gandhi decided to confront the salt laws head-on. He wrote to Viceroy Lord Irwin on March 2, demanding repeal of the Salt Acts. When no concessions came, Gandhi planned a nonviolent protest: a march to the sea where he would illegally make salt. On March 12, 1930 he set out from his Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, accompanied by 78 followers. Sabarmati Ashram, Gandhi's home from 1917 to 1930, became the march's launch point.