The significance of the Salt March

IN 2005, there was a resurgence of interest around the world in nonviolence.

- ELA GANDHI

It was the 75th anniversary of the famous Dandi March organised by Mahatma Gandhi. Many peace activists began to consider observing this anniversary in some symbolic way and to re-commit to nonviolence and peaceful means of resolving conflict.

In Durban, a group of people came together under the banner of the Gandhi Development Trust to re-enact this famous march and dubbed it the Gandhi Luthuli Salt March. It symbolically joined the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, drawn up in 1955 in Kliptown at the Congress of the People, with the 75th anniversary of the Dandi March.

The Freedom Charter was drawn up at a time when Chief Albert Luthuli was president of the ANC. This prompted the name Gandhi Luthuli Salt March and in short, the Annual Salt March.

This year, we recall that 95 years ago on April 6, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi and 78 volunteers began their nonviolent defiance march from Sabarmathi Ashram in Ahemdabad in India to the coastal town of Dandi. This turned out to be one of the largest and most effective defiance campaigns in the world in which millions of people throughout India participated by defying the unjust monopoly on salt by the British colonisers of India.

The British not only prohibited the manufacture of salt but also imposed a tax on it.

Salt is an essential ingredient on the table of every person regardless of status, race, class, caste or gender. This prohibition affected everyone, and the act of defiance against this law spread like wildfire across the length and breadth of India, drawing millions into this nonviolent campaign involving the making of salt.

The band of 78 trained volunteers together with Gandhiji walked through hundreds of villages for 241 miles and for 24 days mobilising the communities as they marched, making their way to the seaside village known as Dandi. There they began to manufacture their own salt.