Gandhi’s Salt March: Paradoxes and Tensions in the Memory of Nonviolent Struggle in India

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

On 12 March 1930, Mahatma Gandhi, accompanied by 78 followers embarked on a march of more than 200 miles from his Sabarmati Ashram near Ahmedabad to the seaside village of Dandi to commence a nonviolent campaign whose goal was to defy the salt tax and the British Government’s monopoly over salt collection and manufacturing. ‘Next to air and water’, Gandhi explained, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life. It is the only condiment of the poor. … There is no article like salt outside water by taxing which the State can reach even the starving millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. The tax constitutes therefore the most inhuman poll tax that ingenuity of man can devise. (Gandhi, 1999b, p.

Original languageAmerican English
Title of host publicationPalgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
Pages32-51
Number of pages20
DOIs
StatePublished - 2015

Publication series

NamePalgrave Macmillan Memory Studies

Keywords

  • Civil Disobedience
  • Indian Government
  • Planning Commission
  • Social Memory
  • Special Economic Zone

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Cultural Studies
  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
  • Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
  • Linguistics and Language

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