Gandhi's strategy and the Salt March
The Congress Working Committee of the The Indian National Congress (INC, often called Congress Party) is a broadly based political party in India (founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire) gave Gandhi the responsibility for organising the first act of civil disobedience, with Congress itself ready to take charge after Gandhi's expected arrest.
Gandhi's plan was to begin civil disobedience with a satyagraha aimed at the British salt tax. The 1882 Salt Act gave the British a monopoly on the collection and manufacture of salt, limiting its handling to government salt depots and levying a salt tax. Violation of the Salt Act was a criminal offence. Even though salt was freely available to those living on the coast (by evaporation of sea water), Indians were forced to buy it from the colonial government.
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 suggested a land revenue boycott instead. The Statesman, a prominent newspaper, wrote about the choice:
"It is difficult not to laugh, and we imagine that will be the mood of most thinking Indians."The British establishment too was not disturbed by these plans of resistance against the salt tax. The Viceroy himself, Lord Irwin, did not take the threat of a salt protest seriously, writing to London,
"At present the prospect of a salt campaign does not keep me awake at night."However, Gandhi had sound reasons for his decision. An item of daily use could resonate more with all classes of citizens than an abstract demand for greater political rights. The salt tax represented 8.2% of the British Raj tax revenue, and hurt the poorest Indians the most significantly. Explaining his choice, Gandhi said:
"Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life."In contrast to the other leaders, the prominent Congress statesman and future Governor-General of India, C. Rajagopalachari, understood Gandhi's viewpoint. In a public meeting at Tuticorin, he said:
Suppose, a people rise in revolt. They cannot attack the abstract constitution or lead an army against proclamations and statutes...Civil disobedience has to be directed against the salt tax or the land tax or some other particular point — not that; that is our final end, but for the time being it is our aim, and we must shoot straight.
Gandhi felt that this protest would dramatise Purna Swaraj in a way that was meaningful to every Indian. He also reasoned that it would build unity between Hindus and Muslims by fighting a wrong that touched them equally.
After the protest gathered steam, the leaders realised the power of salt as a symbol. Nehru remarked about the unprecedented popular response, "it seemed as though a spring had been suddenly released."
Gandhi had a long-standing commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience, which he termed satyagraha, as the basis for achieving Indian sovereignty and self-rule.
Referring to the relationship between satyagraha and Purna Swaraj, Gandhi saw "an inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree."
He wrote:
"If the means employed are impure, the change will not be in the direction of progress but very likely in the opposite. Only a change brought about in our political condition by pure means can lead to real progress."Satyagraha is a synthesis of the Sanskrit words Satya (truth) and Agraha (insistence on). For Gandhi, satyagraha went far beyond mere "passive resistance" and became strength in practising nonviolent methods. In his words:
Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or nonviolence, and gave up the use of the phrase "passive resistance", in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing we often avoided it and used instead the word "satyagraha"....
His first significant attempt in India at leading mass satyagraha was the non-cooperation movement from 1920–1922. Even though it succeeded in raising millions of Indians in protest against the British created Rowlatt Acts, violence broke out at Chauri Chaura, where a mob killed 22 unarmed policemen.
The so-called Rowlatt Acts, or The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, popularly known as the Rowlatt Act and also known as the Black Act, was a legislative act passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in Delhi on March 10, 1919, indefinitely extending the emergency measures of preventive indefinite detention, incarceration without trial and judicial review enacted in the Defence of India Act 1915 during the First World War. It was enacted in light of a perceived threat from revolutionary nationalist organisations of re-engaging in similar conspiracies as during the war. See Hindu-German Conspiracy
Passed on the recommendations of the Rowlatt Committee and named after its president, British judge Sir Sidney Rowlatt, this act effectively authorized the government to imprison any person suspected of terrorism living in the Raj for up to two years without a trial, and gave the imperial authorities power to deal with all revolutionary activities.
The unpopular legislation provided for stricter control of the press, arrests without warrant, indefinite detention without trial, and juryless in camera trials for proscribed political acts. The accused were denied the right to know the accusers and the evidence used in the trial. Those convicted were required to deposit securities upon release, and were prohibited from taking part in any political, educational, or religious activities. On the report of the committee, headed by Justice Rowlatt, two bills were introduced in the central legislature in February 1919. These bills came to be known as "black bills". They gave enormous powers to the police to search a place and arrest any person they disapproved of without warrant.
A well known description of the bills at that time was:
No Dalil, No Vakil, No Appeal
i.e., no pleas, no lawyer, no Appeal. Despite much opposition, the Rowlatt Act was passed in March 1919. The purpose of the act was to curb the growing nationalist upsurge in the country.
After the violent Chauri Chaura incident, Gandhi suspended the protest, against the opposition of other Congress members. He decided that Indians were not yet ready for successful nonviolent resistance.
The Bardoli Satyagraha in 1928 was much more successful. It succeeded in paralysing the British government and winning significant concessions. More importantly, due to extensive press coverage, it scored a propaganda victory out of all proportion to its size. Gandhi later claimed that success at Bardoli confirmed his belief in Satyagraha and Swaraj:
"It is only gradually that we shall come to know the importance of the victory gained at Bardoli...Bardoli has shown the way and cleared it. Swaraj lies on that route, and that alone is the cure..."Gandhi recruited heavily from the Bardoli Satyagraha participants for the Dandi march, which passed through many of the same villages that took part in the Bardoli protests.
On 5 February, newspapers reported that Gandhi would begin civil disobedience by defying the salt laws. The salt satyagraha would begin on 12 March and end in Dandi with Gandhi breaking the Salt Act on 6 April. Gandhi chose 6 April to launch the mass breaking of the salt laws for a symbolic reason—it was the first day of "National Week", begun in 1919 when Gandhi conceived of the national hartal (strike) against the Rowlatt Act.
Gandhi prepared the worldwide media for the march by issuing regular statements from Sabarmati, at his regular prayer meetings and through direct contact with the press. Expectations were heightened by his repeated statements anticipating arrest, and his increasingly dramatic language as the hour approached:
"We are entering upon a life and death struggle, a holy war; we are performing an all-embracing sacrifice in which we wish to offer ourselves as oblation."Correspondents from dozens of Indian, European, and American newspapers, along with film companies, responded to the drama and began covering the event.
For the march itself, Gandhi wanted the strictest discipline and adherence to satyagraha and ahimsa. For that reason, he recruited the marchers not from Congress Party members, but from the residents of his own ashram, who were trained in Gandhi's strict standards of discipline. The 24-day march would pass through 4 districts and 48 villages. The route of the march, along with each evening's stopping place, was planned based on recruitment potential, past contacts, and timing. Gandhi sent scouts to each village ahead of the march so he could plan his talks at each resting place, based on the needs of the local residents. Events at each village were scheduled and publicised in Indian and foreign press.
On 2 March 1930 Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, offering to stop the march if Irwin met eleven demands, including reduction of land revenue assessments, cutting military spending, imposing a tariff on foreign cloth, and abolishing the salt tax. His strongest appeal to Irwin regarded the salt tax:
If my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws. I regard this tax to be the most 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.
As mentioned earlier, the Viceroy held any prospect of a 'salt protest' in disdain. After he ignored the letter and refused to meet with Gandhi, the march was set in motion. Gandhi remarked:
"On bended knees I asked for bread and I have received stone instead."The eve of the march brought thousands of Indians to Sabarmati to hear Gandhi speak at the regular evening prayer. An American academic writing for The Nation reported that "60,000 persons gathered on the bank of the river to hear Gandhi's call to arms. This call to arms was perhaps the most remarkable call to war that has ever been made."
On 12 March 1930, Gandhi and 80 satyagrahis, many of whom were from scheduled castes, set out on foot for the coastal village of Dandi, Gujarat, over 390 kilometres (240 mi) from their starting point at Sabarmati Ashram.
The Salt March was also called the White Flowing River because all the people were joining the procession wearing white khadi.
According to The Statesman, the official government newspaper which usually played down the size of crowds at Gandhi's functions, 100,000 people crowded the road that separated Sabarmati from Ahmadabad. The first day's march of 21 kilometres (13 mi) ended in the village of Aslali, where Gandhi spoke to a crowd of about 4,000. At Aslali, and the other villages that the march passed through, volunteers collected donations, registered new satyagrahis, and received resignations from village officials who chose to end co-operation with British rule.
As they entered each village, crowds greeted the marchers, beating drums and cymbals. Gandhi gave speeches attacking the salt tax as inhuman, and the salt satyagraha as a "poor man's struggle". Each night they slept in the open. The only thing that was asked of the villagers was food and water to wash with. Gandhi felt that this would bring the poor into the struggle for sovereignty and self-rule, necessary for eventual victory.
Thousands of satyagrahis and leaders like Sarojini Naidu joined him. Every day, more and more people joined the march, until the procession of marchers became at least two miles long. To keep up their spirits, the marchers used to sing the Hindu bhajan Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram while walking.
At Surat, they were greeted by 30,000 people. When they reached the railhead at Dandi, more than 50,000 were gathered. Gandhi gave interviews and wrote articles along the way. Foreign journalists and three Bombay cinema companies shooting newsreel footage turned Gandhi into a household name in Europe and America
The New York Times wrote almost daily about the Salt March, including two front-page articles on 6 and 7 April. Near the end of the march, Gandhi declared:
"I want world sympathy in this battle of right against might."In this declaration Gandhi (lawyer by profession) invokes the watershed speech by Abraham Lincoln (lawyer by profession) known as the Cooper Union speech or address, delivered by Abraham Lincoln on February 27, 1860, at the Cooper Union in New York City. Lincoln was not yet the Republican nominee for the presidency, as the convention was scheduled for May. However, it is considered one of his most important speeches. Some historians have argued that the speech was responsible for his victory in the presidential election later that year.
In the speech, Lincoln elaborated his views on slavery by affirming that he did not wish it to be expanded into the western territories and claiming that the Founding Fathers would agree with this position.
Lincoln said that the only thing that will convince the Southerners is to "cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right" supporting all their runaway slave laws and the expansion of slavery. He ends by saying that Republicans, if they cannot end slavery where it exists, must fight through their votes to prevent its expansion. He ends with a call to duty:
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Arriving at the seashore at Dandi
Upon arriving at the seashore on 5 April, Gandhi was interviewed by an Associated Press reporter. He stated:
"With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire."
He then boiled it in seawater, producing illegal salt. He implored his thousands of followers to likewise begin making salt along the seashore, "wherever it is convenient" and to instruct villagers in making illegal, but necessary, salt.
In his call to Indians to resist British domination, Mahatma Gandhi often referred to and drew inspiration from the American revolution.
References to the Indian independence movement are often made in the Indian press, especially in opinion pieces and commentary, and to this extent are part of a developing narrative that plays into a neo-liberal agenda as far as the Americanized concept of freedom is concerned - that is freedom for a market - and security for those accumulating property.
Salt March and Tea Party
Salt is a basic human need - tea from China was a luxury
This is how the narrative goes:
Written by Adrija Roychowdhury | New Delhi | Published: July 4, 2016 3:43:30 pm
On July 4, America celebrates their hard won victory from the oppressive tax system of the British Empire. On this day, about two and a half centuries back, the 13 states of North America, which was part of the British Empire had declared themselves independent and formed the United States of America.
The global significance of the long drawn struggle of the colonists in America to declare themselves free from the Crown in England was realised much later, when British colonies in the East were aggressively striving to fight against colonial rule.
The American struggle for independence was definitely very different from nationalist uprisings in other colonies of the British in the East. In America it was the British settlers who entered into a bitter scuffle with British government authorities. In colonies like India or the West Indies on the other hand, the natives rose unanimously against the tyranny of the rulers from the West. However, the echoes of the American uprising often found themselves penetrating into the writings and speeches of nationalists in the East.
In his call to Indians to resist British domination, Mahatma Gandhi often referred to and drew inspiration from the American revolution. On January 4th, 1932, when Gandhi was actively propagating ‘Satyagraha’, he wrote the following message in his weekly journal, ‘Young India’
“Even as America won its independence through suffering, valour and sacrifice, so shall India, in God’s good time achieve her freedom by suffering, sacrifice and non-violence.”In March 1930, when Gandhi had embarked upon the famous Dandi march to protest against the draconian salt tax imposed by the British authorities, the resonances his movement had with the historic Boston Tea Party are difficult to ignore.
On November 16th, 1773, North American protesters who called themselves ‘Sons of Liberty’ had successfully stirred up the British Empire, when they dumped huge quantities of tea brought to the shores of Boston from China, into the water of the harbour. Dressed like native American-Indians, and crying slogans of ‘Boston harbour a tea-pot tonight’, the North American colonists had fearlessly stood up against the Tea Act imposed by the British government in 1773.
The Tea Act of 1773 gave a monopoly of tea trade to the English East India Company. It was resisted by the colonists on ideological grounds. In the words of Samuel Adams, one of the most prominent leaders of the American revolution the British tea monopoly was “equal to a tax.”
The Boston Tea Party came as a huge shock to the Crown in England and eventually resulted in the bitter conflict between Britain and the thirteen colonies which lasted from 1775-1783, culminating in the independent formation of the United States of America.
Like the Boston Tea Party, Gandhi’s salt march played the role of awakening the British authorities to take seriously the demands of Indian nationalists. The 24-day march, culminating in Gandhi boiling salty mud in sea water, was a symbolic act of resistance against the British government’s monopoly on salt. The salt march was soon followed by a mass civil disobedience movement that shook the very roots of the Raj in India.
Finally, the following year saw the signing of the Gandhi-Irwin pact which was one of the first instances of the British loosening its control on India. In less than two decades after the pact, the British would be seen bidding farewell to this colonial asset.
Reportedly, when Gandhi sat down with Lord Irwin for signing the historic pact, Irwin offered him tea and asked him if he would like sugar or cream to go with it. Gandhi said no to both with a smile and said that he would like to flavour his tea with salt, “to remind us of the famous Boston tea party.”
Dressed up as Mohawk "Indians"?
A few facts?
The Tea Act
The Indemnity Act of 1767, which gave the East India Company a refund of the duty on tea that was re-exported to the colonies, expired in 1772. Parliament passed a new act in 1772 that reduced this refund, effectively leaving a 10% duty on tea imported into Britain. The act also restored the tea taxes within Britain that had been repealed in 1767, and left in place the three pence Townshend duty in the colonies. With this new tax burden driving up the price of British tea, sales plummeted.
The company continued to import tea into Great Britain, however, amassing a huge surplus of product that no one would buy. For these and other reasons, by late 1772 the East India Company, one of Britain's most important commercial institutions, was in a serious financial crisis. The severe famine in Bengal from 1769 to 1773 had drastically reduced the revenue of the East India Company from India bringing the Company to the verge of bankruptcy and the Tea Act of 1773 was enacted to help the East India Company.
The North ministry's solution was the Tea Act, which received the assent of King George on May 10, 1773. This act restored the East India Company's full refund on the duty for importing tea into Britain, and also permitted the company, for the first time, to export tea to the colonies on its own account. This would allow the company to reduce costs by eliminating the middlemen who bought the tea at wholesale auctions in London. Instead of selling to middlemen, the company now appointed colonial merchants to receive the tea on consignment; the consignees would in turn sell the tea for a commission. In July 1773, tea consignees were selected in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston.
The Tea Act in 1773 authorized the shipment of 5,000 chests of tea (250 tons) to the American colonies. There would be a tax of £1,750 to be paid by the importers when the cargo landed. The act granted the EIC a monopoly on the sale of tea that was cheaper than smuggled tea; its hidden purpose was to force the colonists to pay a tax of 3 pennies on every pound of tea.
The Tea Act thus retained the three pence Townshend duty on tea imported to the colonies. Some members of Parliament wanted to eliminate this tax, arguing that there was no reason to provoke another colonial controversy. Former Chancellor of the Exchequer William Dowdeswell, for example, warned Lord North that the Americans would not accept the tea if the Townshend duty remained.
Lord North did not want to give up the revenue from the Townshend tax, primarily because it was used to pay the salaries of colonial officials; maintaining the right of taxing the Americans was a secondary concern.[36] According to historian Benjamin Labaree, "A stubborn Lord North had unwittingly hammered a nail in the coffin of the old British Empire."
Even with the Townshend duty in effect, the Tea Act would allow the East India Company to sell tea more cheaply than before, undercutting the prices offered by smugglers, but also undercutting colonial tea importers, who paid the tax and received no refund. In 1772, legally imported Bohea, the most common variety of tea, sold for about 3 shillings (3s) per pound.
After the Tea Act, colonial consignees would be able to sell it for 2 shillings per pound (2s), just under the smugglers' price of 2 shillings and 1 penny (2s 1d). Realizing that the payment of the Townshend duty was politically sensitive, the company hoped to conceal the tax by making arrangements to have it paid either in London once the tea was landed in the colonies, or have the consignees quietly pay the duties after the tea was sold. This effort to hide the tax from the colonists was unsuccessful.
The protest movement
The protest movement that culminated with the Boston Tea Party was not a dispute about high taxes. The price of legally imported tea was actually reduced by the Tea Act of 1773. Protesters were instead concerned with a variety of other issues. The familiar "no taxation without representation" argument, along with the question of the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies, remained prominent. Samuel Adams considered the British tea monopoly to be "equal to a tax" and to raise the same representation issue whether or not a tax was applied to it. Some regarded the purpose of the tax program—to make leading officials independent of colonial influence—as a dangerous infringement of colonial rights. This was especially true in Massachusetts, the only colony where the Townshend program had been fully implemented.
Colonial merchants, some of them smugglers, played a significant role in the protests. Because the Tea Act made legally imported tea cheaper, it threatened to put smugglers of Dutch tea out of business. Legitimate tea importers who had not been named as consignees by the East India Company were also threatened with financial ruin by the Tea Act. Another major concern for merchants was that the Tea Act gave the East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade, and it was feared that this government-created monopoly might be extended in the future to include other goods.
When the tea ship Dartmouth, arrived in the Boston Harbor in late November, Whig leader Samuel Adams called for a mass meeting to be held at Faneuil Hall on November 29, 1773. Thousands of people arrived, so many that the meeting was moved to the larger Old South Meeting House. British law required Dartmouth to unload and pay the duties within twenty days or customs officials could confiscate the cargo. The mass meeting passed a resolution, introduced by Adams and based on a similar set of resolutions promulgated earlier in Philadelphia, urging the captain of Dartmouth to send the ship back without paying the import duty. Meanwhile, the meeting assigned twenty-five men to watch the ship and prevent the tea – including a number of chests from Davison, Newman and Co. of London – from being unloaded.
Governor Hutchinson refused to grant permission for Dartmouth to leave without paying the duty. Two more tea ships, Eleanor and Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor. On December 16 – the last day of Dartmouth's deadline – roughly 5,000 to 7,000[64] people out of a population of roughly 16,000 had gathered around the Old South Meeting House.
After receiving a report that Governor Hutchinson had again refused to let the ships leave, Adams announced that "This meeting can do nothing further to save the country."
Symbolic Mohawks?
While Samuel Adams tried to reassert control of the meeting, people poured out of the Old South Meeting House to prepare to take action. In some cases, this involved donning what may have been elaborately prepared Mohawk costumes. While disguising their individual faces was imperative, because of the illegality of their protest, dressing as Mohawk warriors was a specific and symbolic choice. It showed that the Sons of Liberty identified with America, over their official status as subjects of Great Britain.
That evening, a group of 30 to 130 men, some dressed in the Mohawk warrior disguises, boarded the three vessels and, over the course of three hours, dumped all 342 chests of tea into the water.
Whether or not Samuel Adams helped plan the Boston Tea Party is disputed, but he immediately worked to publicize and defend it. He argued that the Tea Party was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their constitutional rights.
No taxation without representation
By "constitution" he referred to the idea that all governments have a constitution, written or not, and that the constitution of Great Britain could be interpreted as banning the levying of taxes without representation. For example, the Bill of Rights of 1689 established that long-term taxes could not be levied without Parliament, and other precedents said that Parliament must actually represent the people it ruled over, in order to "count".
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