Civil Disobedience and the Salt Satyagraha, 1930–34

Detail

Why salt? The eleven demands and the ultimatum

• 31 January 1930 — Gandhi wrote a letter to Viceroy Lord Irwin. In it he put eleven demands.
• The demands were picked to touch all classes — from rich industrialists to the poorest peasant. This was deliberate: one list that every Indian could see themselves in.
• Gandhi set a deadline. If the demands were not met by 11 March, Congress would start civil disobedience.
• The most important demand was to abolish the salt tax.
• Why salt was the perfect target:
• Everyone eats salt — rich and poor, in every province.
• The colonial state kept a monopoly of manufacture and sale (only the government could make salt or sell it; ordinary people making salt was a crime).
• Gandhi called the salt tax the "fourfold curse" — it hit the people in four ways at once.

• He said salt was taxed "more than 1,000 per cent" of its value.

• So salt joined a moral issue (a tax on the poorest man's food) with a practical one (a law anyone could break, anywhere, with their own hands).

The Dandi March, 12 March – 6 April 1930

• Started 12 March 1930 from Sabarmati Ashram with 78 trusted volunteers.
• Walked about 240 miles (roughly 385 km) to the coastal village of Dandi, taking around 24 days — about 10 miles a day. [2]
• The march was slow on purpose. Each day the group stopped in a different village, and bigger and bigger crowds gathered to hear Gandhi explain why the tax was unjust to the poor. Hundreds more walkers joined the core group on the way. [2]
• On 6 April 1930 Gandhi broke the salt law by making salt from boiled sea water.
• His line at that moment: "when a whole nation is roused… no leader is necessary." That was the plan — every village could now make its own salt without waiting for orders.

Note: Britannica says the marchers reached Dandi on 5 April and that on the morning of 6 April Gandhi "picked up handfuls of salt" from the shore. NCERT records the act as making salt by boiling sea water on 6 April. Keep the NCERT version for the exam. [2]

Civil Disobedience vs Non-Cooperation — what changed

• Non-Cooperation Movement (NCM, 1920–22): Indians refused to cooperate — gave up titles, left schools, courts, councils, foreign cloth.
• Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM, 1930): Indians went further and broke colonial laws openly.
• Forms the breaking took:
• Salt made everywhere along the coast and inland.
• Boycott of foreign cloth; shops selling it were picketed.
• Picketing of liquor shops (standing outside to stop customers going in — this also hit government excise income).
• Refusal to pay revenue and chaukidari tax (chaukidari tax = a village tax paid to keep a village watchman).
• Village officials resigning their posts.
• Forest people broke forest laws — collecting wood and grazing cattle where the state had banned it.

Repression: Peshawar and Sholapur

• April 1930 — Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a Gandhi follower, was arrested. Angry crowds came out in Peshawar and faced armoured cars and police firing; many were killed.
• A month later, Gandhi himself was arrested (early May 1930). [2]
• Industrial workers in Sholapur answered by attacking the symbols of British power — police posts, municipal buildings, law courts and railway stations.
• 21 May 1930 — Dharasana Salt Works raid: about 2,500 peaceful marchers, led by the poet Sarojini Naidu, walked on the salt works. Police beat them down as they came forward, row after row, and they did not hit back. [4]
• Scale of arrests: about 60,000 arrested in the months after the march (class 12 figure, matching the "by end of 1930 some 60,000 in jail" count) and about 100,000 arrested overall across the movement (class 10 figure). [2][4]

The Gandhi–Irwin Pact and the Round Table Conferences

• Gandhi released from jail in January 1931; talks with Irwin followed. [2]
• Gandhi–Irwin Pact, 5 March 1931 — terms:
• Gandhi called off the Civil Disobedience Movement.
• The government released the political prisoners.
• Indians were allowed to make salt along the coast for their own use. [2][3]

• No promise of independence and no promise of self-government — this is the key exam point.

• First Round Table Conference, November 1930, London — held without Congress (its leaders were in jail), so it went nowhere.

• Second Round Table Conference, September–December 1931 — Gandhi attended as the sole Congress representative, with Sarojini Naidu also present. [3][4]
• His claim that Congress spoke for all of India was challenged from three sides:
  • the Muslim League — said Congress did not speak for Muslims;
  • the Princes — said Congress had no say in the princely states;
  • Dr B.R. Ambedkar — said Congress did not speak for the Depressed Classes.

• The session failed — no agreement on the constitution and none on communal representation (who gets reserved seats for which community). [3]

• After the failure, Viceroy Lord Willingdon hit back hard: Congress was declared illegal, leaders jailed, and meetings banned.

• Congress relaunched civil disobedience, but it lost momentum by 1934 and was withdrawn.

Three lasting significances

• 1. World attention. Foreign newspapers followed the march day by day. The American magazine Time, which had first mocked Gandhi's thin frame and "spindly legs", ended by calling him a "Saint and Statesman". The Raj could no longer act unwatched.
• 2. First mass participation of women.
• Thousands of women walked out of their homes to hear Gandhi, make salt, and picket liquor and foreign-cloth shops.

• Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay persuaded Gandhi not to limit the protest to men — a turning point for women in the national movement.

• 3. British realisation. The Raj understood that it could not hold India by force alone and would have to devolve power — hand over some power to Indians. The question was now how much and when, not whether.

Prelims Hooks

• Gandhi's letter to Lord Irwin with eleven demands was written on 31 January 1930; the ultimatum expired 11 March 1930.
• The Dandi March began 12 March 1930 from Sabarmati Ashram with 78 volunteers, covering about 240 miles (385 km) in roughly 24 days. [2]
• Gandhi broke the salt law on 6 April 1930 at Dandi by making salt from boiled sea water.
• Gandhi called the salt tax the "fourfold curse" and said salt was taxed "more than 1,000 per cent".
• Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was arrested in April 1930; crowds in Peshawar faced armoured cars.
• The Dharasana Salt Works raid of 21 May 1930 was led by Sarojini Naidu with about 2,500 marchers. [4]
• Gandhi–Irwin Pact: 5 March 1931 — CDM withdrawn, prisoners freed, coastal salt-making allowed; no independence commitment. [2][3]
• The First RTC (Nov 1930) had no Congress; the Second RTC (Sept–Dec 1931) had Gandhi but failed on the communal question. [3]
• Gandhi's claim to represent all India at the Second RTC was contested by the Muslim League, the Princes, and Dr B.R. Ambedkar.
• Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay convinced Gandhi to let women join the protest; Lord Willingdon was the Viceroy who declared Congress illegal after the Second RTC.

Mains Points

• Why salt was a masterstroke of political strategy. It was the one law that the richest merchant and the poorest landless labourer could break in the same way, on the same day, with the same moral cover. Unlike NCM's boycotts — which cost students their degrees and lawyers their practice — salt-making cost nothing and could be done in any coastal village. It converted a legal-constitutional demand into a mass, self-replicating act, which is exactly what "no leader is necessary" means.
• CDM was a wider but shallower movement than NCM. It pulled in new groups — rich peasants (Patidars, Jats) hit by the Depression's falling prices, poor tenants wanting rent remission, and business groups wanting tariff protection. But each group had its own goal, so when Gandhi withdrew in 1931 the coalition broke. Use this to argue that Gandhian mass movements peaked and receded in cycles, each leaving behind a bigger organised base.
• The Gandhi–Irwin Pact: victory or retreat? Congress got prisoner release, the salt concession, and — most importantly — recognition as a negotiating party, which is why the Second RTC happened at all. Against that: no independence commitment, momentum lost, and the Second RTC's failure over communal representation exposed that Congress did not in fact speak for everyone. The Ambedkar and League challenges at the Second RTC are the direct seed line to the Poona Pact (1932) and to the Pakistan demand.
• Women and the transformation of the public sphere. The 1930 movement was the first time women entered nationalist politics in large numbers, and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay's intervention shows this was won by argument, not granted. Note the limit for a balanced answer: participation was real but leadership stayed largely male, and Gandhi framed women's role in terms of sacrifice and moral strength rather than equal political rights.