Salt March

The Salt March disobedience]] in the form of a nonviolent protest, which took place in colonial India on 12 March 1930.

The march was Initiated by Mohandas Gandhi in order to allow the extraction and production of salt from seawater as was the practice of the Bhartiya (Indian) people. British officials deemed such production to be illegal and repeatedly used force to stop it.

The March was a direct action campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly. The march gained worldwide attention and gave impetus to the Indian independence movement; it started the nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement.

The march was the most significant organised challenge to British authority since the Non-cooperation movement of 1920–22, and directly followed the Purna Swaraj declaration of sovereignty and self-rule by the Indian National Congress on 26 January 1930.

Gandhi led the Dandi March from his base, Sabarmati Ashram, near the city of Ahmedabad. 78 people began the march with Gandhi, who intended to walk 240 miles (390 km) to the coastal village of Dandi, which was located at a small town called Navsari in the state of Gujarat. As Gandhi and the others continued on what would become a 24-day march to Dandi to produce salt without paying the tax, growing numbers of Indians joined them along the way. When Gandhi broke the salt laws at 6:30 am on 6 April 1930, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Raj salt laws by millions of Indians. The campaign had a significant effect on changing world and British attitudes towards Indian sovereignty and self-rule and caused large numbers of Indians to join the fight for the first time.

Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (/ˈɡɑːndi, ˈɡæn-/;Hindustani: [ˈmoːɦənd̪aːs ˈkərəmtʃənd̪ ˈɡaːnd̪ʱi]; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the preeminent leader of the Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatma (Sanskrit: "high-souled", "venerable")—applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa,—is now used worldwide. He is also called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for "father", "papa") in India. In common parlance in India he is often called Gandhiji. He is unofficially called the Father of the Nation.

Born and raised in a Hindu merchant caste family in coastal Gujarat, western India, and trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, Gandhi first employed nonviolent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, but above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.

Salt

Common salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in its natural form as a crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantities in seawater, where it is the main mineral constituent; the open ocean has about 35 grams (1.2 oz) of solids per litre, a salinity of 3.5%. Salt is essential for animal life, and saltiness is one of the basic human tastes. The tissues of animals contain larger quantities of salt than do plant tissues; therefore the typical diets of nomads who subsist on their flocks and herds require little or no added salt, whereas cereal-based diets require supplementation. Salt is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous of food seasonings, and salting is an important method of food preservation.

Some of the earliest evidence of salt processing dates to around 8,000 years ago, when people living in Romania were boiling spring water to extract the salts; a salt-works in China has been found which dates to approximately the same period. Salt was prized by the ancient Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Hittites and the Egyptians. Salt became an important article of trade and was transported by boat across the Mediterranean Sea, along specially built salt roads, and across the Sahara in camel caravans. The scarcity and universal need for salt has led nations to go to war over salt and use it to raise tax revenues. Salt is also used in religious ceremonies and has other cultural significance.

Mahātmā

Mahatma (Mə-HÄT-mə) is Sanskrit for "Great Soul" (महात्मा mahātmā: महा mahā (great) + आत्मं or आत्मन ātman [soul]). It is similar in usage to the modern Christian term saint. This epithet is commonly applied to prominent people like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Munshiram (later Swami Shraddhananda), Lalon Shah, Ayyankali and Jyotirao Phule. According to some authors Rabindranath Tagore is said to have used on March 6, 1915, this title for Gandhi;. Some claim that he was called Mahatma by the residents of Gurukul Kangadi in April 1915, and he in turn called the founder Munshiram a Mahatma (who later became Swami Shraddhananda). However, a document honoring him on Jan 21, 1915, at Jetpur, Gujarat, calling him Mahatma is preserved. The use of the term Mahatma in Jainism to denote a class of lay priests, has been noted since the 17th century.

Theosophy

The word, used in a technical sense, was popularized in theosophical literature in the late 19th century, when Madame Helena Blavatsky, one of the founders of the Theosophical Society, claimed that her teachers were adepts (or Mahatmas) who reside in Asia.

Satyagraha

Satyagraha (/ˌsætɪəˈɡrɑːhɑː/; Sanskrit: सत्याग्रह satyāgraha) — loosely translated as "insistence on truth" (satya "truth"; agraha "insistence" or "holding firmly to") or holding onto truth or truth force — is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. The term satyagraha was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi. He deployed satyagraha in the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa for Indian rights. Satyagraha theory influenced Nelson Mandela's struggle in South Africa under apartheid, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s and James Bevel's campaigns during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and many other social justice and similar movements. Someone who practices satyagraha is a satyagrahi.

Origin and meaning of name

The term originated in a competition in the news-sheet Indian Opinion in South Africa in 1906. It was an adaptation by Gandhi of one of the entries in that competition. "Satyagraha" is a Tatpuruṣa compound of the Sanskrit words satya (meaning "truth") and Agraha ("polite insistence", or "holding firmly to"). Satya is derived from the word “sat”, which means “being”. Nothing is or exists in reality except Truth. In the context of satyagraha, Truth therefore includes a) Truth in speech, as opposed to falsehood, b) what is real, as opposed to nonexistent (asat) and c) good as opposed to evil, or bad. This was critical to Gandhi’s understanding of and faith in nonviolence:”The world rests upon the bedrock of satya or truth. Asatya, meaning untruth, also means nonexistent, and satya or truth also means that which is. If untruth does not so much as exist, its victory is out of the question. And truth being that which is, can never be destroyed. This is the doctrine of satyagraha in a nutshell.” For Gandhi, satyagraha went far beyond mere "passive resistance" and became strength in practising non-violent methods. In his words: