THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE PARTITION OF INDIAthe impact of the agitation and it had finally ended up in violence. Now he
had the brilliant idea of selecting the Government of India’s salt monopoly
as a suitable target.
The salt tax affected all parts of the population and especially the poor;
the law which ensured the government’s monopoly could be easily and
demonstratively broken by picking up some salt near the sea. In order to
intensify the dramatic effect of this demonstration, Gandhi recruited a
reliable batch of ‘satyagrahis’ and marched with them over a long distance
to the beach at Dandi, Gujarat. The press reported the daily progress of
this salt march. After Gandhi finally picked up the first grain of salt
thousands of people from all parts of India did likewise and thus courted
arrest. Contemporary observers were surprised at the enormous response
which Gandhi elicited in this way. He had engineered a perfect symbolic
revolution: one that pitted the Indians against the British but did not create
a conflict of Indian interests.
In addition he announced an eleven-point programme which he termed
the ‘substance of Independence’. These points reflected various Indian
interests and thus constituted a common meeting-ground. The abolition of
the salt tax was only one of these points; Gandhi also asked for a 50 per
cent reduction of the land revenue, for protective tariffs on textiles, for a
devaluation of the rupee from 1s. 6d. to 1s. 4d. Several other grievances
were similarly highlighted.
When Gandhi started his campaign in April 1930 the impact of the
Great Depression had not yet affected India. But while the campaign was
in full swing the wheat price fell and landlords and tenants in the wheat-
growing regions of northern India came into conflict because the
landlords—themselves pressed by their creditors—mercilessly collected
their rents, which the tenants found difficult to pay as their income had
dwindled. Jawaharlal Nehru and other radical Congress members of
northern India advocated Congress support for a ‘no-rent’ campaign by the
tenants. Gandhi and the old guard of the Congress were hostile to the idea
because they wanted to avoid a class struggle which would drive the
landlords into the arms of the British. But Nehru made some calculations
which foreshadowed the land reform introduced at a later stage. He came
to the conclusion that the Congress could very well risk alienating the
small group of landlords. In fact, driving them into the arms of the British
would be no bad thing: sooner or later they would have to be deprived of
their privileges and then it would be much better if they could be attacked
as allies of the British, rather than placated as adherents of the freedom
movement.
In the winter of 1930–1 the situation became more tense and Lord
Irwin, who had so far watched the campaign with equanimity, got worried
about the prospect of a peasants’ revolt. Gandhi indicated that he would
be prepared for a compromise. He was obviously interested in terminating