The Salt March

Of all the taxes of the Raj, Gandhi chose the smallest and the most intimate: the levy on salt, which no Indian, however poor, could avoid, and which made it a crime to gather what the sea left free on the shore. On 12 March 1930 he walked out of Sabarmati Ashram with seventy-eight chosen marchers, vowing not to return until India was free, and turned south toward the coastal village of Dandi, 241 miles away.

The march took twenty-four days, and the world walked alongside. Villages strewed the roads with leaves; headmen resigned their posts as he passed; foreign correspondents wired each day's miles to every continent. On the morning of 6 April, at the tideline, Gandhi bent and lifted a fistful of salty mud — and with that gesture made the law absurd.

India erupted in imitation. Salt was made and sold illegally in every province; Sarojini Naidu led 2,500 volunteers on the Dharasana salt works, where they walked unresisting into police staves, rank after rank, until the wire services carried the horror worldwide. Some 60,000 went to prison, Gandhi among them. Time magazine named him Man of the Year; the Raj had lost the argument in front of the whole world.