Examine why Gandhiji started the Salt Satyagraha. Why was Salt Satyagraha notable event?

OR

Examine the outcome of the provincial elections of 1937 and explain the role of Congress ministries and Muslim League on it.

With the end of the Non-cooperation Movement, Gandhiji focused on social reforms. On 26 January 1930, Independence Day was observed. The national flag was hoisted in different places and patriotic songs were being sung. After this event, Gandhiji proclaimed that he would lead a satyagraha to break the Salt Law that gave the government the monopoly in the production and sale of salt.

Gandhiji chose salt over all other commodities as in every Indian household, salt was an essential material. Still, people were not allowed to make salt even for domestic use. They had to buy it from shops at a very high price. This policy of the government had wide disdain among the masses. Thus Gandhiji decided to organise the Salt Satyagraha to break this practice. According to Gandhiji, the salt tax is a fourfold curse. It denies the people of a valuable village industry, involves wanton destruction of property that nature produces in abundance, this destruction results in more national expenditure and results in the extraction of tax of from the starving population.

On 12 March 1930, Gandhiji started the Dandi March. He started walking from his ashram at Sabarmati towards Dandi, a coastal area in the Gujarat coast. He reached Dandi three weeks later, made a fistful of salt and broke the Salt Law. Subsequent salt marches were carried out conducted in other parts of the country by many prominent leaders. During the movement, nearly 60,000 Indians were arrested including Gandhiji.

The salt satyagraha was a notable movement in the freedom struggle. Gandhiji gave speeches and talks in every village that he visited. He urged the local officials to renounce government employment and join the freedom struggle. All the meetings of Gandhiji’s were well attended. The gathering consisted of people from by all castes including both women and men.

The movement brought into its folds thousands of ordinary Indians. It especially rejuvenated youth. They left their colleges and were ready to join the satyagraha. The movement revealed the active participation of the middle-class of the cities in the freedom struggle. Thousands of students left the government-owned schools and colleges, headmasters and teachers resigned and lawyers gave up their legal practices. The council elections were also boycotted in many provinces. Merchants and traders refused to trade in foreign goods or finance foreign trade. As the movement spread, people began to discard imported clothes and foreign goods.

The production and sales of domestic swadeshi goods increased. Khadi and other handlooms were extensively produced and sold through the country. Many units were established that undertook the spinning of Khadi. The Indian industries expanded their production. The movement spread rapidly at its commencement from the cities to the countryside and villages.

The Salt Satyagraha had three important implications:

• The satyagraha gave world-wide attention to Gandhiji and his ideas. The march was frequently covered and reported by both the European and American press.

• It was the first nationalist movement that saw the participation of women in large numbers. The activist Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay had convinced Gandhiji not to limit the protests to men alone. She was one of the women who was arrested.

• The Salt Satyagraha gave consciousness to the British that their rule would not last forever. They had to transfer some power to the Indians.

OR

In 1937, elections to the provincial legislatures were conducted for the first time. But the voting rights was not enjoyed equally by everyone in the country. It was highly restricted according to the caste, land ownership and political power. Also, women did not have the right to vote. Thus only about 10% to 12% of the population had the right to vote.

The Congress performed well in the elections. The party won an absolute majority in 5 out of 11 provinces. It formed governments in 7 of them. But the Congress performed badly in the constituencies reserved for Muslims. The Muslim League did not have a huge success. It could get only 4.4% of the total Muslim vote cast in this election. It was not able to win a single seat in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and could win only 2 out of 84 reserved constituencies in the Punjab and 3 out of 33 in Sind.

In the United Provinces, the Muslim League had wished to form a coalition government with the Congress. But since the Congress had won an absolute majority in the province, it rejected the offer. Scholars are of the opinion that this denial by Congress convinced the League that if India stayed united, Muslims would find it difficult to gain political power. They would always remain to be a minority.

The League was of the view that only a Muslim party could represent the interest and requirements of the Muslims. The Congress was fundamentally a Hindu party and Muslims were a minority. But Jinnah’s persistence that the League should be considered as the only spokesman of Muslims could not be accepted by everyone. Initially, the League was popular only in the United Provinces, Bombay and Madras. Its political base in other areas was slowly growing. Its support was still weak in the important provinces of Bengal, the NWFP and Punjab. Even in Sind, it failed to form the government. With this incident, the League increased its efforts to increase its social support and had a detached relation with the Congress.

The activities of the Congress also accelerated the widening split between the two. In the United Provinces, the party had rejected the League’s suggestion of forming a coalition government. This was mainly because the League had supported landlordism, which the Congress wanted to be abolished. Even though Congress insisted on secularism, the policies were not properly followed. In 1937, Maulana Azad stated that members of the Congress were not allowed to join the League, but Congressmen were part of radical organisations like the Hindu Mahasabha. The Congress Working Committee declared that Congress members could not be members of the Mahasabha only in December 1938. Cow protectionism and other radical activities of the Congress distressed the conservative Muslims and increased this widening rift between the two.

All these activities from the part of both the parties increased the feeling of communalism in the country. The activities of the Congress convinced the League that India was indeed a Hindu county and they would not be properly represented. All these ideas finally resulted in the partition of the country after independence in 1947 into India and Pakistan.