The Salt March - Chapter 2 Nationalism in India Class 10 History
Here you will learn about the topic Salt March which is a part of Chapter 2 Nationalism in India Class 10 History that will make you understand the various factors through which one can improve their efficiency. You will be able to understand the subject in a more advanced way and also in a simpler way. It will help the students to recall information with more precision and faster.
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The Salt March - Chapter 2 Nationalism in India Class 10 History
• When the celebrations of ‘Purna Swaraj’ or full independence of 26 January 1930 failed to gather large attention, Mahatma Gandhi had to find a way to relate this abstract idea of freedom to more concrete issues of everyday life so he could gather masses.
• Mahatma Gandhi found in salt a powerful symbol that could unite the nation. The 1882 British Salt Act that gave the British a monopoly on the collection and manufacture of salt and allowed them to levy a salt tax.
• On 31 January 1930, he sent a letter to Viceroy Irwin stating eleven demands in which some of these were of general interest, others were specific demands of different classes, from industrialists to peasants.
→ The idea was to make the demands wide-ranging, so that all classes within Indian society could identify with them and everyone could be brought together in a united campaign.
• The most stirring of all was the demand to abolish the salt tax. Salt was something consumed by the rich and the poor alike, and it was one of the most essential items of food. The tax on salt and the government monopoly over its production, Mahatma Gandhi declared, revealed the most oppressive face of British rule.
• Mahatma Gandhi gave an ultimatum, if the demands were not fulfilled by 11 March, the letter stated, the Congress would launch a civil disobedience campaign.
→ Irwin ignored the letter and was unwilling to negotiate. So, Mahatma Gandhi started his famous salt march.
• Gandhi planned to stage a 240-mile march from his Sabarmati ashram in Ahmedabad to the coastal village of Dandi accompanied by 78 of his trusted volunteers where he would publicly break the Salt Laws on 6 April 1930.
• The volunteers walked for 24 days, about 10 miles a day. Thousands came to hear Mahatma Gandhi wherever he stopped, and he told them what he meant by swaraj and urged them to peacefully defy the British.
• On 6 April he reached Dandi, and ceremonially violated the law, manufacturing salt by boiling sea water.
• The action of Mahatma Gandhi inspired millions of other Indians to break the Salt Laws by producing salt by themselves and refusing to pay the tax. This marked the beginning of the Civil Disobedience Movement.
• People were now asked not only to refuse cooperation with the British, as they had done in 1921-22, but also to break colonial laws.