Entry 36. March to the sea

Tyranny often manifests itself in silly ways. Laws against dark-skinned people using the same facilities as light-skinned people are somewhat nonsensical, for example. Another silly law prohibited the people of a land called India from making their own salt. Really.

The remote government, based several thousand miles away on a different continent, passed a law that prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt. The idea was to force people to buy their salt from businesses sanctioned by the government, which also levied a heavy salt tax on the purchases.

Mohandas Gandhi, who had studied Thoreau, reasoned that defying the silly Salt Act would be an ideal way to fight the government in nonviolent fashion. In EY 1930, tens of thousands of people led by Gandhi gathered on the shore of the Arabian Sea to make their own salt from the salty ocean water.

The act of defiance set off a wave of mostly nonviolent demonstrations, and the remote government arrested 60,000 people, including Gandhi – a healthy start on Thoreau’s goal of crowding the jails to the point of jamming the wheels of government.

I said “mostly nonviolent.” The violence, however, was initiated by the government.

Gandhi had feared what eventually happened, warning his followers that they must be prepared for the worst, even death, in their effort to throw off the salt tax – just as Thoreau in his much milder protest was prepared to go to jail for his belief.

While he was in jail, a group of 2,500 peaceful marchers outside a salt factory allowed themselves to be brutally beaten by a group of police officers acting under government instructions.

A reporter who observed the “raid” on the salt factory recorded what happened after the marchers refused to obey a police order to disperse:

Police charged, swinging their clubs and belaboring the raiders on all sides. The volunteers made no resistance. As the police swung hastily with their sticks, the natives simply dropped in their tracks.

Less than 100 yards away I could hear the dull impact of clubs against bodies. The watching crowds gasped, or sometimes cheered as the volunteers crumpled before the police without even raising their arms to ward off the blows. With almost unbelievable meekness they submitted to the clubbing and were carried away by their comrades who had collected a score of stretchers.

As the attacks continued, stretcher bearers were overworked. Other volunteers joined, using blankets as stretchers for the injured who were falling so fast that the volunteers established a clearing station a hundred yards from the pans.

I counted 42 injured lying on the muddy ground and a few others who were unconscious and writhing in pain.

After police had driven the raiders back, leaders altered their tactics and started stretching themselves on the ground or sitting in front of the police as closely as they could press to the entanglements. They were warned repeatedly by police, who then struck the men sitting in front of them. The volunteers who were hit simply reeled over on the ground – without making a cry or an effort to defend themselves.

The incident caused a worldwide outcry against the government’s actions, and although it would be more than a decade before India became free, Gandhi showed how effective nonviolent protest could be in shaming the tyrant into ending the tyranny – assuming of course that the tyrant is capable of shame.

But it must be said that India remained independent for many years after that, while violent regimes came and went in surrounding countries. To me it was a demonstration that violence begets violence, while freedom won without violence seemed more lasting.

Entry 37. The man from Greeley