On This Day - Mahatma Gandhi Began His Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Movement, Or The Dandi March, In 1930

Gandhi began his march from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, and covered 387 kilometres (240 mi).

On March 12 in the year 1930, Mahatma Gandhi began his Salt March, also known as the Salt Satyagraha or the Dandi March. It was an act of nonviolent civil disobedience in colonial India, and the twenty-four day march lasted till 6 April 1930.

The movement was nothing but an open and direct campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly. It was also conducted because the Civil Disobedience Movement needed a strong inauguration.

MK Gandhi began the march with 78 of his trusted volunteers, covering 387 kilometres (240 mi), from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, which was at the time called Navsari. As he moved ahead, huge numbers of Indians joined them. Gandhi finally broke the British Raj salt laws at 8:30 am on April 6, 1930, and it inspired people in large scale to conduct civil disobedience against the salt laws.

After he made salt by evaporation at Dandi, Gandhi moved southward along the coast. He made salt and also spoke to people along the way. The Congress Party then wanted to stage a satyagraha at the Dharasana Salt Works, but Gandhi ended up getting arrested on the midnight of 4–5 May 1930.

The Dandi March brough worldwide attention to the Indian independence movement, and the satyagraha against the salt tax lasted for almost a year, with Gandhi's release from jail. As part of the Salt Satyagraha, over 60,000 Indians were jailed.

To say the least, the Salt Satyagraha movement followed Gandhi's principles of nonviolent protest called satyagraha, comprising two Sanskrit words - satya, "truth", and agraha, "insistence". It even influenced several American activists including Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, and others during their Civil Rights Movement for African Americans and other minority groups in the 1960s.

Finally, India achieved Purna Swaraj with sovereignty and self-rule by the Indian National Congress on 26 January 1930.