Where is Dandi Beach located?
On the other side of Navsari, the coastal village of Dandi was the historical site of where the Salt Satyagraha started when Gandhi broke the Salt Tax Act and taught fellow Indians how to make “illegal” salt from the salty shores of Dandi beach. This act is considered by many to be the beginning of the fall of British rule.
This monument stood next to a larger-than-life statue of Gandhi bending down and picking up the salty mud that he would later boil and extract salt from.
The inscription reads: “Here On April 6, 1930, Gandhiji Broke The Salt Law Picked Salt And Challenged The Rule Of The Mighty British Which Ultimately Won For Our Motherland Freedom on August 15, 1947.”
I admit I couldn’t imagine exactly what it must feel like to Indians to be in a place where such revolution took place, and their country was never the same from that day. My whole life I’ve lived in a safe and protected environment. I did appreciate the parallel between the Salt Tax revolution in India and America’s revolt against the (British) Tea Tax in the form of the Boston Tea Party. Both acts sparked a longer-term revolution for both countries.
On Dandi Beach, we were treated to a beautiful sunset and directly behind us a bright moon was already starting to reflect brightly. Families that had spent the day on the beach were readying to go home, and the random camel was still taking children around for trips on the beach.
The sun in India doesn’t disappear into the horizon cleanly like it does in San Diego, for example. It disappears in what it seems to be a few feet above the water line. Wherever there are people in India, there are bound to be refreshments. On the waterfronts and beaches, this was especially true. One of the more popular refreshments that I saw in India is crushing whole sugar cane to make sugar cane juice. Sometimes they would add syrups, lime juice or ice but most of the time I saw it in its pure form, squeezed straight from the cane to glass. You would see machines to squeeze out the sugar cane, with a glass or bucket on the other side of the machine to catch the liquid. Here he’s feeding the pieces of cane into the machine.
Sometimes the best way to enjoy sugar cane was to start eating it directly. Chopped into big chunks, you just stuck a piece in your mouth and started sucking and chewing the juice directly from the fibers, leaving you with a small pile of what you saw next to the machine. When they were very cold, they were a refreshing snack. How Dandi Beach Became a Historical Tourist Destination?
The Satyagraha march, which triggered the wider Civil Disobedience Movement, was an important part of the Indian independence movement. It was a campaign of nonviolent protest against the British salt tax in colonial India which began with the Salt March to Dandi on March 12, 1930. It was the most significant organized challenge to British authority since the Non-cooperation movement of 1920-22, and the Purna Swaraj declaration of independence by the Indian National Congress on December 31, 1929. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi led the Dandi march from his Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, Gujarat to produce salt without paying the tax, with growing numbers of Indians joining him along the way. When Gandhi broke the salt laws in Dandi at the conclusion of the march on April 6, 1930, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Raj salt laws by millions of Indians.
Gandhi was arrested on May 5, 1930, just days before his planned raid on the Dharasana Salt Works. The Dandi March and the ensuing Dharasana Satyagraha drew worldwide attention to the Indian independence movement through extensive newspaper and newsreel coverage. The satyagraha against the salt tax continued for almost a year, ending with Gandhi's release from jail and negotiations with Viceroy Lord Irwin at the Second Round Table Conference. Over 80,000 Indians were jailed as a result of the Salt Satyagraha. The campaign had a significant effect on changing world and British attitudes toward Indian independence and caused large numbers of Indians to actively join the fight for the first time. However, it failed to result in major concessions from the British.
The Salt Satyagraha campaign was based upon Gandhi's principles of nonviolent protest called Satyagraha, which he loosely translated as "truth-force." (Literally, it is formed from the Sanskrit words satya, "truth", and aagraha, "asking for.”) In early 1930 the Indian National Congress chose Satyagraha as their main tactic for winning Indian independence from British rule and appointed Gandhi to organize the campaign. Gandhi chose the 1882 British Salt Act as the first target of Satyagraha. The Salt March to Dandi, and the beating by British police of hundreds of nonviolent protesters in Dharasana, which received worldwide news coverage, demonstrated the effective use of civil disobedience as a technique for fighting social and political injustice. The Satyagraha teachings of Gandhi and the March to Dandi had a significant influence on American civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., and his fight for civil rights for blacks and other minority groups in the 1960s