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Unit 10: National Movements and Indian Independence

Vedaranniyam on the Tanjore coast. By the time he was arrested on 30 April he had collected Notes
enough volunteers to keep the campaign going for quite some time. In Malabar, K. Kelappan, the
hero of the Vaikom Satvagraha, walked from Calicut to Payannur to break the salt law. A band of
Satyagrahis walked all the way from Sylhet in Assam to Noakhali on the Bengal Coast to make salt.
In Andhra, a number of sibirams (military-style camps) were set up in different districts to serve as
the headquarters of the salt Satyagraha, and bands of Satyagrahis marched through villages on their
way to the coastal centres to defy the law. On their return journeys, they again toured through
another set of villages. The Government’s failure to arrest Gandhiji for breaking the salt law was
by the local level leaders to impress upon the people that ‘the Government is afraid of persons like
ourselves,’ and that since the starting of the, salt Satyagraha the Government ‘has disappeared and
hidden itself somewhere and that Gandhi Government has already been established.’ Jawaharlal
Nehru’s arrest on 14 April, for defiance of the salt law, was answered with huge demonstrations
and clashes with the police in the cities of Madras, Calcutta and Karachi.
On 23 April, the arrest of Congress leaders in the North West Frontier Province led to a mass
demonstration of unprecedented magnitude in Peshawar. Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan had been
active for several years in the area, and it was his mass work which lay behind the formation of the
band of non-violent revolutionaries, the Khudai Khidmatgars, popularly known as the Red Shirts
— who were to play an extremely active role in the Civil Disobedience Movement. The atmosphere
created by their political work contributed to the mass upsurge in Peshawar during which the city
was virtually in the hands of the crowd for more than a week. The Peshawar demonstrations are
significant because it was here that the soldiers of the Garhwali regiments refused to fire on the
unarmed crowd.
It was becoming increasingly clear that the Government’s gamble — that non-interference with
the movement would result in its spending itself out, that Gandhiji’s salt strategy would fail to
take off — had not paid off. In fact, the Government had never been clear on what course it should
follow, and was, as Gandhiji had predicted, ‘puzzled and perplexed.’ The dilemma in which it
found itself was a dilemma that the Gandhian strategy of non-violent civil disobedience was
designed to create. The Government was placed in a classic ‘damned if you do, damned if you
don’t’ i.e., if it did not suppress a movement that brazenly defied its laws, its administrative
authority would be seen to be undermined and its control would be shown to be weak, and if it
did suppress it, it would be seen as a brutal, anti-people administration that used violence on non-
violent agitators. ‘If we do too much, Congress will cry “repression” . . . if we do too little,
Congress will cry “victory,” ’ — this is how a Madras civilian expressed the dilemma in early
1930. Either way, it led to the erosion of the hegemony of the British government.
The rapid spread of the movement left the Government with little choice but to demonstrate the
force that lay behind its benevolent facade. Pressure from officials, Governors and the military
establishment started building up, and, on 4 May, the Viceroy finally ordered Gandhiji’s arrest.
Gandhiji’s announcement that he would now proceed to continue his defiance of the salt laws by
leading a raid on the Dharasana Salt Works certainly forced the Government’s hand, but its timing
of Gandhiji’s arrest was nevertheless ill-conceived. It had neither the advantage of an early strike,
which would have at least prevented Gandhiji from carefully building up the momentum of the
movement, nor did it allow the Government to reap the benefits of their policy of sitting it out.
Coming as it did at a high point in the movement, it only acted as a further spur to activity, and
caused endless trouble for the Government.
There was a massive wave of protest at Gandhiji’s arrest. In Bombay, the crowd that spilled out
into the streets was so large that the police just withdrew. Its ranks were swelled by thousands of
textile and railway workers. Cloth-merchants went on a six-day hartal. There were clashes and
firing in Calcutta and Delhi. But it was in Sholapur, in Maharashtra, that the response was the
fiercest. The textile workers, who dominated the town went on strike from 7 May, and along with
other residents, burnt liquor shops and proceeded to attack all symbols of Government authority
— the railway station, law courts, police stations and municipal buildings. They took over the city
and established a virtual parallel government which could only be dislodged with the imposition
of martial law after 16 May.

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