Did Gandhi really pick up salt at Dandi?

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Did Gandhi really pick up salt at Dandi?

By Vijay Rana

 

Britain's leading Asian web-radio presents the eyewitness account of

Dandi March

 

Did Gandhi really pick up salt at the seashore in Dandi? No he

didn't. In fact, he picked up some muddy seawater and salt was later

extracted by boiling it, says Sumangal Prakash, one of Gandhi's

disciples who lived in Sabarmati Ashram and who was one of those 78

people Gandhi officially chose to accompany him during the historic

salt march.

 

After studying in Benaras, Sumangal Prakash took up his first job as

Hindi teacher at Gujarat Vidyapeeth in Ahmedabad and went to live in

Gandhi's Sabarmati Ashram. He was close to Prime Minister Lal Bahadur

Shastri and later became one of his secretaries.

 

While researching on the 100 years of Indian National Congress, I met

Sumangal Prakash in June 1985 at his residence in Pahar Ganj in

Delhi. I had to search for him for more than an hour. Nobody in the

neighbourhood would know him.

 

Dressed in a hand washed Khadi Kurta, the frail old man was living in

pretty austere conditions, in a small apartment, plagued by a

horrible traffic noise. His sitting room barely had any furniture

except a clean white bed and a broken plastic cane chair that he

offered to his interviewer. His loving old wife poured tea from an

aluminium kettle. It was a humbling experience to be with them.

 

While narrating the story of Dandi March, his voice was filled with

such energy and enthusiasm that I could never imagine from such an

old man. In this extraordinary interview, Sumangal Prakash gave a

graphic account of the morning of 12th March 1930: "We couldn't sleep

that night because Sabarmati Ashram was surrounded by thousands of

people from all over India. They had encamped around the ashram and

their noise wouldn't let us sleep. We came out of Ashram sharp at

five minutes to six. Five minutes later Gandhi ji arrived and we

began the historic journey".

 

"When we reached the Ellis Bridge, we found huge crowds waiting on

the bridge. Finding it impossible to cross the bridge, Gandhi decided

to walk through the Sabarmati river, as the water was no deeper than

our knees. From their I looked back and It was such a compact

assembly of human heads, I imagined if someone threw a football over

them it would never tough the ground," remembered Sumangal Prakash.

 

This is perhaps the only surviving account of Dandi March and it

could be listened on Britain's leading NRI web-radio. Sumangal

Prakash specially talked about Gandhi's Surat meeting, "it was

perhaps the first public meeting of one hundred thousand people in

India. Also, we saw the microphone for the first time being used in a

public meeting. And there was a sort of competition among people to

donate money for Gandhi's Satyagrah. Women gave their ornaments;

children donated from their little savings. Then there was

competition among the businessmen of Surat and Ahemdabad to give more

and more money to the cause of freedom".

 

Gandhi reached Dandi on the evening of April 5. According to Sumangal

Prakash, "after prayers in the morning, we went to the shore to take

bath. As a frail Gandhi entered the sea, he couldn't keep himself

steady, so we had to hold him to save him from fumbling. It was

hardly one feet of water there".

 

"Our historians have committed a mistake," Sumangal Prakash

continued. "They have written that Gandhi reached Dandi, and there

was salt already lying on the shore. This is not how it happened. In

fact, after full moon, patches of seawater were formed at many places

on the shore and from one of these patches it (the muddy sea-water)

was collected in a tumbler. Then it was boiled on a temporary

fireplace made of two bricks. We could extract only about half a tola

or about 5gms of salt. Then in the evening, we had a public meeting

in Dandi where that salt was auctioned by Gandh's secretary Mahadev

Bhai. That little salt was bought for Rs.500 by Ranachhod Bhai, who

later became the president of Delhi Congress. That's how it

happened."

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