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Young World
Salty trails
MOHINDER SINGH
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The story of salt as told from China to Europe to India is interesting...
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The German scholar M.J. Schleiden in his book Das Salz contended that there was a direct correlation between salt taxes and despots. Athens and Rome did not tax salt, while China and Mexico were salt-taxing tyrannies. Using this yardstick, the British rule in India was patently despotic.
Salt taxation originated in China. Guanzi, the earliest written text on Chinese salt administration was penned around 300 B.C. In due course, the Guanzi proposal became an accepted policy with the Chinese emperors. It is the first known instance in history of a state-controlled monopoly of a vital commodity. To the Romans, salt — `the grain of life' — was a necessary part of empire building. The first of the great Roman roads, the Via Salaries, Salt Road, was built for transporting salt. The Roman army required salt for its soldiers and for its horses. The legionnaires were paid a part of their remuneration in salt — giving rise to the word salary. The Latin word sal became the French word solde, meaning pay, which is the origin of the word soldier.
British salt policy in colonies was influenced by the prevailing concepts of salt taxation and controls in Europe and elsewhere.
On the west coast in Gujarat, salt had been made for at least 5,000 years in a 9,000 square-mile marshland known as the Rann of Kutch. The marshland gets covered by sea-water and so also with flooded rivers in the rainy season. By winter the salt water begins to evaporate, leaving behind salt crust. On the east coast, Orissa, with a perfect natural sea water zone, constitutes a prime salt-producing area. The salt beds, called khalaris, are flooded in spring tides, which saturate the soil with salt as the water evaporates — the salt made there is known as kartach. A second salt, panga, was produced by salt labourers, called malangis, by mixing salty soil in seawater and boiling it.
In the late 18th Century, Cheshire, U.K. was increasing its salt production and aggressively hunting overseas markets. The empire was expected to provide these markets. The Cheshire salt could not compete with the price and quality of Orissa salt. When the British proposal to buy up all Orissa salt met with resistance, they banned Orissa salt in Bengal.
Since the border between Bengal and Orissa was a thick jungle difficult to patrol, salt was smuggled into Bengal. In 1803, in the name of fighting contraband, the British overran Orissa and annexed it to Bengal.
And on November 1, 1804, Orissa salt became a British monopoly. In the early 19th century, to make the salt tax more profitable and stop the smuggling, the East India Company established customs check points throughout Bengal.
By the 1840s, the Company had constructed a 14-ft-high, 12-ft-thick thorn hedge on the western side of Bengal to prevent entry of contraband salt. Later, after 1857, the Customs Line grew until it snaked some 2,500 miles across India from the Himalayas to Orissa. The hedge was expanded into a spiky gnarl of prickly pear and acacia.
The first public meeting in India to protest the salt policy took place in Cuttack in February 1888. While salt was a burning issue in a few regions, it was not a national issue. Many in the Congress were baffled by Gandhiji's idea of focussing the independence movement on salt.
Yet he argued that salt was an example of British misrule that touched the lives of all Indians. On March 2, 1930, Gandhi wrote to Lord Irwin, the viceroy: "If you cannot see your way to deal with these evils and my letter makes no appeal to your heart, then on the twelfth day of this month I shall proceed with such co-workers of the ashram I can take, to disregard the provisions of the salt laws."
The viceroy expressed his regret at Gandhi's decision.
On March 12, 1930, Gandhi left the ashram with 78 selected followers for a 240-mile walk to the sea at Dandi, where they would defy the law by scraping up salt. On April 5, after 25 days, Gandhi reached the sea at Dandi. With him were now not only the original 78 followers but thousands. And that included intellectuals, elite, as well the poor. At Dandi, he scooped up a handful of white powder, And this gesture brought out a collective exclamation that resembled a roar.
He had openly broken the British salt law.
Gandhiji was arrested on May 5, 1930 as he slept peacefully by the sea under a mango tree.
Gandhi's defiance of the colonial salt law had given a singular twist to the age-old story of salt.
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