Why Britain let Gandhi finish the 1930 Salt March

Mohandas Gandhi began the Salt March at 6.30 am on 12 March 1930, leaving the Sabarmati Ashram near Ahmedabad with 78 volunteers for the coastal village of Dandi, about 240 miles (385 km) away. The aim was to break the British Salt Acts, which made it illegal for Indians to collect or sell salt, forced them to buy it from a government monopoly and taxed it. The tax hit the poorest hardest, and anyone could break the law with a handful of seawater.

British officials decided not to stop him. In Gandhi’s records, senior officials in the Government of India “did not take the breach of salt tax seriously”. One member of the Central Board of Revenue called it “Mr. Gandhi’s somewhat fantastic project”. New Delhi told London the effect outside Gujarat seemed “comparatively small” and that Gandhi should not be arrested unless there was no reasonable alternative. He was left to walk the whole route, and the delay worked in his favour.

• 5 April: After 24 days, Gandhi reaches Dandi at the head of a crowd numbering tens of thousands.
• 6 April, 8.30 am: Police have crushed the salt deposits into the mud, so he picks up a lump of natural salt from a small pit. Sarojini Naidu cries “Hail Deliverer”.
• April–May: People make salt illegally along the coast and in Bombay and Karachi. More than 60,000 people are arrested.
• 5 May: Gandhi is finally arrested, nearly two months after setting out.
• 21 May: Police beat Naidu’s 2,500 marchers at the Dharasana Salt Works. The American reporter Webb Miller’s account causes an international outcry.
• January 1931: Gandhi is released and begins talks with the viceroy, Lord Irwin.

“With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.” (Gandhi at Dandi, 6 April 1930)

The British government made no immediate concession on the tax. Gandhi had first protested against racial injustice nearly four decades earlier, after he was thrown off a train in South Africa.