A Covenant of Salt: The Participation of Women in the Dandi March

What determines the fragility of a gender? Is it the way they look and behave, or is it the eye that judges them and the mouth that reinstates fragility when it is not present? We do not see women in history as fragile in the face of danger. Rather, it is they who have taken control of the slipping reigns, filling the gaps left by men and pushing for unity on the battlefront. The Dandi March of 1930 is only an exemplar of women’s reclamation of power yet it is ironic how it had to be done through a fistful of salt.

Women preparing their own contraband salt as an act of defiance against Salt laws. Source: Digital District Repository Detail

“To awaken people, it must be the women who must be awakened. Once she is on the move, the family moves, the village moves, and the nation moves” - Sarojini Naidu.

As vouched for by Naidu, women have been a necessary and leading force in India’s struggle for freedom and a significant block required for nation-building in the aftermath of independence. Whether it is in the radical front or the moderate background, they have served as the glue holding the country together in its most strenuous period. But regardless of all their contributions, their names are often overshadowed by their male peers.

It is a shame that we are unaware of any sort of information, except baseless speculations, regarding most of these women since most researchers have believed them to be lost. In contrast to this, many believe that no one in history has bothered enough to draw and preserve records on them since history is often narrated from a biased perspective. What we do know is that women during the Dandi march walked shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts, covering a distance of almost 387 kilometres from the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad right down to the coastal village of Dandi in Gujrat, where the campaign got its name from. This movement, also recognised as the ‘Salt March’ or the ‘Salt Satyagraha', is one of the watershed moments in the wider history of the Civil Disobedience Act, and women have defied numerous norms to make it a success.

Women, especially those hailing from the lower middle class, have had a large hand to play in the production of salt in the past. However, the taxation on salt imposed by the British often made it exceedingly tough for these very producers to purchase it or afford it in the first place. Therefore, the march, which started on the 5 March 1930, only ended when the party scooped up and claimed their right to tax-free salt on the 12 April of the same year. It was undoubtedly poetic, but this simple act of non-violence stirred up the entire country, even garnering a global response. The likes of Sarojini Naidu, Kamala Nehru, Kasturba Gandhi, Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur, Aruna Asaf Ali, Mithuben Petit, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, and many others seemed to have compelled Gandhi with their smouldering determination to complete the march and set the precedent that women add to the heftiness of the united front they were presenting.

The lesser-known narrative of this incident is the sexist turn that this movement was headed towards. Gandhi is said to have excluded women from participating in the Salt March, and were it not for the organised efforts of these very women, perhaps the movement itself wouldn’t have seen the success it did. The sexual divide that was put up by the male leaders, especially Gandhi, even during an extremely crucial moment of resistance has been heavily criticised by scholars today, even though it may not have been a topic for further discussion in the past. While Gandhi was sure to be the face of the movement, it was these very women activists who helped mobilise women, encourage, direct, and overall coordinate the countrywide participation. It would’ve been quite unfair for these ladies, who had borne the brunt of all other past activities of Civil disobedience, to be left out of such a crucial moment the party was about to make in history. Truth be told, the very fact that the names of several women participants have been left out of the records stands as proof of this injustice.

Women during the colonial period faced a level of discrimination that is termed intersectional discrimination today. This means they’ve dealt with discrimination based on basis of their gender but also their race, caste, colour, employment, age, and the list goes on. Dandi March has been one such occasion where women have managed to defy not only the colonisers but also the absurd rules and regulations imposed upon them by the patriarchy. By uniting to represent all other women of the nation, women during the Dandi March broke free from these bounds, reclaiming their right to tax-free salt, to fight against injustice, and in general, to a free life.

The Salt Movement had managed to become a great controversy, one that caught the British's attention enough to put several of these women behind bars for more than six months. When we look at the larger picture, it wasn’t just about the women in this particular movement. While society may think that the association of salt with women through gender roles is natural, it wasn’t simply about salt for the women in the Dandi March. It was a display of the unity of the women's race and the power they hold when one supports the other, putting aside their differences and reclaiming their right to defend the motherland. It was a message sent to the male counterparts that they had every right to stand on equal footing and lead the country towards freedom. While it is unfortunate that the country managed to reach an almost absolute state of unity only when placed against an external force, it gives hope that the gender wars need not be necessary since we as a nation once learned to do without them.