Gandhi leads the Salt March

Mahatma Gandhi and followers walked about 240 miles (390 km) from Sabarmati to Dandi on the Indian coast to challenge the British salt tax. The 24-day march drew world attention to the Indian independence movement.

The march itself ended at Dandi on 5 April 1930, and Gandhi made salt on the shore the next morning, 6 April.

Context

The Salt Act of 1882 barred Indians from collecting or selling salt. British rulers held a monopoly on it and charged a heavy tax, which affected everyone, including the poorest. That made salt a simple, widely understood target for protest.

The march began on 12 March 1930 at Sabarmati Ashram near Ahmedabad. Gandhi, then 60, set out with a few dozen followers and walked for 24 days to Dandi, a coastal town on the Arabian Sea, where marchers made salt from seawater in defiance of the law.

Reports of crowd size vary. Britannica says hundreds more joined along the way, while HISTORY says the crowd had grown to tens of thousands by Dandi. No source consulted gives one exact figure.

Indians across the country broke the salt laws in the following months. HISTORY reports that more than 60,000 people were arrested, and Gandhi himself was arrested on 5 May. The British did not leave India until 1947, but Britannica calls the march a turning point that drew worldwide attention to British rule.