The Hindu Business Line : Another Dandi march, another Gandhi!

AS THE April sun beats down on them, the marchers re-enacting the historic Dandi Yatra sip glasses of cold and refreshing buttermilk. It is the very thing, perhaps, the Mahatma, the hero of the original march in 1930, would have ordered.

The scene is Delad Village Camp, Surat. A few marchers lay under a shamiana on this soporific noon, not sleeping, but listening to the soulful strains of Vaishnava Janato... and Raghupati Raaghava Raja Ram... , both favourites of the Father of the Nation. Starting on March 12, the marchers had covered much of the yatra that culminates at Dandi on Wednesday.

Among the marchers are quite a few Pakistanis who had experienced the pain of Partition that Gandhji had said he would never let happen. He was almost prophetic and lived only 168 days after the cataclysmic divide. In the rustic surroundings, stands incongruously out of place a state-of-the-art van fitted with various communication gadgets.

There is much bustle inside as marchers from India and abroad sit before the very latest in personal computers to send updates on the march to friends and relatives across continents.

Indeed a far cry from wireless telegraph that spat out in dots-and-dashes the progress of the march 75 years ago. . Incidentally, Mahatma Gandhi used that facility extensively.

"In the modern context, Bapu would have got a Platinum Card for the extensive use of the telegraph," quips Tushar Gandhi, with humour much like his great-grand-father's.

"Whenever Bapu's entourage reached a place with telegraph facility, his personal secretary Mahadev Desai would break off to rush to the telegraph office with Bapu's written word for dispatch to various centres. Today, Bapu, the master communicator, would surely have used the Internet," muses Tushar Gandhi.

"Bapu always wanted to be in touch with the masses, especially those in inaccessible remote, rural areas and had dreamt about complete rural connectivity. He always used communication as an effective tool to be in touch with the masses. Today, he would be the greatest user of the Internet as it would have kept him in touch with the people 24 X 7. Bapu was nothing if not communicator par excellence," he says with a smile.

Tushar Gandhi, 45, is the Trustee of the Mumbai-based Mahatma Gandhi Foundation (MGF). MGF organised the re-enactment of the Dandi Yatra that was flagged off from Gandhiji's Sabarmati Ashram. Called "The International Walk for Peace, Freedom and Justice," the march was flagged off by the Congress(I) president, Ms Sonia Gandhi on March 12. The 75th anniversary march has served to recreate the spirit of the 1930s.

The marchers are taking the same route, at the same time and making the same three halts as Gandhiji did. The marchers spend the nights in tents and subsist on frugal, vegetarian food. By April 6 the group would have walked 325 km through 150 villages across six districts of Gujarat.

What was the provocation for the original Dandi March? At the end of the 1920s, Mahatma Gandhi was a sad man after the Civil Disobedience Movement had gone awry with the infamous Chauri Chaura incident. He wanted to pick up the threads of the Freedom Movement. He desperately needed a worthy cause.

The master strategist found one before long. It was the British law that made manufacturing salt a crime. Indians could not make or sell salt and only the government-approved salt was to be sold, which the traders had to get from British units. Gandhiji wrote to Viceroy Lord Irwin that he would break the unfair law.

Thus began the historic Dandi March 75 years ago. Gandhiji set out from the Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad, at 6-30 a.m. with 78 Congress volunteers and walked some 250 miles to arrive in Dandi 26 days later.

He walked for 23 days, punctuated with three days of rest. At Dandi, on the Arabian Sea, he made salt, breaking the law. He was sent to jail.

Gandhiji had vowed never to return to Sabarmati Ashram until India achieved Independence. He did get India Independence, but never returned to Sabarmati, as he was assassinated on January 30, 1948, a few months after India became free.

(The author, a former Deputy Editor of PTI, is a New Delhi-based freelance journalist.)

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