The Dandi March & the Civil Disobedience Movement

01Background

By the late 1920s, the Congress had grown impatient with incremental constitutional reform. At its December 1929 session in Lahore, under the presidency of Jawaharlal Nehru, Congress adopted the goal of Purna Swaraj — complete independence — and 26 January 1930 was observed as the first Independence Day pledge across the country. Gandhi was tasked with choosing a form of direct action to follow through on this declaration, and he selected an unlikely target: the colonial salt tax and the government monopoly on salt production, which affected every Indian household regardless of class or region.

02Key events

On 12 March 1930, Gandhi set out from his ashram at Sabarmati with a small group of followers, walking roughly 385 kilometres over 24 days to the coastal village of Dandi in Gujarat. The march itself became a rolling public event, with growing crowds and press attention along the route. On reaching the coast on 6 April 1930, Gandhi symbolically broke the law by picking up a lump of natural salt, an act of deliberate, public civil disobedience.

The march triggered the wider Civil Disobedience Movement: Indians across the country illegally made or sold salt, boycotted foreign cloth and liquor shops, and refused to pay certain taxes. The movement saw large-scale participation, mass arrests — including Gandhi's own arrest in May 1930 — and the imprisonment of much of the Congress leadership. It continued in phases through 1931, punctuated by the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 1931, under which the government agreed to release political prisoners and Gandhi agreed to attend the Second Round Table Conference in London.

03Important people

• Mahatma Gandhi — conceived and led the march and the wider movement.
• Sarojini Naidu — led the raid on the Dharasana Salt Works after Gandhi's arrest, an episode that drew significant international press coverage.
• Abbas Tyabji — an elder Congress leader who took over leadership of the salt satyagraha after Gandhi's arrest.
• Lord Irwin (Viceroy) — negotiated the 1931 pact that temporarily eased the confrontation.

04Timeline

05Historical significance

The Dandi March turned an ordinary household necessity into a powerful symbol of colonial injustice, making the movement immediately understandable to Indians of every class. It was also one of the first Indian political events to receive sustained international press coverage, shaping global perceptions of the freedom struggle and of Gandhi personally as a moral and political leader.

06Consequences

The Gandhi-Irwin Pact secured the release of political prisoners and Congress's participation in the Second Round Table Conference in London, though the conference ultimately made little constitutional progress. Civil Disobedience resumed briefly in 1932 before being called off in 1934. The movement's scale and organisation strengthened the Congress's claim to represent Indian public opinion in subsequent negotiations with the British government through the 1930s and 1940s.