Why was the Salt March a turning point in the freedom movement?
Britain's Salt Acts prohibited Indians from collecting, or selling salt. Citizens were forced to buy salt from the British, who taxed it heavily. Gandhiji reasoned that defying the Salt Tax would be a simple and effective way for many Indians to break a British law without using violence.
On March 12th, 1930, Gandhiji set out from his ashram at Sabarmati near Ahmadabad, with his followers, to the coastal town of Dandi. All along the way, Gandhiji addressed large crowds, and with each passing day an increasing number of people joined the march.
By the time they reached Dandi on April 5th, Gandhiji was at the head of a crowd of tens of thousands. Then, early the next morning, he walked down to the sea, and reached down to pick up a small lump of natural salt out of the mud. By this small act, he defied the British law, and created a huge impact.
Nationalists led crowds of citizens in making salt, and Gandhiji's Salt March put India firmly on the road to freedom.
Subhash Chandra Bose was a patriot right from his earliest years. He was a brilliant student who excelled at his studies, but was asked to leave Presidency College in Calcutta for assaulting a professor who made anti-India comments. He later cracked the civil services examination after his graduation, and secured a job with the civil service department, but quit because he did not want to work under the British.
