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Read the following excerpt carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Why the Salt Satyagraha?

Why was salt the symbol of protest? This is what Mahatma Gandhi wrote: The volume of information being gained daily shows how wickedly the salt tax has been designed. In order to prevent the use of salt that has not paid the tax which is at times even fourteen times its value, the Government destroys the salt it cannot sell profitably. Thus it taxes the nation's vital necessity; it prevents the public from manufacturing it and destroys what nature manufactures without effort. No adjective is strong enough for characterizing this wicked dog-in-the-manger policy. From various sources I hear tales of such wanton destruction of the nation's property in all parts of India. Maunds if not tons of salt are said to be destroyed on die Konkan coast. The same tale comes from Dandi. Wherever there is likelihood of natural salt being taken away by the people living in the neighbourhood of such areas for their personal use, salt officers are posted for the sole purpose of carrying on destruction. Thus valuable national property is destroyed at national expense and salt taken out of the mouths of the people.

The salt monopoly is thus a fourfold curse. It deprives the people of a valuable easy village industry, involves wanton destruction of property that nature produces in abundance, the destruction itself means more national expenditure, and fourthly to crown this folly, an unheard-of tax of more than 1,000 per cent is exacted from a starving people.

This tax has remained so long because of the apathy of the general public. Now that it is sufficiently roused, the tax has to go. How soon it will be abolished depends upon the strength of the people.

The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG), Vol. 49

(i) Why was salt monopoly introduced by the British considered as a curse by the Indians?

(ii) How did Gandhiji illustrate his tactical wisdom with regard to salt monopoly?

(iii) Explain the significance of Gandhiji?s challenge of salt protest.

Answer:

(i) Because it deprives the people of a valuable easy village industry, involves wanton destruction of property that nature produces in abundance, the destruction itself means more national expenditure and more starving of people.

(ii) Gandhiji announced that he would lead a march to break one of the most widely disliked laws in British India, which gave the state a monopoly in the manufacture and sale of salt. For in every Indian household, salt was indispensable, yet people were forbidden from making salt even for domestic use, compelling them to buy it from shops at a high price. To make it target, Gandhiji hoped to mobilise a wider discontent against British rule.

(iii) Significance of the Gandhiji's challenge of salt protest includes:

1. The march was widely covered by the European and American press. This made Gandhiji in worlds -attention.

2. It was first nationalist activity in which women participated in large numbers.

3. This salt march made people come together and forced upon the British the realisation that their Raj would not last forever.