Salt: A World History

In the early 20th century, India was a British colony, and “Indian salt was to be managed for the benefit of Cheshire” (333). Kurlansky gives a brief history of the East Indian Company, a private trading company that effectively had all the rights and powers of a nation and could buy property. It bought its first Indian property in 1639 and would eventually build the city of Calcutta: “By the nineteenth century, more than half of India was governed by the East India Company and the rest by local princes, who served as puppet rulers for the British” (334). After a revolt against the company in 1857, the British took over local governance.

Orissa is a salt-producing area on India’s east coast. The salt is made in enormous salt beds and was plentiful enough that even the poorest peasants could make and sell salt: “Liverpool salt could not compete with the price and quality of Orissa salt” (336). In 1790, the British attempted to buy all the salt made in Orissa, but were denied. They next banned all Orissa salt from entering Bengal, with which Orissa shared a border. Smuggling was impossible to stop, however, and the contraband Orissa salt moved so freely that “the British army occupied Orissa and annexed it to Bengal” (337). Orissa salt was now a British monopoly. Within a decade, it was illegal for anyone but the British government to manufacture salt. The Zemindars—“coastal chieftains whose privilege and authority were undermined by the destruction of the salt industry” (337)—resisted. They encouraged Indians to reject British salt policy and fomented discord at every opportunity.

Early in the 19th century, the East India Company was given the charge of establishing customs checkpoints throughout Bengal, in order to stop smuggling. The Customs Line would eventually span 2,500 miles and included a fourteen-foot-tall wall with barbed thorns on top.

In 1863, the British stopped all local salt production, which led to a famine in 1866. The malangis—salt workers who tended to work as family units—had no other crops of their own and could not pay for food in the absence of salt to sell. They suffered the most during the famine.

Kurlansky writes that “[t]he first public meeting in India to protest salt policy took place in Orissa in February, 1888” (342). Indians had a salt-tax burden that was over twenty times that of the English. The British government did not take the resistance seriously and saw it as a trivial matter. By 1930, Orissa was in a state of almost open rebellion, and a man named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi began to focus on the salt rebellion.

Gandhi used the salt campaign—and the unjust salt taxes—as the core of his campaign for Indian independence. The Indian National Congress was confused by the importance he gave to the issue. In a letter to Lord Irwin, Viceroy of India, Gandhi wrote: “I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man’s standpoint. As the independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land, the beginning will be made with this evil” (346).

Gandhi went to an ashram in Gujarat, where he began encouraging his followers to reject the salt-tax laws. With seventy-eight followers, he began a 240-mile march to the sea, where he intended to scrape salt, which was illegal. He reached the sea after twenty-five days of marching, during which the global media reported on his trek, and “[a] public salt making was organized in Orissa on April 6 to coincide with Gandhi’s” (350). More Indians reached the sea and scraped salt. The jails were soon filled with protestors. Gandhi’s act of defiance became a national movement within a week. Salt was openly sold on the street. Some of Gandhi’s followers began to use violence, however, prompting him to publicly denounce their actions. Gandhi was arrested for saying that he intended to take over government saltworks.

While Gandhi was in prison, riots spread across India, and “[o]n March 5, 1931, Lord Irwin signed the Gandhi-Irwin pact, ending the salt campaign” (352). Indians could now collect salt for personal use, and the prisoners were released.