Gandhi's Contribution To The Indian Independence Movement

This investigation will explore the question “To what extent did Gandhi’s salt march of 1930 contribute to India achieving independence from British colonial rule?”. The direct aim of the salt march was to encourage Indians to resist tax and protest against the British salt monopoly. It led to many Indians becoming heartened to the protest’s overall aim to attain independence.

The salt march will be evaluated based on how many of its own aims were achieved as well how much it progressed the Indian Independence Movement. This investigation will also be limited to the immediate effects of the salt march on the people of India as well as the struggle for independence. Hence this investigation will be limited to the period of 1930 – 1932.

Written historian accounts and essays as well as speeches by Gandhi himself are used to support this investigation. B. Summary of Evidence (674)

The salt tax affected everybody, especially the poorest Indians. It was a policy Gandhi felt strongly about as

Because Sanskrit is the liturgical language of Hinduism, Gandhi’s repeated use of Sanskrit reinforced the idea that Muslims would be marginalized, regardless of the racial make-up of the government. This is why the Muslim boycott of the civil disobedience movement started by Shaukat Ali was so popular. Gandhi failed to recognize the needs of the minorities and make the movement more accessible across religions and not just social classes and gender. Even in his speech delivered at Broach regarding this issue, Gandhi claimed that the Indian Muslims’ ‘resistance can only be short-lived’ and failed to use more secular words to reassure Muslims of the need for their support. This lack of sensitivity would later result in the failure of the round table conference as the treatment of Muslims was major issue of contention, which prevented the conference from being more productive than it