Study Guide · Chapter 7
Civil Disobedience and the 1930s
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- Civil Disobedience Movement (1930–1934): Launched with the historic Dandi March (Salt Satyagraha) — Gandhi and 78 followers walked approximately 240 miles from Sabarmati Ashram to the coastal village of Dandi (Gujarat), arriving on 6 April 1930 to make salt from seawater, symbolically defying the British salt tax/monopoly (an item consumed by rich and poor alike, making it a powerful unifying symbol). The movement quickly spread nationwide, involving boycott of foreign cloth and liquor, non-payment of taxes, and defiance of forest laws; notable regional episodes included the Dharasana Salt Satyagraha (led by Sarojini Naidu after Gandhi's arrest, met with brutal police violence, witnessed and reported internationally by American journalist Webb Miller) and the Bardoli Satyagraha legacy continuing under Sardar Patel's earlier organisational template.
- Round Table Conferences: Three conferences held in London (1930, 1931, 1932) to discuss constitutional reform. The Congress boycotted the First; Gandhi attended the Second Round Table Conference (1931) as the sole Congress representative, following the Gandhi-Irwin Pact (March 1931), under which Civil Disobedience was suspended, political prisoners (except those involved in violence) released, and the salt tax modified in exchange for Congress's participation in the conference — though the conference itself achieved little concrete progress on the core question of self-government.
- Communal Award (1932): Announced by British PM Ramsay MacDonald, extending separate electorates to depressed classes (Dalits/Scheduled Castes) along with other minority communities; Gandhi undertook a fast unto death in protest (in Yerwada Jail), viewing separate electorates for depressed classes as a device to permanently fragment Hindu society; this led to the Poona Pact (September 1932) between Gandhi and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, replacing separate electorates for the depressed classes with a system of reserved seats within joint/general electorates — a compromise Ambedkar accepted with reservations, given the pressure of Gandhi's fast, and one that remains a subject of continuing historical debate.
- Civil Disobedience formally resumed briefly after the Second Round Table Conference's failure, before eventually being withdrawn (1934) as its momentum waned.
- Government of India Act, 1935 and subsequent 1937 provincial elections: Congress ministries formed in several provinces; resigned en masse in 1939 protesting India's declaration as a party to WWII without consultation.
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