The Salt March

Jason Lui

1930 Salt march

I had enough from the stupid British people. They put such high tax on everything even salt, a basic food ingredient. This is ridiculous, we can’t make our own salt and we have to buy the salt they make with such heavy tax. I can’t believe in this rubbish from the British. I have a family to take care of. I have three children and a wife to take care of; I wouldn’t have enough money to survive if this goes on. I can’t believe they would actually do that. I am not going to take this anymore; I’m going to follow our brave leader, Mohandas Gandhi. This is the perfect leader that was leading us out of British rule. India shall rise again and be a strong country. March 11^th, 1930, the night before the march, Gandhi told us "There can be no turning back for us hereafter. We will keep on our fight till swaraj is established in India. Those of them that are married should take leave of their wives. We are as good as parting from the Ashram and from our homes.--- Let nobody assume that after I am arrested there will be no one left to guide them. It is not I but Pandit Jawaharlal who is your guide. He has the capacity to lead." This was it, there was no return, the protesters and I led by Gandhi were ready to march for salt.

It was March 12^th, 2010, we are ready to march 200 miles from Gandhi’s house to the Indian sea to collect salt. This was an illegal act because to were making salt on our own but this action is to show the British that we are capable of ourselves and they should leave our country alone. I was very excited during the march, more and more people came and joined the protest. We marched for about twenty-four hours and collected the salty seawater. We were going to start to make our salt but the British came in and arrested Gandhi by force. There were also about 50000 Indians that were arrested. Luckily for me, I had managed to run way before getting arrested and escaped from the British police.

This was a major change for India. Our nonviolence protest had made the British people to force their power on us to stop the protest. This is a driving force for more protesting activities in India. I am going to start and make more of these protests. I will help change India. Through these events, more and more people would start to question British colonization of India, this demonstrated a great act from Gandhi. More and more people would rise and start to help protest against the British. Gandhi is magnificent leader, he is brave and he helped with the change in India. I am going to free India from British colonization and be a successful leader just like Gandhi.