Making Salt

Ghandi and the 1930 Salt Satyagraha: A Spring Walk Worth Remembering

Mahatma Gandhi once walked 240 miles to make salt at the edge of the Arabian Sea. It was an act of treason. A way to subvert British rule. It was classic civil disobedience: a simple, deliberate act of life sustaining labor designed to thwart an unjust rule of law. 

Every person requires salt to live and yet it was illegal in 1930′s India for any Indian to harvest salt from the sea. Salt was taxed and sold only by the British. By controlling a necessity of life the British were able to exert control over the majority they ruled.

Gandhi understood the power of simplicity over the power of tyranny. He wielded that power with grace and precision. He made salt. He spun his own cloth. He founded an ashram. He walked his talk, and ruled a nation. There was power in reclaiming HIS right, to sustain HIS life, in HIS own way.

As almost any chemically injured person will tell you the very first thing we lose with this disease is control. The loss of power often follows the loss of control, and if we lose the ability to work, medical bills mount as assets dwindle. Toxic homes push the most severely effected of us outside to live alone in cars, or worse. It ain’t pretty and yet somehow against all odds most of us — not all — but most of us, survive to eventually find some semblance of stability in our lives.

So, how do we do it? How do we fight back and reclaim our lives? There are as many answers to that question as there are chemically injured people. We each find our own chosen way.

I believe there is a bit of Mahatma Gandhi in everyone of us. Gandhi made salt. Some of you make soap, create jewelry, gaze at the stars, carve wood, write poems, practice photography, quilt, paint, build websites, write legal briefs, or simply listen and provide vital emotional support. 

These are all equivalent acts of simplicity, creativity, frugality and subversion. One act no greater than the other. Each as potentially empowering as The 1930 Salt Satyagraha, which began on March 12th, and ended at the Arabian Sea on April 6th, 1930. A spring walk worth remembering.

Lucinda Hodges

originally published in 2006, Pariah, A Healing Journal