Word: salte
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Last week observers noted the following steps in Mahatma Gandhi's campaign of open violation of the British salt monopoly in India, his policy of passive resistance to the British...
...11th anniversary of the Amritsar Massacre (when over 300 Indian men and women were shot down by British troops) half a million natives gathered on the beach near Bombay to scoop up water, extract forbidden salt by evaporation. Towards evening a huge, blood-red papier-mache monster, symbolizing the salt tax, was dumped into the ocean...
...Saint Gandhi grew wroth at British authorities who have been methodically seizing salt evaporated by his followers. Said he: "It is sheer vulgarity to snatch salt from our Satyagrahis [Nationalist volunteers]. It is my earnest desire that the Satyagrahis should not part with their salt in spite of the most severe injury to their hands." His chief worry was that he had not been arrested, though his second son was jailed last week as his first was fortnight ago for violating the salt laws, making "seditious utterances...
...Dandi, a disturbance occurred when carters blocked the great Howrah Bridge at rush hour by removing the wheels of their carts. Police said that stones were thrown at them. They replied with bullets. Six men were killed, 60 wounded, but the disturbance then quieted. On the day of the salt-making, followers of Mr. Gandhi squatted down in front of a train near Bombay, but were beaten off by police...
...salt making demonstrations spread to other parts of India, more than 80 law-breakers were arrested, including the Mahatma's son Ram Das Gandhi. Those first brought to trial were fined up to $182 or six months in jail. A typical stroke of British statecraft was an announcement by a spokesman for the British Government that: "The Government considers Mr. Gandhi's actions merely symbolical, and not an actual violation...