The Salt Satyagraha was a mass civil disobedience movement initiated by Mahatma Gandhi against the salt tax imposed by the British government in India. He led a large group of people from Sabarmati Ashram on 12th March 1930 till Dandi, a coastal village in Gujarat, to break the salt law by producing salt from seawater.

• By 1930, the Congress Party had declared that Poorna Swarajya or complete independence was to be the sole aim of the freedom struggle.

• It started observing 26 January as Poorna Swarajya Day, and it was decided that civil disobedience was to be the means employed to achieve it.

• Mahatma Gandhi was asked to plan and organise the first such act. Gandhiji chose to break the salt tax in defiance of the government.

• Indians had been making salt from seawater free of cost until the passing of the 1882 Salt Act that gave the British monopoly over the production of salt and authority to impose a salt tax. It was a criminal offence to violate the salt act.

• The salt tax accounted for 8.2% of the British Raj revenue from tax and Gandhiji knew that the government could not ignore this.

• Around 60,000 people including Gandhiji himself were arrested by the government.

• There was widespread civil disobedience carried on by the people. Apart from the salt tax, other unpopular tax laws were being defied like the forest laws, chowkidar tax, land tax, etc.

• The government tried to suppress the movement with more laws and censorship.

• There were similar marches and salt was produced illegally in Assam and Andhra Pradesh.

• Foreign clothes were boycotted. Liqueur shops were picketed. There were strikes all over.

• The movement did not procure any major concessions from the government.