Place · salt satyagraha site · India
Dharasana
The small town in Valsad district, Gujarat, 25 kilometres south of Dandi, where the Dharasana Salt Works raid of 21 May 1930 produced one of the most important mass media moments of the Indian independence movement. Six weeks after Gandhi's 6 April 1930 Salt March ended at Dandi, Sarojini Naidu led 2,500 satyagrahis in column-by-column attempts to seize the Dharasana salt depot. The non-resistant volunteers were systematically clubbed by 400 British-led Indian police over three days — Webb Miller's United Press wire dispatch 'In eighteen years of reporting... I have never witnessed such harrowing scenes' ran in 1,350 newspapers worldwide. The international moral collapse of the British position dates to Dharasana. The site is now a national memorial.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.970, 72.920
Connections (1)
- Historical routeDandi
Dāndi and Dharasana are eight weeks apart in the same campaign. After the salt was lifted at Dāndi, the movement marched on the Dharasana saltworks in May 1930, where Webb Miller's wire report of unresisting marchers being clubbed in rows carried the campaign into the American press. Sarojini Naidu led the Dharasana marchers after Gandhi's arrest, and Miller's dispatch was held up by British censors in India before he got it out through a neutral cable office.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Dharasana”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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