Timeline
26 January 1930
The campaign followed the Indian National Congress's adoption of the Purna Swaraj (complete independence) resolution at its Lahore session in December 1929,…
2 March 1930
Gandhi obtained the Congress Working Committee's authorisation to lead a civil disobedience campaign, and on he addressed an ultimatum to Viceroy Lord Irwin…
12 March 1930
The procedural mechanics began with the Dandi March, which Gandhi commenced on from his Sabarmati Ashram near Ahmedabad accompanied by 78 chosen volunteers.
5 April 1930
On reaching the coastal village of Dandi on , Gandhi paused for prayer, and on the morning of 6 April he ceremonially lifted a lump of natural salt from the…
5 May 1930
Gandhi was arrested on 4– under Regulation XXV of 1827 and detained without trial.
5 March 1931
The campaign was suspended under the Gandhi-Irwin Pact signed on , by which the government agreed to release political prisoners and permit coastal salt manu…
Positions at a glance
Indian National Congress
The Salt Satyagraha was the inaugural and defining act of the Civil Disobedience Movement launched by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in 1930 against British rule in India. Its legal target was the colonial salt monopoly, codified in the Salt Act of 1882, which reserved to the government the exclusive right to manufacture and sell salt and imposed a tax on it. Salt was a deliberate choice: a necessity consumed by every Indian regardless of caste, religion, or income, the tax on it dramatised the injustice of an alien administration extracting revenue from the poorest. The campaign followed the Indian National Congress's adoption of the Purna Swaraj (complete independence) resolution at its Lahore session in December 1929, where the tricolour was unfurled on the banks of the Ravi and 26 January 1930 was declared the first Independence Day. Gandhi obtained the Congress Working Committee's authorisation to lead a civil disobedience campaign, and on 2 March 1930 he addressed an ultimatum to Viceroy Lord Irwin listing eleven demands, warning that he would break the salt law if they were ignored.
All-India Muslim League
Controversy and limitation attended the campaign. B. R. Ambedkar and sections of the Depressed Classes leadership questioned whether anti-colonial agitation adequately addressed caste oppression, and the Muslim League largely stood apart, foreshadowing later communal divergence. The Round Table Conferences yielded little for Congress, and the second phase of civil disobedience resumed in 1932 only to be met with renewed repression under the Government of India's emergency ordinances before petering out by 1934. Historians debate whether the campaign delivered tangible constitutional gains; its most durable achievement was arguably the transformation of the independence struggle into a genuinely mass phenomenon and the projection of the Indian cause onto the global stage.
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On 6 April 1930, Mahatma Gandhi picked up a lump of natural salt at Dandi on the Gujarat coast, breaking the British Salt Act of 1882 and igniting the nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement.
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