INDIA AND SALT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 115, 17 May 1930, Page 16

INDIA AND SALT

GANDHI’S EVIL PLOTTING TRUE MEANING EXPLAINED. PATHWAY TO CATASTROPHE. Salt is a Government monopoly in India, and that is why Gandhi’s scheme to institute civil disobedience in the salt manufacturing areas was a threat of serious importance, according to a contributor to a London journal. The writer, in an article published prior to Gandhi’s arrest, said;— The total consumption of salt in India is 24 million tons per annum. Of this 600,000 tons is imported; the remainder is equally produced in Bombay, Madras, and Northern India —that is to say, Rajputana and the Punjab. The retail price ranges about two rupees eight annas per maund; in fact, |d per lb. The duty is one-half of this; the remainder of the price is accounted for by cost of production and distribution. As the average consumption per head is 101 b. per annum the abolition of the duty would mean a saving of 24d for every person who uses salt.

Now, the salt is worked in various ways, according to the district. In the Punjab hills there are rock salt mines worked by evaporation from the brine lakes, which are leased by the Government from the Jaipur and Jodpur States; in the Bombay and Madras Presidencies by evaporation from sea brine on the coasts. Where brine is used it is introduced into flat pans running fom a size of 80ft. by 30ft. to 200 ft. square or more. Vast Saliferous Areas. Evaporation is caused by the heat of the sun, and is allowed to continue until the brine has been reduced from a depth of 18in. to a depth of Sin. or 4in. At this stage crystals form on the bottom of the pan, and are extracted byhand, washed and piled in small heaps, or sometimes in large Government stores. Often this work is done by women; it is a curious sight to see them scraping the crystals out with their hands and carrying them away in baskets balanced on their heads. In the Bombay Presidency—with which Gandhi is immediately concerned —sea brine is subjected to evaporation in exactly the same way, in some cases worked by Government, elsewhere by private individuals on Government license. But—now comes the point—all round this area is a vast tract of saliferous country, so permeated with salt that I have known a young deer caught in this region, when offered fresh water, refuse to drink the unaccustomed stuff.

Salt “effloresces” on the surface of the ground; it is a continuous process., but particularly noticeable after rain. This salt, which is called earth of swamp salt, is of extremely poor quality; it is unfit for human consumption, and the offence of removing it is actually punishable by the Government by imprisonment or a fine. Yet this is the salt which Gandhi wants the Indians to scrape up with their hands and use in preference to the Government salt, which is of the purest quality! The saltworks are to lie idle; the desert is to return to its own ways; and India—who knows?

Disaster of a Salt Famine. Can the casual reader visualise the suffering, the disastrous consequence to health and life itself, of a salt famine? In case he cannot, I will give the consequence in one word—catastrophe. Cattle cannot live without a regular dose of salt, and the peasant, apart from the fact that he will have no way of maintaining his own health without salt, will not be able to farm. His beasts will be unfit for work. Moreover, Government salt is pure, and the people could not secure ten pounds of pure salt a year for themselves. I do not imagine that Gandhi thinks the animals could go out and find salt for themselves. Gandhi, in his march, preached to each village that the headmen should resign from their posts and that village clerks or accountants should throw up their positions, so that the Government would b« paralysed and unable to collect land revenue—the biggest source of income. He was received more coolly than he had hoped, the reason being, perhaps, that the people are slightly more enlightened than when he last approached them. The establishment of co-operative societies has done something toward supplying them with at least the rudiments of knowledge. The ground over w’hich Gandhi has lately been moving is full of natural salt, and in the neighbourhood is alarge Government plant. Here men work in difficult conditions. The country is dry and arid and in some of the saltworks the rainfall does not exceed two inches in the course of a year. The Government transports water by railway to some of the manufacturing .centres. It would be interesting to know how Gandhi proposes to accomplish a similar feat—absolutely vital to the country—without the help of Western innovations. as for example, the railway, to say nothing of the money with which to run it. Gandhism Means Suffering. • Tn practice, Gandhism would mean the suffering of the many that, a few might have power and riches. I do not say that Gandhi sees it in that light.

I am convinced, as a matter of fact, that he does not. But he is a dreamer, a visionary, unable to appreciate the fact that the “independence’’ he preaches is in reality the worst kind of slavery—eonomic slavery and the India he strives to establish is a far poorer India than that which can lean on the British Government. Gandhi is an educated man and although he has now fallen into the habit of using the somewhat peculiar English that is the only language in which Indians from varying parts of the country can talk to one another (since their languages are incomprehensible to one another) it should not be forgotten that he is a barrister and that he is shrewd, according to our own standards. The Nationalist leader first took part in public life in South Africa, where, during the Boer War, he organised a stretcher-bearer corps. He was then distinctly pro-British. But later he objected to the Colonial Government’s attitude toward the Indians in South Africa and it was there that he devised his scheme of “Civil Disobedience.”