| August 18, 1997 | ||
| |
|
|
|
|
DANDI There are a string of crumbling villages and bitter societies on the salt trail, reports SAMAR HALARNKAR. And Gandhi has little place in Gujarat's brash, industrial future.
There's a towering concrete marker where 67 years ago a frail man in a flimsy dhoti stood at a seashore and picked up a fistful of salt. It was an act that shook -- and eventually destroyed -- an empire. Today the seashore, like much of that day's grandeur, is a dim memory. The sea has retreated a kilometre away from the marker at Dandi, a quiet village (population: 1,187) on the Gulf of Khambatt. All that's left is the windswept calm of a muddy creek. In the mornings, locals perch on the memorial's boundary wall to let turds drop into the mud below. And the salt pans? Well, if you want salt, Karsanbhai Patel at the local store can offer you sparkling Tata salt, not fresh perhaps, but purified, iodised and sealed in plastic bags. "Salt offers no one a living in Dandi," laughs Patel. "They don't either," he says, pointing to a line of cars and buses disgorging day trippers from the neighbouring town of Navsari, all headed for the beach, a miserable stretch of blackening sand. If they have the time, a few might even wander down to the Gandhi Memorial. Pic: Fawzan Husain
History leaves us with the memorials we deserve. And so, a place that defined a pivotal moment in India's history, a place that set India on the road to freedom, is no more than a part-time loo. As for Dandi, it makes its living abroad. It is a fount of the great Indian diaspora: every family has a brother or an uncle in faraway Kenya, Kuwait, Chicago or Fiji. "At least four cars leave every day for Mumbai airport. We even have our own parking slots there," boasts young Ishwar Patel. Dandi, Gujarat -- and India -- were nothing like this on March 12, 1930. An impoverished, conquered nation held its breath as Gandhi and a hand-picked lot of 78 satyagrahis set out from his rural ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati outside Ahmedabad on a 388-km trek, to symbolically break the salt law. It was a crime then for Indians to make salt -- a commodity that for millions was the only relish in a harsh, unrelenting diet. But the tax on imported British salt pushed up prices seven times. "Our cause is just, our means are strong and God is with us," Gandhi declared the night before the march. But the march was merely a roll of the dice; the stakes were much higher: swaraj (self-rule). For 24 days, India watched spellbound as a heroic old man challenged an empire, armed with no more than a bamboo staff -- and his convictions. Gandhi also challenged his people -- sinking in a quicksand of suffocating tradition and religious hatred -- to take to the spinning wheel, abandon alcohol, treat untouchables with affection, and improve sanitation. It didn't really happen. Gramudyog (village industries)? "Sure we have gramudyog," says Chunibhai Patel, 80, who as a boy guarded the door of the dharamshala (rest house) at Aslali, while Gandhi slept away the rigours of the first day of the march. "Illicit liquor," he says straight-faced, "is our gramudyog." Equality? At Boriavi, the elders will take you with pride to the local dharamshala where Gandhi stayed the night of July 16, 1930. A stone plaque records the village's tryst with the Father of the Nation. Next to it is another inscription: the dharmashala, it warns, is for "upper castes only". There are few memorials in the 23 villages where Gandhi stayed en route. The worst tributes to his memory are the physical decay. "Very little has changed since Gandhi came this way," says Rajubhai Parmar, a farmer in the squalid little village of Kankapur. "This is pavitra bhoomi (holy land), but the Government has forgotten us." Yet, much has changed along the route of the long march. At the start is exploding Ahmedabad, India's textile capital. You will find khadi here, but it will seem no more than an insignificant bale in a dazzling storehouse of synthetic cloth running off modern power-driven looms. Anand is India's milk capital, a modern metaphor for Gandhi's rural vision, a giant cooperative venture between technologists, managers and more than half a million cattle farmers. Further south is Ankleshwar, ground zero of the golden corridor, a swathe of land dotted with giant chemical factories and 16-wheel trucks roaring along a four-lane highway. Vehicle dealerships are everywhere. But with economic prosperity, caste and religious divisions have only strengthened. Alabhai Vahabhai of Dabhan village knows that prejudice well. Illiterate but proud, he owns 50 head of cattle. But the upper-caste members of the local cooperative society will not allow him and his kind, a backward tribe of cattle herders called Bharwads, shares in the society. "We own more cattle than they, but they don't want to live with us," he shrugs, outside his thatched hut on the fringes of Dabhan. It's a dog-in-the-manger attitude: of the 800 members of the society, only 200 actually own cattle. Shailesh Patel is one of the new rich. His truck is on the road, and he has little else to do aside from watch the world go by and adjust his bejewelled watch. "My mother used to look after the cattle, put her hand under the cows and collect the dung," he says in disgust. "She's gone to the US, so who's going to do dirty work like this?" But the Bharwads will be kept out. Gandhiji wanted a new social dawn, but society, as Amrit Modi points out, will live in darkness if it so wishes. Modi has been the secretary of the Sabarmati Ashram for 22 years. He's worn khadi since he was a boy of 12 in those heady days, and travels second class, even though he has a first-class government pass. It's a struggle, he admits, to correlate Gandhian ideals with modern realities. The schisms and anger distress the last surviving satyagrahi from Gujarat, Bhanushankar Dave, 92. "This is a different country," he whispers. His eyes see no more than an arm's length away, and his movements are almost in slow motion. But his memory of the long march is sharp. "We thought we could do anything. The atmosphere was live, electric with the current of freedom," says Dave, his whisper rising to a murmur. He pauses for a long while. "It will never happen again." But Dave embodies the eternal hope that a frail old man once gave a nation. "Things will improve young man," he says grabbing a shoulder to lean forward. "You must have hope," he says, "or you will have nothing else."
|
|
Editorial Office: © Living Media India Ltd |
 |
 |
"These
very fields, immediately after the hateful salt monopoly
is gone, will be valuable salt pans ..." 
