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Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh will release a set of four Special Postage Stamps, here tomorrow commemorating the 75th Anniversary of Dandi March, in the presence of Smt. Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson, National Advisory Council, Shri Dayanidhi Maran, Minister of Communications & Information Technology and Dr. Shakeel Ahmad, Minister of State for Communications & Information Technology. Dandi March was one of the most inspiring chapters in the history of the Indian Freedom struggle which was started by Gandhiji on March 12, 1930. The 25-day long march from Sabarmati Ashram with 78 volunteers to Dandi on the Gujarat Coast ended on April 6, 1930.
The Dandi March, otherwise known as “Salt Satyagraha”, is considered to be the beginning of the civil disobedience movement in which Gandhiji along with his followers marched through dusty and muddy tracks and knee-deep waters as well, and picked up a small lump of natural salt thereby giving the signal to hundreds of thousands of people to similarly defy the law. It is a well known fact that the British in those days attempted to exercise a monopoly on the production and sale of salt. “I know that the Salt Tax has to go and many other things with it”, Gandhiji had once said in his ‘Young India’. His opposition to the Salt Tax imposed by the British, was thus elemental and yet effective in rousing the nation. The Salt Satyagraha was a masterstroke in political mobilisation which also conclusively established that civil disobedience, as a means to achieve freedom was a viable political medium.
The stamps, in the denomination of five rupees each, depict the glimpses of the marchers led by Mahatma Gandhi on the move; Mahatma Gandhi in the backdrop of News headline appeared in Bombay Chronicle in its 13th March 1930 edition; Mahatma Gandhi’s own handwritten lines on 5th April 1930 saying “I want world sympathy in this battle of Right the might”; and the map depicting the route of the historical Dandi March.
RM/AMA- 040405 Dandi March Stamp
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