Author:

Debashis Bera
Assistant Professor
Saheed Anurup Chandra Mahavidyalaya
South 24 Pargana,West Bengal,India

Email: beradeba@gmail.com

Abstract: The Salt March was a non-violent and tax-resistant protest movement in colonial India against the British monopoly on salt. Through this movement, Mahatma Gandhi initiated the Civil Disobedience Movement on April 6, 1930. Two places in Medinipur played a particularly significant role in this regard – Pichhaboni in Contai and Narghat in Tamluk. Narghat is a historic site in the Tamluk subdivision of East Medinipur district. It is situated just at the crossing point of the Haldi River, a little beyond Nandakumar on the Digha–Tamluk National Highway, at a distance of about 102 kilometres from Kolkata. It lies close to the police stations of Tamluk, Nandigram, Mahishadal, and Sutahata. Shahid Amin, while writing about the Chauri Chaura incident in his essay Gandhi as Mahatma remarked, “In Champaran in Bihar or Kheda in Gujarat, Gandhi spent quite some time, but he gave hardly any time to Gorakhpur. … In this region, Gandhi was physically present for less than a day.” That is to say, through this article he meant that although Gandhi spent very little time in Gorakhpur (compared to Champaran or Kheda), his influence on the popular mind lingered there for a long time afterward. In this article, I will show that during the Salt Satyagraha, Gandhi was not in Tamluk for even a month, a day, or an hour, yet the Congress satyagrahis here, following his directives, successfully conducted the Salt Satyagraha, which was in no way less significant than the movements where Gandhi was physically present. However, this movement was quite distinct from the conventional Congress-organized ones. At the local level, the satyagrahis adopted their own strategies, methods, and programs of action.

Key Words: Civil Disobedience Movement, Nationalism, Purna Swaraj, Tamluk, Salt Satyagraha etc.