Journal of Mohandas K. Gandhi

June 16, 1930 — Dharasana

The sun was already high when I stepped out of the modest hut, my dhoti clinging damply to my legs. The air shimmered with heat rising from the parched ground. Though I had not marched at Dharasana myself — the viceroy’s order had seen to that — I could not remain still. I had come not as a leader, but as a witness. Dharasana had become the crucible in which the spirit of our movement was tested.

Word had reached me in the early hours: a new wave of satyagrahis had arrived. Not men of stature, nor trained workers from the Ashram. They were children. Boys and girls no older than twelve, their feet bare, their eyes open, carrying with them white flags and a handful of salt wrapped in cotton.

I reached the edge of the path that led to the Salt Works. There, lining the dusty road, stood perhaps forty of them — ragged kurtas, unruly hair, calloused feet — holding silence like it was a shield. They didn’t move as the guards walked past. They didn’t flinch. Each child held a little cone of dried salt, shaped from the waters of the Arabian Sea, and placed it at the roadside, as if to say: This is ours. This is not wrong.

One boy — no taller than my shoulder when seated — trembled slightly as a British officer approached and shouted in his face. Still, the boy did not move. I watched his throat tighten, his fingers clutch the salt closer to his chest. He bowed his head. The officer stood frozen. And then, with a grunt of something between shame and confusion, he walked away.

It was not the boy who had been humbled.

Later in the day, we sat beneath the neem tree that offered sparse but welcome shade. Some of the children, faces flushed from the heat, shared with one another what food they had — a roti torn into four, a mango pressed soft in the hand. I sat among them as an equal. One girl, with unruly curls and dirt-streaked cheeks, offered me her last piece of roti. I declined gently.

I asked, “Why have you come here, when you could be at home, at school?”

The girl shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. “Because my brother was beaten here. And I wanted to stand where he stood.”

Another boy chimed in, “We want to be in the story, Bapu. Not just hear it later.”

Their innocence was fierce. Their determination outshone their size. They had not read Thoreau or Tolstoy. But they understood justice more clearly than many ministers.

We spoke little after that. One began to hum the Ramdhun — Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram… — and soon the others joined. Their young voices floated across the fields, reaching the salt works, where older satyagrahis lay recovering from the brutal batons of that morning.

As the sun dipped lower, I walked a little further toward the site. There, in silence, I saw something I will carry in my heart for the rest of my days.

A line of salt cones — placed by children’s hands — stretched along the dirt path like breadcrumbs leading to freedom. Each little heap shimmered pale against the red dust, defiant and fragile, easily brushed aside but no less real.

A guard passed near them. He stopped, looked down, then moved around them, not over. It was a small gesture, perhaps subconscious. But I noticed it. I noticed everything.

These children had not marched. They had not shouted. But they had carried something even greater than salt — they had carried dignity. They had brought the movement forward by refusing to be invisible.

And they had reminded me — as I so often need reminding — that this revolution does not belong to speeches or sermons or even seasoned satyagrahis. It belongs to those who carry it in silence, with open hands and open hearts.

That night, under a sky pricked with stars, the ashram volunteers gathered to spin and sing. One of the elder weavers passed me a spindle. I turned it slowly in rhythm with the others, watching the children sleep nearby on mats of jute. I saw the girl who had offered me her roti clutching her bundle of salt like a talisman.

I write now by lamplight. The village is hushed. Somewhere nearby, a conch shell has just sounded — perhaps in evening prayer, perhaps as a call to tomorrow.

I am more certain than ever: we are not merely reclaiming salt. We are reclaiming our right to raise our children without fear. To let them stand, silent but seen, in the presence of power and not shrink. To have them speak by simply being.

In their hands, I saw not just salt.

I saw light.

M.K. Gandhi

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