March-to-the-Sea

Early one morning last week Mahatma Gandhi, wizened, sainted patron of Indian Independence, arose from his couch in the Sabarmarti Ashram, his settlement outside Ahmadabad, wrapped in cloth around his spidery loins, took the high road for Jalalpur, 150 miles away on the Gulf of Cambay in the centre of India's western seaboard. With him proceeded 79 followers-- one Christian, two Moslems, the rest Hindus. It was a mission of profoundest significance to Indian Nationalists, for when, after 20 days, the little legion should arrive in Jalalpur, they planned to take pails of water*from the sea, extract the salt therefrom in direct defiance of the British government's Indian salt monopoly and tax. This symbolic act would inaugurate the Civil Disobedience campaign, long contemplated by Saint Gandhi as a new, potential means of protest against British rule (TIME, Jan. 13 et ante). Thereafter, countless adherents of Saint Gandhi would be expected to harass the British government with similar infractions of the law.

Before he left, the Mahatma bade goodbye to Mrs. Gandhi, a shriveled little middle-aged Hindu. Well-educated, she oversees the cooking and housekeeping at her husband's headquarters and ''college," lectures to Hindu women, promotes a "spinning campaign" whereby Hindu women of high and low degree are urged to spend some part of each day at their looms.

The Mahatma also bade goodbye to a six-foot sun-blackened, scantily-clad girl of 30, with a shaven pate, who is general supervisor of the headquarters, and would tend his tasks during his absence. Srimati Mira Bai he calls her, but her real name is Madeleine Slade. Once a freckled blonde, she is a daughter of the late Admiral Sir Edward Slade of the Royal Navy. She studied philosophy in several Continental schools, found nothing to inspire her until she read of the Mahatma's labor. Correspondence with him followed; in 1926 she went to India, cheerfully accepted the year's probation to which he subjected her. She slept on a splintered floor, cooked her own meagre food, spun her clothes from raw cotton. Having learned Hindu, taken a Hindu name, embraced the Hindu faith, she became tantamount to the Mahatma's private secretary, accompanied him on trips to the villages, supported his spindly frame when, though ill, he persisted in taking his ruminative walks. Madeleine Slade wished she too might have marched to Jalalpur last week, but, as she declared: "The Master does not believe in placing women, least of all English women, in the forefront of the battle."

The girl that Gandhi left behind him had plenty to do. In his Ashram ("college") on the Sabarmarti River, some 22 persons had been stricken with smallpox, three were already dead. What might ordinarily have been a crisis was overshadowed by the excitement attending the Mahatma's departure.

A swirling, jabbering crowd of some 20,000 greeted the marchers with shouts and cheers as they emerged in the dawn. Sentries paced around nearby salt pans fearing Nationalist attacks. An Indian woman presented the Mahatma with a horse, to be used if any of the marchers fell sick. Little, glinting clouds of rupees were flung over the heads of the swarthy group, and on every hand sounded the CRACK, CRACK of cocoanuts broken asunder by the Hindus to assure good fortune. A volunteer band raised their horns and blared a few bars of "God Save the King" before they realized their mistake and subsided in brassy confusion.

For four hours the Mahatma trudged along the dusty roads before he reached the village of Aslali, end of the first day's march. As he progressed, the host which had saluted his departure and followed him in orderly fashion for many miles gradually fell back, the cheering died away. At Aslali some 125 natives greeted him with garlands and song. The Mahatma addressed them, declared that his aide Vallabhai Patel had been arrested a week previously for intending to speak in public. Said Saint Gandhi: "Let the Government arrest me for actually doing so."

Next morning, as the 80 Disobedients again took the path, the village was asleep; not a single cheer resounded. In a nearby hamlet Saint Gandhi called his lonely procession to a halt, gazed up and down the silent, empty street, addressed the blank windows of slumbering houses. "If you do not awake you will be looted by other people, if not by Englishmen."

Under a scorching sun the trek continued. Mr. Gandhi's head and legs began to ache. At Nawagon, haggard and drooping, he stayed another night, urged the villagers to make and wear homespun clothes, to join the Disobedients. There he profoundly congratulated the eight "head men" who had cheerfully resigned as a protest against Vallabhai Patel's imprisonment. Next day, at Boriavi, he declared: "Money alone will not win self-government. If money could win, I should have obtained it long ago. What is required, therefore, is your blood." When he arrived at Nadiad, Mr. Gandhi sank to the ground, had to have cold compresses applied to his head, his legs swabbed with ointment, before he could proceed. At Anand he announced he would rest for a day and, following his one-day-a-week-silent rule, would say no word to anyone. Newsgatherers reported they did not believe the emaciated saint would be physically able to go much farther, waited to see how he felt after his day of rest and silence.

Meanwhile in Poona, southeast of Bombay, 100 volunteers planned to emulate Saint Gandhi, make a 100-mile march-to-the-sea. In Calcutta, Mayor J. M. Sen Gupta, garlanded, his forehead daubed with vermilion in, honor of a Hindu festival, embarked for Rangoon to answer British charges that he had encouraged Civil Disobedience.

*It is unlawful for an Indian to carry a pail of sea water to his home. Although India has four of the world's best rock salt areas in the world, could locally manufacture all the salt necessary, the British government dumps some 600,000 tons in the Indian market annually, thus provides ballast tonnage for British shipping, gets $20,000,000 annual revenue from India. The monopolized salt is sold to Indians at prices sometimes 2,000% of production cost. Indian farmers who take cattle to the seashore at night to let them lick whatever salt is deposited, thereby run the risk of imprisonment.

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