Click to play videoDandi (Gujarat): Mahatma Gandhi's march to Dandi to protest the British taxe on salt kicked off the Civil Disobedience Movement in the Indian freedom struggle.
On a distant day in April 1930, a 400 km march to break the British monopoly over salt culminated in Dandi, Gujarat. The father of the nation stooped down and said, "Here I ruin the foundations of the British empire." And the rest, as they say, is history.
But seventy-six years later, the road Gandhi took is lined with paddy fields, palatial NRI bungalows and prawn farms but there’s no trace of salt – according to the locals, not since 1940.
"Because of the water's turbidity, salt production here is not possible," says a Dandi-based shrimp farmer, Mahindra H Patel.
The shallow sea-waters in the area have made salt pans obsolete. Now, instead of salt, Dandi is better known for its shrimps.
Mahindra Patel owns a 4-hectare shrimp farm, which brings him Rs 7-8 lakh a year.
But it’s the lucrative shrimp business, along with proposals for five-star hotels, and resorts that make the 1200 residents of Dandi nervous.
"If industry comes here, every kind of nuisance will come with it. The entire atmosphere of this place will be destroyed," President of the Dandi Agricultural Co-operative Society, Dayalbahi M Patel says.
The Dandi Co-operative is refusing to sell the 7,000 acres of land under its control in spite of pressures from the industrialists.
But the village does admit it was Gandhi's visit that got them the roads, hospitals and other facilities.
"Out of 5-6 lakh villages, what is Dandi's significance? If Mahatma Gandhi had not set foot here, who would bother about us?" asks Dayalbhai Patel.
When Mahatma Gandhi picked up a handful of salt in Dandi, he created an enduring image in history.
There's only gravel now, but what the Mahatma has left the village of Dandi is a fistful of self-reliance and the ability to dictate its future on its own terms.
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