SALT

Violence has a way of breaking you. Even if it’s the other guy whose bones are crushed.

The food is all right. Mostly vegetarian. Suits me fine. It’s the sun and the wind; one splitting your skin open and the other rubbing the salt in. I am beginning to get used to that as well. It’s not for nothing I walked miles in the Mexican desert following a General. Or ran across the streets of London as the air raid alarms blared in 1917. After all, my muscles hold the miles they walked to cover stories along the length and breadth of Michigan as a young journalist. So, I am all right.

Sent by United Press, after flying for thousands of miles, I landed here. To meet the frail, half-naked man with a staff. Who seems to have a spirit that can move an ocean of people. Before I could witness him in action, he had been arrested. But I am told, that the old man walked 240 miles in 24 days with his followers; to scoop the mudded salt at Dandi, and said “with this, I am shaking the foundations of the Empire.”

That was on 04/6/1930. Today is 05/21/1930.

On walking here through scorching heat and meeting with this short, homely woman who is leading the raid, I am inclined to believe she meant what she said- death or victory.

I stand among the onlookers who have witnessed days of peaceful volunteers trying to raid Dharasana Salt Works. With about 400 policemen guarding its barbed wire barricade day and night, it has turned into a fortress.

I gather that the volunteers in their rough white clothes and caps have been patient. It has been six days since they first tried to approach the premises and were asked to go back. They sat around, at one time, for 28 hours on a stretch. Many of them were arrested every day.

The poetess-leader who has taken over the mantle from her arrested fellow leaders looks like she is ready to stare the devil in the eye. I’m sure she has a compassionate side to her but she doesn’t have the luxury to show it. Not when her compatriots are dying for lack of salt. In her homespun khadi clothes, she looks every bit like a woman on a mission. Someone who could cry out to her followers in an impassioned voice, “You must not use any violence under any circumstance. You will be beaten, but you must not resist. You must not even raise a hand to ward off blows. Although Gandhi’s body is in prison, his soul goes out with you!”

A company of infantry from Bombay has taken its position, overlooking about 2,600 volunteers. The volunteers clad in thin-white robes move forward in zigzag columns. A few of them have ropes and pliers in their hands. There is a buzz in the crowd around me. I feel the tentacles of pent-up anguish, unspent fury, and dissolving patience lash around me.

I hear the policemen shouting warnings that go unheeded. The thin white line keeps growing in length and moves towards the barricade. The magistrate’s orders fall on deaf ears too. The glinting steel of the clubs in the hands of men in khakis begins to reflect the morning sun. A few rifles reveal their presence in the company. But the thin white line keeps moving.

There are a few cheers from the volunteers who have managed to reach the posts holding up the barbed wire. As they try to lasso the posts, the policemen run to them again, demanding them to disperse. Only to be refused.

With my years of experience on the job keeping my ear down to the rumble of the battleground or my eyes snapped open to the snip of the guillotine, I can tell when the air is about to go putrid. It’s the same every time. It smells of fear mixed with hatred.

The police charge ahead, swinging their clubs. Standing at a distance of 100 yards I can hear the dull sounds of crack-crack-crack as the clubs hit the skulls and bones. There is no resistance from the volunteers, not even a hand raised to protect their skulls. They just fall on their tracks like nine pins, without crying, their robes soaking wet with blood. Others silently take their places as the crowd gasps and cheers.

It is not for a journalist to swim with the tide of emotions an event triggers. It is for him to stand on the stoic rock of reason and observe its ebb and flow. Yet, the meekness and readiness with which these volunteers keep submitting themselves to the brute force without a sound make me sick to my stomach. I look away.

The injured natives are carried away by their comrades on stretchers. But there are not enough stretchers to carry the growing number of fallen ones. The blankets are brought in as stretchers. I count about 42 injured lying on the ground. There is a great deal of agitation in the crowd of onlookers.

Then, the police start to drag the volunteers to the edge of the ditch, where I stand, and hurl them into the ditch, splashing mud on everyone nearby.

This goes on for some time. Then an official with three policemen approaches the poetess-leader and arrests her. The momentum of the ghastly spectacle slackens as the noon sun heats the ground beneath us.

Later in the day, I visit the temporary camp set up by about 20 doctors and nurses to treat the injured men. I count about 200 injured men in the shack and more arrive as I prepare to leave. Many of them are college students or clerks from all parts of Gujarat. Knowing that I am a correspondent, they speak to me freely.

I reach Bombay after struggling to get an auto transport as I am wearing foreign clothes. And deposit my 2000-word report at the telegraph office. Only to be sent an anonymous reply pencilled on a scrap of paper saying it has not been telegraphed- a hidden code for not passing the censorship. But I am not the one to relent in my pursuit of holding a mirror to the world. If the ghosts from its reflection come out to haunt me, let them.

As I said, violence has a way of breaking you. And if it doesn’t shatter you, it leaves its jagged edges around you. Even if you are the guy who just reports it.