History of the salt tax in British India

The administration eventually relented and invited Mahatma Gandhi to England to attend the Second Round Table Conference.

Gandhi's Dandi March got wide news coverage and proved to be a turning point in the history of India's independence movement.

The salt tax continued to remain in effect and was repealed only when Jawaharlal Nehru became the prime minister of the interim government in 1946.

An early mention of salt taxation is found in Guanzi, a book written in China c. 300 BCE, which proposes various methods for its implementation.

[2] The Rann of Kutch is an extensive marshland that is cut off from the rest of the Indian subcontinent during monsoons when the seas inundate the low-lying areas.

The Arthashastra, which describes the different duties of the people, says that a special officer called lavananadhyaksa was appointed to collect the salt tax.

[4] In 1759, two years after its victory at the Battle of Plassey, the British East India Company came into possession of land near Calcutta where there were salt works.

[4] Utilizing this opportunity to make money, they doubled the land rent and imposed transit charges on the transportation of salt.

[4] In 1764, following the victory at the Battle of Buxar, the British began to control all the revenues of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.

Robert Clive, who returned as governor in 1765, made the sale of tobacco, betel nut, and salt (apart from other accessories and essential spices and condiments), the monopoly of the senior officers of the British East India Company.

[4] The outrage was expressed by the authorities in England who declared: We consider it too disgraceful, and below the dignity of the present situation, to allow such a monopoly.Clive responded by offering the company 1,200,000 per annum from the profits made.

Corruption dealt a severe blow to the company and the revenue from salt trade fell to 80,000 rupees by 1780.

The Orissa zamindars, who had earlier controlled the local salt trade, were alarmed at the sudden loss of income and tried to persuade the malanga not to work for the British, but to no avail.

In the early 19th century, to make the salt tax more profitable and reduce smuggling, the East India Company established customs checkpoints throughout Bengal.

A customs line was established, which stretched across the whole of India, which in 1869 extended from the Indus to the Mahanadi in Madras, a distance of 2,300 miles; and it was guarded by nearly 12,000 men and petty officers... it consisted principally of an immense impenetrable hedge of thorny trees and bushes, supplemented by stone wall and ditches, across which no human being or beast of burden or vehicle could pass without being subject to detention or search.The taxation laws introduced by the British East India Company were in vogue during the ninety years of British Raj which followed the demise of the company.

[10]Since the introduction of the first taxes on salt by the British East India Company, the laws were subjected to fervent criticism.

A resolution was passed wherein the delegates present declared 'That this Congress do put on record its disapproval of the recent enhancement of the salt tax as involving a perceptible increase to the burden of the poorer classes, as also the 'partial adoption, in a time of peace and plenty, of the only financial reserve of the Empire.'

On 14 August 1894, he thundered in the House of Commons: Then the Salt Tax, the cruelest Revenue imposed in any civilized country provided Rs.

[1]In 1895, George Hamilton stated at a session of the House of Commons that: Time has, however, now come when the Government finds itself in possession of larger surpluses and it is, therefore, its duty as guardian of public exchequer, to reduce taxation on salt.When the salt tax was doubled in the year 1923, it was sharply criticized in a report by the Taxation Enquiry Committee which was published two years later.

In 1929, Pandit Nilakantha Das demanded the repeal of the salt tax in the Imperial Legislature but his pleas fell on deaf ears.

While in South Africa, he wrote in The Indian Opinion: The tax levied on salt in India has always been a subject of criticism.

This time it has been criticized by the well-known Dr. Hutchinson who says that 'it is a great shame for the British Government in India to continue it, while a similar tax previously in force in Japan has been abolished.

At the historic Lahore session of the Indian National Congress on 31 December 1929 in which Purna Swaraj was declared, a passing reference was made to the infamous and oppressive salt law and resolved that a way should be found to oppose it.

In the first week of March 1930, Mahatma Gandhi wrote to Lord Irwin apprising him of the prevailing social, economic and political conditions in the country.

On 12 March 1930, Gandhi embarked on a satyagraha with 78 followers from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi on the Arabian Sea coast.

His reporting on the violence at the Dharasana Salt Works was later credited for helping turn world opinion against British colonial rule of India.

In April 1930, Congress leader Chakravarti Rajagopalachari led a salt satyagraha in Vedaranyam, Madras province.

[16][17] The British authorities turned deaf ears to the massive protests against the salt tax which rocked India during the early 1930s.

It was only on 6 April 1946 that Mahatma Gandhi made a formal request to Sir Archibald Rowlands, the finance member of the Viceroy's Executive Council, to remove the oppressive salt tax.

[6] The salt tax continued in force until March 1947, when it was abolished by the Interim Government of India headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, by the then-Finance Minister Liaquat Ali Khan.