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By March 1930 the people of India are growing more restless under the yoke of British rule. Indian nationalists turn to Mohandas Gandhi to lead a campaign for full independence. Having successfully employed nonviolent sanctions while fighting for suppressed Indians in South Africa, and then again in India in the 1920's, Gandhi moves to confront the colonial rulers in ways that average Indians can understand and be part of.
His first target is the British monopoly on the manufacture and sale of salt, and he leads a 250-mile march to the sea, where he and thousands of protesters violate the law by making their own salt. This practice was known as satyagraha, or civil disobedience or the protesting of unjust laws. The British crackdown and arrest over 60,000 protesters and many, including Gandhi, go to jail. The march to the sea and Gandhi's subsequent arrest made headlines around the world.
As civil disobedience spreads, the satyagraha campaign encompasses a boycott of British cloth and the resignations of local Indian officials who work for the British. All this puts great pressure on the British/Indian government and the British Viceroy Lord Irwin opens talks with Gandhi, who opts for compromise. Although the campaign does not dislodge the British from India, it shatters the legitimacy of British control and rallies the Indian people to the cause of independence, which eventually comes in 1947 (post-WWII).
That the civil disobedience campaign flowed from Gandhi's leadership does not, however, mean that it was a simple projection of his ideals. The dynamic of satyagraha (civil disobedience), as Gandhi originally conceived it, started with breaking the laws of the Raj, then forcing the British to punish protesters. Their suffering would touch the hearts of the oppressors, expose the injustice of their rule, and create conditions in which the British would choose to leave not be forced out with violence. Naively, Gandhi even believed that willingness to negotiate indicated a personal change of heart. But Gandhi and Irwin were not the same as India and Britain: Irwin was impressed by Gandhi, but his government was not ready to regard the Indian people as sovereign.
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