From Dandi Bapu sent out a message to the world “I want world sympathy in this battle of right against might”. The message lives and resonates around the world even today, so relevant in today's time. A simple sentence, but it summed up the aspirations of millions of poor, weak, enslaved people, who were fighting against the might of a mighty empire on which it was said the sun never set. And yet, today they were defiant of that empire, and were sowing the seed of freedom from that empire, not only for themselves, but for all the enslaved people of the world and it happened because the world gave a sympathetic hearing to the aspirations of these people, and the empire lost its moral authority to enslave.
After morning prayers, Bapu and his band of marchers, along with people from Gujarat Vidyapeeth and Bardoli Ashram, took a dip in the sea. At 8.30 am on 6th April 1930, Bapu bent down and picked up a first full of saline mud. He raised his arms to the sky and declared he was breaking the salt law. There wasn't much salt in his hands, but volunteers distilled the mud and made 5 ounces of salt from the mud Bapu had picked up. Later that salt was taken to Ahmedabad and was auctioned in Ahmedabad and thus Dandi became immortal.
The great march for freedom ended in Dandi, but the freedom movement got a new impetus from there on and then there was no looking back, it was said the defiance that the people of India showed at Dandi and after Dandi in the salt satyagraha all over the nation signaled to the Empire that their days in India were numbered.
The Salt March and the brutality displayed by the Colonial Government and the nonviolence of the Indians finally, took whatever moral ascendancy, the British claim to colonize India away from them, and then, the next decade was spent only in trying to find a face saving method by which to grant independence to India, and get away from what was becoming impossible, a people impossible to enslave any longer.
This is the story of the epic March to Dandi, its route and history. The battle of right over might waged here still inspires people the world over who are fighting for justice and rights against the seemingly mighty, even today.