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Writer's pictureDr. Sanjeev Chopra

A Touch Of Salt


Arunava  Sinha’s English translation of the Bangla   Lobonakto by Anita Agnihotri  ‘A Touch of Salt’(ATS) is set in the Rann of Kutch and  those villages and towns of Gujarat where  the Mahatma (referred to as Gandhibaba)  undertook the Dandi March in 1930 , a turning point in the history of our freedom movement . Geology, geography, morphology, mythology, history hagiography, political economy, social history as well as the intersection of gender and caste come together in this intergenerational story, in which all characters, except historical ones – Gandhi, Kasturba, Patel, Nehru , Sarojini Naidu, Miraben  and Lord Irwin – are fictional.

 

We learn from ATS that the  Rann of Kutch is  a  thirty thousand square kilometer  estuary of Thar desert on India’s western frontier . It  includes  a marshy green belt , treeless forest reserves and  is the natural  habitat of wild asses, cranes  flamingoes  besides a host of migratory birds from across the globe. Aeons ago,  the Indian  and the Eurasian plates  met beneath the surface of the earth . In the Jurassic age before Gondwanaland split into two , there was a  deep  sea   where the Rann is now thus  accounting for all the underground salt  which   been harvested by the community of Agarias (salt makers) from times immemorial .The community elders assert that Aurangzeb’s firman   gave  them a  perpetual , and exclusive right  over  the manufacture  of salt . This was also an important exportable from the  erstwhile busy and active port of Bharuch when  ships  carried merchandise to Java and Sumatra in the east and to Aden and Red Sea in the west. Then the  onslaught of the Khiljis, Tughlaqs, Portuguese  and Marathas in quick succession  diverted   the merchants   to safer shores elsewhere. The Rann was witness to a  massive earthquake of 1819 which saw thousands dead , besides a change in the course of Indus.  By  1835, the East India  company discovered the potential of salt , and set up its trading outpost replete with a settlement boasting of  manicured lawns, flower gardens, club and library. As value and volumes grew, the steam engine and  railway wagons for extracting the produce made their appearance in Kharaghoda ( khara for salt and ghoda for mound )in 1880,  the  village of our fictional muses ,Tribhuvan  Patel  and his grandson Azad .

 

In the aftermath of the 1883 famine , the government was desperate to raise its revenues , and its attention was drawn to ‘salt’, the essential ingredient for every human and animal  of the sub-continent . Thus was   established   the Salt Commission  in 1885 ,but in an interesting  coincidence, this was also the year of the founding  of  Indian National Congress , which  soon raised the issue of this  iniquitous  tax. By 1891 , the Gandhi ( still not Mahatma)  wrote against it in the London press. .On his return from South Africa , he had  galvanized the Congress, and established  a permanent  base  on the banks of Sabarmati after the 1917 earthquake. Everything about the  Dandi March of 1930  is described in ATS in great detail – from its conception to its logistics , the choice of the route , which avoided both princely states and Muslim dominated villages, the choice of the 78 volunteers , the leadership succession in the event of Gandhi’s arrest and the advance scouting parties. The Dandi march galvanized the nation , hundreds of thousands joined the protest , salt became more affordable, but what of the world of Agarias – the primary producers of salt ?

 

We learn from the narrative that the Agarias led a transhumance existence – four months in their native Kharaghoda – but from month of Kartik (post Dusshera)  till the peak of summer in Jyeshta -  they lived in their makeshift shanties in the desert  to produce salt  in  extreme climes -from subzero in the cold nights of Pausha ( December -January) to the unbearable summer of Baisakhi ( April- May). Given the ‘pagla padwani’ – the rhythm of their feet in saline water  when  salt enters their  soles -all Agarias  lose  control over  their limbs below the knees , so much so that the  when their  bodies were cremated, the legs  refused to burn with the rest of the torso.

 

While Tribhuvan had  marched with Gandhibaba as a feisty teenager   and  stoically  bore nineteen stitches when the  cops rained  blows on his skull and ribs, his grandson Azad Patel  carries on the struggle for livelihoods and Azadi  well into the seventh decade of Independence. In this, both are different from Ramsingh –  who found his father Tribhuvan’s  idealism misplaced -  in his considered opinion the British rule was better , at least insofar as the Agarias were concerned for  they got their land leases on  time ,  and the water was  provided   on the designated days with clockwork precision . Tribhuvan had been the first to make salt in the Dandi march, but the camera did not click his picture for posterity. All that remained was the oral narrative !

 

What happened after Independence ? As salt became more affordable , the Agarias lost their bargaining power with the new monopolists.  But more than that, with the declaration of the Rann of Kutch as a ‘reserved forest’ for the protection of  wild asses , the Agarias lost whatever  rights they had over their livelihoods, and their water . It became a commodity to be purchased from contractors who owned water tankers. The Narmada canal  was a boon for the farmers of Gujarat and MP : the two states recorded a double digit growth in agriculture  ,but it also marked the death knell of the micro level salt workers  whose pans were flooded with the sweet waters . The final blow which shattered  their  world  was the establishment   of a  modern salt manufacturing unit which would draw  all the water from their settlement . They found it   disconcerting    that the very same forest officials who  stopped the Agarias from even drawing survival water were now hand in glove with these big units , obviously with the political protection of the ‘high and mighty’ of the state government .

 

Azad and his RTI activist friend Nilesh ,move the government for information about their rights and their records .Not only are  they meet with stony silence , the activist breathed  his last in a shooting incident (or accident) which was  classified in police records as suicide . And Azad is nowhere to be traced , for his ‘azadi’ has been clamped under the draconian provisions of the National Investigation Agency  , which authorizes his trial outside of  his state. The Home Secretary , a member of the IAS ,  is an established symbol of status quo, but is   ironically named    Viplav(which means revolution in Bangla and Hindi). Like his colleagues , he    has taken an oath to be faithful to the Constitution, and  knows the letter of the law to the tee, but  that is it . The spirt has been buried in deep,  very  deep furrows in the underbelly of the earth.   Symbolically too,   from his office  facing the Sabarmati river front ,  the Hriday Kunj in Sabarmati Ashram where the Salt march had been conceptualized is invisibilsed by the ‘redeveloped features’ in the new steel and cement  complex which boast of shopping centres , restaurants , river cruises and speedboats .For as the last paragraph puts it so succinctly : the Mahatma, in any case has to be looked for in the darkness , not under bright lights’  and  ‘the lifeless river , as dry as a dead mother’s breasts has been filled by the waters of Narmada , and tourists marvel at the magic incantations that have brought the river back to life ..

 

Or so, they believe in the land where the Mahatma adorns every currency note and ‘Azad’ needs a Habeas corpus petition to be resurrected.

 

 

 

 


 

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