Gandhi’s most famous campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience was the Salt March, for which Time magazine would designate him Man of the Year. On March 2, 1930, Gandhi wrote a letter to the British Viceroy, Lord Irwin, who oversaw India’s administration. Addressing him as “Dear Friend,” Gandhi announced his upcoming campaign against the British salt monopoly, and firmly and politely laid out his demands by which it could be avoided. First and foremost was a path to full Dominion Status for India, similar to Australia and Canada.
Contrast this to America’s Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson’s document is peppered with words and phrases like “tyrant,” “absolute despotism,” and “injuries and usurpations.” King George III is not a dear friend, but instead the subject of a laundry list of grievances prefixed “He has.” The united states held their “British brethren” to be “enemies in war,” and the first enumerated power for these “free and independent states” was to levy war.
Gandhi’s letter did call British rule “a curse” and listed many reasons. The sale of alcohol weighed heaviest on the poor, undermining both “their health and morals.” A multitude of taxes, including that on salt, seemed designed to “crush the very life out of” the population. The costs of the military and civil administration were “ruinously expensive.”
Income inequality was also worth mentioning. Gandhi calculated that the Viceroy’s salary was more than 5,000 times India’s average income. This disparity was far greater than that in England, where the British Prime Minister was “only” getting 90 times Britain’s average income.
Despite this, Gandhi’s tone remained respectful and gentle. “My ambition,” he wrote, “is no less than to convert the British people through nonviolence, and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India. I do not seek to harm your people. I want to serve them even as I want to serve my own.”
This same sentence serves as a pretty good description for the American Union, whose ambition is to convert Congress through nonviolence, and make them see the harm that their inaction is causing to the American people. As a nonpartisan PAC, it does not seek to harm any politician or party, but to serve the citizenry by crowdsourcing a legislative package to end poverty, mass incarceration, and the endless wars, and to serve the 118th Congress by building the necessary electoral support to pass such transformative legislation. Of course, should Congress refuse to be persuaded to serve the people, then duty will require that the American Union of swing voters replace them on November 5, 2024.
More about the Salt March, including the parallels to the American Union campaign, will appear in the coming weeks.
Gandhi’s “unquestioning and immovable faith in the efficacy of nonviolence“ ultimately succeeded. What principle do you have unquestioning faith in?