Gandhi’s Speech to the Sabarmati Ashram Community before beginning the Salt MarchGandhi selected seventy-eight coresidents who lived with him at the Sabarmati Ashram community to join him in leading the Salt March, the start of a nationwide nonviolent anticolonial campaign.
March 12, 1930
God willing, we shall set out exactly at 6:30. Those joining the march should all be on the spot at 6:20. If our first step is pure, all our subsequent steps will be good and pure. As ManilalManilal Gandhi was Gandhi's second-eldest son. He lived in South Africa and managed the Phoenix Settlement community along with is wife, Sushila Gandhi, but had come to India to join the Salt March. is joining us, I would say something for his benefit. He should not join just because he is my son though he cannot help being my son, nor can I forget that I am his father.
We who are setting out with a great responsibility on our heads – we the Ashram inmates – have but one capital. We can boast of no learning. We who took certain vows and pledged ourselves to the Ashram way of life ought to adhere to those vows scrupulously. The seventy-twoUltimately seventy-eight men joined Gandhi from Sabarmati Ashram. men joining the march should once again read the Ashram rules and think whether or not they should join the march. Those inmates of the Ashram who have any dependents will not be able to draw money from the Ashram for them. None should join the struggle with that hope. This fight is no public show; it is the final struggle – a life-and-death struggle. If there are disturbances, we may even have to die at the hands of our own people. Even in that case, we shall have made our full contribution to the satyagraha"Satyagraha" = nonviolent civil disobedience struggle. We have constituted ourselves the custodians of Hindu-Muslim unity. We hope to become the representatives of the poorest of the poor, the lowest of the low and the weakest of the weak. If we do not have the strength for this, we should not join the struggle. For my part I have taken no pledge not to return here, but I do ask you to return here only as dead men or as winners of swaraj"Swaraj" = self-rule; in this case political self-rule or independence.. Chhaganlal JoshiChhaganlal Joshi was a resident of Sabarmati Ashram and one of the seventy-eight marchers who accompanied Gandhi on the Salt March. will not be able to run up here if DhiruDhiru was the nickname for Dhiren Gandhi, a grandnephew of Gandhi who was one of the children living at Sabarmati Ashram at the time of the Salt March. falls ill. Even if the Ashram is on fire, we will not return. Only those may join, who have no special duty to their relatives. The marchers have vowed to follow life-long poverty and to observe brahmacharya"Brahmacharya" = celibacy for life. They leave here with the determination to observe brahmacharya and will remain faithful to that determination. The man who always follows truth and always proclaims what he does is a brave man. Anyone who deceives others is not brave. I cannot speak to anyone privately for I have not a minute to spare. Though addressing myself to Manilal particularly, I say this to all.
We are entering upon a life-and-death struggle, a holy war; we are performing an all-embracing sacrifice in which we wish to offer ourselves as oblation. If you prove incapable, the shame will be mine, not yours. You too have in you the strength that God has given me. The Self in us all is one and the same. In me it has awakened; in others, it has awakened partially.