The salt tax controversy continues.
The leader of the Democracy party in a manifesto says that it is absurd to speak of the party’s objections to the tax as purely sentimental or political.
A severe blow had been dealt at reforms by certification, and the cumulative effect of such an exercise of executive authority would render the position of the people’s representatives under the reformed constitution wholly illusory.
The president of the Liberal Association has sent a cable message to the Secretary of State for India (Viscount Peel), asking for Parliamentary intervention with the view of allaying the discontent caused by the Viceroy’s certification, stating that it has weakened the Indian Government’s prestige and the position of those who loyally supported the Government in making the reforms a success.
The Bengal extremists, by an overwhelming majority, passed a resolution proposing that non-co-operators should refuse to pay the enhanced salt tax, and requesting the All India Congress to empower the Bengal congress to order mass civil disobedience of the certification.
The second is a United Press dispatch from Bombay dated (excerpts):
A new move in which a woman will lead the followers of Mahatma Gandhi in opposition to the government was announced today in plans for fresh attacks on the Dharsana salt works.
Shortly after martial law had been established at the terrorized city of Sholapur, Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, who succeeded yesterday to the leadership Gandhi was forced by his arrest to abandon, started enlisting volunteers for the salt works raid.
Both Gandhi and his first successor, Abbas Tyabji, were arrested when they prepared to raid the Dharsana works.
Mrs. Naidu’s determination to force the policy of Gandhi to the limit was demonstrated in violations of the salt laws at Shiroda and Belgaum last night and today.
She expected to enlist about 300 volunteers.
There was also danger at Karachi where a hartal was declared in protest against sentencing of Abbas Tyabji, noted jurist, to three months in prison.
All Hindu shops and markets were closed.
Moslems were not affected.
A mass meeting was arranged for tonight after several peaceful parades had been held.
An accompanying article by UP’s Webb Miller included these notes:
Dissatisfaction with the salt tax as a result of agitation inspired by Gandhi — although the salt tax actually amounts to only a small sum per head yearly.
The followers of Gandhi, however, claim it is iniquitous because it hits the poverty stricken comparatively harder than the rich.
Salt is a vital necessity for the poor, who, with big families, must eat as much as the wealthy.
Furthermore, dissatisfaction has existed in certain districts as a result of the land tax, the only levy with which millions are familiar.
The government collects the land tax in accordance with the area in crops.
The rent production tax is often revised in accordance with alterations of the fertility and productiveness of the land.
By a colossal system of accounts, every cultivated field in India’s 500,000 villages is registered and taxed.
Revisions, or absence of revisions, was responsible for the outbreak at Bardoli, where the followers of Gandhi recently said they would not pay the tax unless Gandhi instructed them to do so.
The Indians object to the government’s payment of 30,000,000 to 40,000,000 rupees a year (about $8,500,000 to $11,500,000) in pensions to retired officers.
They also object to the fact European businesses take great sums out of the country instead of investing here.
The claim was made during these conversations that a widespread practice has come into existence, namely, shipping raw materials from India abroad and then buying products manufactured from these raw materials for sale in India.
This, the Indians complain, forces them to pay freight two ways and allows several profits.
The Indian leaders insist they must build their own industries.
One tactic that has been used from time to time by tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns is to attempt to make tax enforcement, or government reprisals against tax resisters, costly for the government — for example by clogging the jails or the court system.
If accomplished successfully, this can force the government into a checkmate, where if it fails to take action it loses, but if it takes action it loses.
But by forcing resisters to throw themselves onto the gears of the machine, this tactic can be costly to them as well, and so this tactic can turn into a game of chicken (or a war of attrition).
Here are a handful of examples:
John Brown Smith was a British citizen living in Massachusetts.
Not, as an alien, being entitled to vote, he decided to test the American “no taxation without representation” motto, and stopped paying his $2 poll tax.
In the town threw him in jail.
There he stayed… for almost a year!
The town had to pay about $1.75 a week just to feed him.
The question of martyrdom in this case hinges on the board bill, for which the Town of Belchertown is liable.
Some of the frugal tax-payers of Belchertown object to being assessed for their proportion of Smith’s weekly board bill.
They think that they are the real martyrs, since they maintain in idleness a man who will nto pay a poll-tax, the proceeds of which would scarcely suffice to pay the cost of maintaining him one week in Northampton Jail.
Some nobler spirits, however, express their willingness to pay their share of the cost of Smith’s prison fare until the crack of doom, if Smith should hold out so long, in order that the majesty of the law shall be vindicated.
Smith, on his part, exultingly declares that he is better housed and fed than a majority of the voters of Belchertown who are paying his board.
This aspect of the case detracts somewhat from the heroism of the martyr to the poll-tax.
Nevertheless, as Smith adds that he would rather spend the rest of his days in jail than give up the principle for which he is contending, we may concede that he is a real hero, unaffected by the mercenary considerations of his board bill.
Smith was eventually released when someone came forward to pay his tax and fines (a total of $5.62) for him (leaving the government about $75 behind on the deal).
J.J. Keon refused to pay his poll tax in Grafton, Illinois, in :
J.J. Keon, a Socialist of this city, is in the city jail, having the time of his life, so he says, because he is forcing the city to spend $125 to punish him for failure to pay a poll tax of $1.50… He says he finds nothing in the state constitution which makes a poll tax legal, so he insists that the city keep him in jail for six months, which is the longest term possible for his “offense.”
He believes that it will not alter his principle and that it may make the city tired of forcing its male population to pay a poll tax.
“You’re losing $4.50 a day [Keon’s usual salary] while you are in jail,” pleaded the mayor.
“In six months that will amount to more than $500.”
“Money is nothing to me when compared with a principle,” replied Keon.
“And let’s see what I am costing the city.
Meals, 150 days, at sixty cents a day, $108; night watchman, $5; chicken fence wire, $2; miscellaneous, $10. Total, $125. The entire poll taxes for the year are only $325.…”
You may remember the newspaper articles about Maurice McCrackin I posted , in which he refused to cooperate at his tax resistance trial — to the point even of having to be carried or wheeled into the courtroom.
headline from the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Sunday Independent
Resisters to an unpopular wage tax in Pennsylvania in discovered that if they refused to pay the tax entirely, the government could quickly hit them with fines or jail time… but if they paid some minimal fraction of the taxes due, the government couldn’t move against them without doing a complicated assessment first to determine how much extra was owed.
This could be a long and dreary legal procedure for a school district or council, especially if there is more than one such delinquent.
Therefore, many residents are beating the wage tax levy by simply clunking a single coin on the tax collector’s desk.
Clogging the courts was an important tactic of the campaign to resist Thatcher’s Poll Tax.
Danny Burns writes:
Bristol City Council issues summonses to 120,000 people, Leeds summoned 110,000 and the numbers in almost all other big cities were comparable.
In order to get through this number of cases, councils had to hope that defendants wouldn’t turn up.…
The strategy of the Anti-Poll Tax Unions was to make sure that as many people as possible came to court.
In law everyone had a right to have their case heard individually.
The calculation was that even if only a small percentage of people had their cases heard, the courts would be blocked for years.
Initially, neither the councils nor the courts took the judicial procedure seriously because they didn’t expect anyone to turn up… South Tyndale Council summoned 3,500 to appear on two afternoons.
A total of five hours was allocated to hear all these cases — an average of four secons per hearing.
When people heard this they were furious, because it was obvious that both the council and the courts saw the process as rubber stamping exercise.…
The Anti-Poll Tax Unions publicised the strategy to block the courts, with leaflets and posters and articles in the local newspapers.
Mass demonstrations were called for the first day of the hearings, and in some areas the courts were brought to a standstill.
In Warrington on , 1,000 people took over the court and all the cases were postponed.
Similar events took place in Southwark:
1,500 people, mostly women and children, turned up at Southwark court and occupied the building.
It was absolute chaos, the courts couldn’t handle the numbers.
The police were stopping people from coming into their own court cases.
The crowds didn’t move until the court declared all 5,000 cases adjourned.
…People were given ideas about how they might disrupt or delay the court proceedings.
These included simple things, like asking for a glass of water because their throat was dry, demanding to see the identity cards of everyone present in court, to fainting in court or arranging for fire alarms to go off.
People were told to demand their rights to see and read every document which was produced as evidence against them.
They were also given briefings on the basic technical arguments.
…Throughout England and Wales over a thousand people were trained to do court support work and could quote the relevant legislation.
Experience showed that the most effective way of wasting time, for those who were not familiar with the law, was to relate direct experiences of hardship.
People talking in their own language about their own circumstances were much harder for the magistrates to dismiss than legal technicians.
Many people made political speeches which lasted for as long as ten minutes, others outlined their financial circumstances.
They all took up valuable time, and sometimes made a powerful and moving impact on the public gallery.
Using the government’s own defenses against it can be a powerful strategy.
And I’ve even got an example in my archives of when the government managed to foil nonviolent tax resisters by using their own tactics against them.
During the Salt Raids in the Indian independence campaign, a group of policemen blockaded the road in front of an assembly of salt raiders, and then sent another group to cut off their escape route.
Then, rather than attacking the raiders, the police used satyagraha tactics to force a standoff:
“You cannot proceed.” the superintendent informed Mrs. [Sarojini] Naidu.
“We will not go back,” the poetess and leader replied.
“We will stay here.”
“We are going to stay here, too, and offer Satyagraha ourselves as long as you stay,” the superintendent said, ordering his men to stand their ground.
They parleyed for a short time and then Mrs. Naidu ordered a chair brought from a nearby house.
She sat down and wrote letters and talked jovially with her friends.
Her followers squatted on the ground nearby, many of them engaged in spinning cloth.
Here are some examples of how the newspapers of the day covered the
Dharasana Salt Raids:
Woman Leader Bides Time When Path Blocked in Salt Raid
Bombay, India, — (United Press) — Police blocked the raid of Mrs. Sarojini
Naidu and her volunteers near the Dharasana salt depot today in one of the
quietest and most weird clashes of the independence campaign inaugurated by
the Mahatma Gandhi.
Authorities adopted the methods of the Satyagraha, or passive registers, to
halt the raid. They formed a cordon around the volunteers headed by Mrs.
Naldu and merely prevented them from moving.
When the police halted them. Mrs. Naidu announced that they would not go back
to their camp.
“We will not move,” the police superintendent replied.
The volunteers brought Mrs. Naidu a chair and they all sat down to await a
move by police, who quietly stood their ground.
Sarojini Naidu
The long-awaited raid led by Mrs. Naidu started
when she left the
Satyagraha camp at the head of the first group of volunteers, reiterating her
intention of seeking “death or victory.” On two previous occasions the raid
was stopped by the arrests of Gandhi and his first successor, Abbas Tyabji.
The thinly-clad volunteers trudged along the road to the government salt
works in ragged formation, equipped with pliers to cut the barbed wire
barricade police had erected. The police force, strengthened by reinforcements
from Jalalpur, awaited them.
The volunteer procession was met on the route by the superintendent of
police, accompanied by 50 excise policemen and a dozen district policemen
armed with sticks. The procession was halted about a half mile from the camp.
Forming a cordon of his men, the police superintendent managed to block the
paths of the Satyagrahis and also cut them off from spectators in the rear.
“You cannot proceed,” the superintendent Informed Mrs. Naidu.
“We will not go back,” the poetess and leader replied. “We will stay here.”
“We are going to stay here, too, and offer Satyagraha ourselves as long as
you stay,” the superintendent said, ordering his men to stand their ground.
They parleyed for a short time and then Mrs. Naidu ordered a chair brought
from a nearby house. She sat down and wrote letters and talked jovially with
her friends. Her followers squatted on the ground nearby, many of them
engaged in spinning cloth.
Mrs. Naldu, educated in England and the mother of four children, announced
before her departure from Bombay for Dharasana, that she was determined to
carry out the responsibilities of the leadership she inherited from Gandhi
and Tyabji, both of whom now are in prison because they declared India should
rule herself.
The Dharasana salt works, state-controlled, have been made the center of the
passive resistance campaign, and Mrs. Naidu’s participation in a raid on it
marks her entrance into the campaign in an active role.
Indian women have participated in the passive resistance campaign since it
was inaugurated at Dandi when Gandhi began making salt illegally, but until
the British government had
ignored them. Mrs. Lakshmipathi, a prominent Madras social worker, was
arrested , however, when she went
to Vederanyam to lead a salt raid. She was sentenced to one year’s simple
imprisonment.
The little woman, who violated the strict rules or Hindu caste to marry Dr.
Naidu. declared the Satyagrahis would ask or give no quarter. Her dark eyes
glowed as she told of her hopes for India, and she was almost trembling with
eagerness when she said neither jail nor death held any terrors for her.
A new plan for defiance of British authority in India, the most deliberate
yet made by the Indian national congress and designed as the last stage in
the campaign for Indian Independence, has been drawn up by the executive
committee of the congress. It was understood on the most reliable authority
.
The executive committee, which has been meeting secretly at Allahabad for the
, adopted a resolution
urging the peasants of the Bengal and Bihar districts to refuse to pay taxes
levied against them for maintenance of village watchmen.
The committee also urged natives of the Gujerat district not to pay the land
revenue in protest against the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi, a Gujeratite.
The plan constitutes the most deliberate defiance of Great Britain’s
authority yet made by the congress, which previously has contented itself
with violations of the government salt monopoly and picketing of liquor and
foreign cloth shops.
The plan is fraught with great possibilities, and will affect hundreds of
thousands of people if it gains complete response.
The watchmen’s tax was selected because the land revenue in Bengal and Bihar
is paid by peasants to landowners and not to the government direct. The
watchmen, however, are employed by the government.
No compromise will be made with foreign cloth merchants, another resolution
declared, and therefore picketing of cloth shops will be intensified.
Dharasana, India, (AP) — Indian authorities,
including the High Commissioner for the Northern Division of Bombay
Presidency, today went to the volunteers’ camps around the Dharasana salt
depots to interview the leaders regarding their intentions as to further
raids.
“We are all leaders,” replied the volunteers, when the Magistrate asked who
directed their activities.
Military officers served notices on the volunteers to quit the camp by
today.
Calcutta,
(AP) — Indian Moslems
in a great gathering here protested the policy of the Nationalist Congress
group in Calcutta municipality of systematically ignoring Moslem claims. A
resolution was passed in favor of a campaign of civil disobedience in the
form of refusing to pay municipal taxes, and demanding an amendment to
existing municipal law so that at least one-third of the total number of
councillors will be Moslems.
Bombay, , (AP) — Undeterred by clashes within British police in which about 200 were injured and as many or more arrested, Indian Nationalists again raided the Government salt depots at Wadala.
Eighty-three Nationalist volunteers led the assault on the wire enclosure.
Thirty returned with two mounds or baskets of salt, while 30 of the remaining
53 were arrested immediately.
The “war council” of the Nationalist Congress convened in a secret meeting here to consider the situation brought about by the raids, in which rioting developed which finally led to the police firing six rounds into the mob. Most of those fired upon were said to be excited textile operatives.
17 Hurt in First Raid
The raids in which 300 were injured began early in the day, with 100
volunteers forming a nucleus of a group which finally circumvented the police
and obtained considerable salt from the depot. The police, with their lathis,
or bamboo staves, injured seventeen, seven seriously, and arrested more than
100 persons.
Later in the day a mob of thousands, in which the Satyagrahis or volunteers
of Mahatma Gandhi, now in prison at Yeroda, Poona, numbered by tens to
hundreds of others, stormed the salt works. Eighteen others were hurt, five
seriously by the police with staves, and others were arrested.
The brunt of thwarting the raid, which was partially successful, fell
principally upon the European police, who were said to have shown great
forbearance. The native police, fearing social boycott if they pressed their
own kinsmen too hard, in some cases sat idly by and watched proceedings.
Police Stoned
Late in the evening a third raid took place, and about a thousand Nationalist
sympathizers, abandoning, it was said, all pretenses at non-violence, stoned
guards and police. Five police and three excisemen were injured by the
pebbles.
Six police who went to the rescue of some hardly pressed excisemen were
themselves surrounded by the mob and obliged to retire. After warning shot
into the air six rounds were fired into the crowd. Casualties were not known
immediately, although an estimated 50 persons were injured by the police in
this in the accompanying action. [sic]
It was reported here from Ahmadabad that 65 Nationalist volunteers leaving on
a train for Dharasana, where the Government operated salt pans are located,
were arrested at Barejadi, 11 mllea from Ahmadabad.
The Nationalist camp at Untadi, near Dharasana, now is in charge of Miss
Maniben Patel, daughter of Villabhai Patel.
London, — (Associated Press) — A dispatch to the Dally Herald
from its Bombay correspondent quoted
a “high official” as saying that if by the end of the year the tax-resistance
campaign is succeeding, the government will be faced with considerable
financial embarrassment. The dispatch added that hope prevailed that civil
resistance would have been checked or abandoned by then, “although at the
moment all signs point in the contrary direction.”
The correspondent said the growth of the Gandhi movement was shown by the
increased number of persons wearing the Gandhi caps. In the cities, he said,
a majority of the people wear them; they also are beginning to be worn in
villages in Punjab while even in aristocratic Simla one person in six of the
population in the bazaars have donned caps, which is the symbol of the
nationalist campaign.
Concurrently he said there has been an intensification of the boycott of
British goods. He cited an unnamed Punjab merchant who has 100,000 pounds of
Lancashire cotton goods on his hands which it is useless to attempt to sell.
This merchant is prepared to accept his losses cheerfully as a contribution to
the nationalist cause, he added.
The government was represented in the dispatch as determined to put down
lawlessness, but the writer implied a doubt whether the civil forces would be
able to prevail against disruption without the aid of the military.
500 Begin Drive Against Foreign Cloth and Liquor Shops — Boycott Expected to Replace Raiding of Salt Depots
Bombay, India, — (United Press) — Wholesale defiance of the government’s
ordinance against picketing shops selling foreign goods or liquors was
inaugurated today by the India independence volunteers.
More than 500 women volunteers renewed picketing of foreign-cloth shops in
Bombay and the local congress leaders were organizing more volunteers for the
work, which was expected to replace the practice of raiding salt depots.
The picketing campaign was a direct challenge to the recent ordinance of the
Viceroy, Lord Irwin, and was expected by many observers to decide definitely
the strength of the home rule movement. The independence leaders also have
planned to defy the Viceroy’s order to halt propagandizing against payment of
land taxes.
Bombay, — (Associated Press) — Official India today could cease to
worry about Indian nationalists’ raids on the government salt pans, but faced
a problem of greater importance — non-payment of taxes, which is being
instigated as the next step in the nationalist campaign of civil disobedience.
A “final” salt raid was undertaken
at Wadala by 15,000 nationalist volunteers and spectators who for a week had
prepared for the occasion. One hundred fifty of their number were injured by
the police with their bamboo clubs, but the remainder broke through the
cordon and obtained handsful of salt.
Holding the salt aloft, and with their bodies covered with slime and mud up
to their waistlines, the volunteers paraded the streets of Bombay crying
aloud their usual: “We have broken the salt laws.” The spirit of the crowd
seemed subdued, however, in comparison with recent raids, a development which
authorities attributed to troops which were at hand for use in case of need.
The nationalists had widely advertised the raid, and raids on a smaller scale
at Dharasana as “final,” a decision taken because of the approach of the
summer monsoons, when the salt areas cannot be approached.
The anti-tax campaign which it was said would replace the campaign against
the salt laws already has been initiated in the Bardoli district where
officials are arriving to post signs warning the peasants that their lands
will be forfeit if they refuse to pay the dues. Thus far they have found the
villages deserted.
The government announced a new
ordinance aimed at the notax campaign. This provides for heavy prison and
monetary penalties against instigators of this form of civil disobedience.
The salt tax, which is the center of the nationalist attack, is less than a
farthing a pound, and is not new to India. It is an ancient method of raising
money which the East India Company inherited from the Mogul empire. Collected
at first only in Bengal, it was subsequently extended to other districts.
The native peasants are great consumers of salt, much of which is required to
counteract the insipidity of their vegetable diet.
In some districts the manufacture has diminished owing to the importation of
foreign salt, but the industry is still widespread and very important. It is
carried on partly by private firms and partly by government agents, but duty
has to be paid on it, and to carry on the manufacture without license is
illegal, hence the significance of the Gandhi procedure.
New Action Comes as Rainy Season Halts Salt Raids — 15,000 Take Part in “Final”
150 Injured by Police
Bombay,
(AP) — A
drizzling rain fell over Bombay Presidency today from cloudy, forbidding
skies, marking the first of the rainy season which comes every summer with
arrival of the monsoon.
This year the rain will mark the end of an important phase of the Indian
Nationalist civil disobedience campaign. The showers of today will be
torrents tomorrow and the salt deposit areas, such as at Wadala and
Dharasana, will become morasses of mud and slime, inaccessible to the raiders
who during the past two months have harassed British police guarding them.
The final raid of the year at Wadala was undertaken by 15,000 Nationalist
volunteers and spectators. Presence of troops was believed to have restrained
the crowd somewhat, although about 150 persons were injured when the police
charged with their lathis, or bamboo clubs.
There will be some further raiding at Dharasana, but even this will cease
within a few days. There was no raiding anywhere today inasmuch as Monday is
the day observed by Mahatma Gandhi, imprisoned leader of the swarajist
movement, as a day of silence.
Tax Resistance Stressed
With abandonment of the campaign against the salt law, the Nationalist
volunteers are stressing the nonpayment of taxes, a campaign of possibly
much more serious import for the British authorities than that just
concluded.
The antitax campaign which it was said would replace the campaign against the
salt laws has already been initiated in the Bardoli district, where officials
are arriving to post signs warning the peasants that their lands will be
forfeited if they refuse to pay the taxes. They thus far have found the
villages deserted.
The Government announced a new ordinance aimed at the no-tax campaign
providing heavy prison and monetary penalties against instigators of this
form of civil disobedience
Campaign Seen as Serious
London,
(AP) — A
Bombay dispatch to the Daily Herald today from its own corresponded there
quoted a “high official” as saying that if by the end of the year the
tax-resistance campaign still is succeeding the Government will be faced with
considerable financial embarrassment. The dispatch added that hope prevailed
that [illegible] resistance would have been checked or abandoned by then,
“although at the moment all signs point in the contrary direction.”
Peasants Reported Leaving Farms as Part of Civil Disobedience Campaign
Await Gandhi Orders
Bombay, (AP) — Nonpayment of taxes,
one of the planks of the civil disobedience campaign platform, appears to be
gaining ground in some sections of India.
All-India National Congress reports say that 50,000 peasants of the Bardoli
region have left their homes, resolved not to pay land taxes until swaraj,
or home rule, is established. Many left their household goods, chattels and
crops behind, the Government confiscating and auctioning them off.
The peasants are said to have for their slogan, “No swaraj, no revenue.” The
leaders of the movement declare the peasants do not desire to evade payment,
but simply will not pay until Mahatma Gandhi is released from jail and has
ordered them to pay.
The Congress characterizes the the peasants’ actions as “an unrivaled example
of a migration movement on the part of people who are resolved to forfeit
their all in the interest of the Gandhi cause.”
The Bardoli district has an area of about 233 square miles and contains 123
villages with a total population of 88,000, of whom 82,000 are rural. The
annual land revenue exceeds $183,000.
The Government claims that [illegible] villages have paid all their arrears
and that throughout the district only twenty-five peasants have [illegible]
payment altogether, dwellers of the villages merely having gone elsewhere to
await developments.
