The Similarities And Differences Between Dandi March And The First Republic Day Parade

The Republic Day Parade, an annual tradition of celebrating India’s political sovereignty, conducted from 1951 onwards and Gandhi's Dandi March, a political non-violent mobilisation of people in 1930 have certain design parallels. However, the methods employed by these stalwarts were different and the results expected and delivered were also different.

Danish Mand KhanUpdated: Jan 18, 2023, 14:47 IST

3 min read

The Republic Day Parade, an annual tradition of celebrating India’s political sovereignty, conducted from 1951 onwards and Gandhi's Dandi March, a political non-violent mobilisation of people in 1930 have certain design parallels. However, the methods employed by these stalwarts were different and the results expected and delivered were also different.

Suchitra Balasubramaniam examines the correlation between the two events in her essay ‘Imagining the Indian Nation: The Design of Gandhi’s Dandi March and Nehru’s Republic Day Parade’.

Dandi March

When Mahatma Gandhi returned to India, he began various satyagarhas( struggle for the truth). These satyagarhas were meant to direct the larger population’s attention to the plight of Indigo farmers who suffered greatly from British injustices; horrible working conditions in textile mills; and a series of unfair laws imposed upon the poor population.

The Dandi March served as the centrepiece of the 1930 Salt Satyagraha, which was centred on a demonstration against the salt tax. Thousands of men and women from all over India took part in it, making it the Mahatma’s biggest mass-mobilisation movement.

Dandi March wikipedia

‘India was one of very few countries where the State had monopoly over salt manufacture and sale. In 1930, the British government levied a 2400 percent tax over the wholesale price of locally manufactured salt in order to create a market for salt imported from Britain. It was a time of rising prices and falling wages and as a result the burden of the tax fell heavily on the poorer sections of Indian society.’

Gandhi made the decision to march to the coast to gather sea salt, fusing the march's symbolic force with the emotive impact of salt as a symbol.

‘Gandhi selected members of the group mostly from among the residents of Sabarmati Ashram to represent the diversity of Indians. The seventy-eight men who accompanied him were among those who were most committed to the Gandhian way of life, purposively drawn from all the provinces of India and including Muslims,Christians, and high and low caste Hindus, from ordinary and well-to-do family backgrounds. Women were not included in the main group of marchers; however, he selected his colleagues Abbas Tyabji, a Muslim, and SarojiniNaidu, a prominent woman Congress leader, to replace him as leader of the group in the event of his arrest.’

The Republic Day

Republic Day Parade President of India

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel who designed the route of the Salt Satyagraha, from Ahmedabad to Dandi said,‘the day on which India attains republican status would be written in letters of gold in its history’, when ‘all traces of foreign rule’ were erased and Indians became ‘in law and in fact [their] own masters’.

Gandhi likened the Dandi march with mythical and religious marches of prophets and Nehru designed the Republic Day as a continuity of tradition with a forward-looking approach. ‘‘Traditions have to be accepted to a large extent and adapted and transformed to meet new conditions and ways of thought, and at the same time new traditions have to be built up’.