Dharasana Satyagraha: Web Miller

Ben Kingsley's Mahatma Gandhi is an epic. It is one of the masterpieces of motion pictures at least for me. The crisp dialogues, the breathtaking cinematography and the Mahatma itself lend the movie such credence that even if I have watched it 6 times, I wouldnt be bored to go for it a 7th time. One thing good is atleast on 15th Aug some cable channel or the other airs it.

The most riveting sequence of the movie for me is the Dharasana Satyagraha. Just after the Dandi March where the Mahatma has broken the Salt Act, the Dharasana Salt Works in Gujarat was chosen for the next protest. A 76 year old retired judge Abbas Tyabji lead the march with the Mahatma's wife Kasturba. Both of them were arrested and subsequently the protest was to be lead by Sarojini Naidu and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

Naidu was aware that violence against the satyagrahis was a threat, and warned them, "You must not use any violence under any circumstances. You will be beaten, but you must not resist: you must not even raise a hand to ward off blows." On May 21, the satyagrahis tried to pull away the barbed wire protecting the salt pens. The police charged and began clubbing them.

The beatings as caught on the camera in the movie were a world apart. Batch after batch of satyagrahis went ahead unflinching only to be struck down by the lathis of the Raj. Scalps broke open, as blood oozed out. People fell by the way side only to be replaced by another batch. Nobody retaliated, nobody fought back.

All this was being watched by Web Miller a British journalist. Even as the beatings were in progress, Miller was shouting on the phone his report which until now for me has been the best newsprint report I have ever come across. Miller is shouting at the top of his voice. He is using the word 'STOP' to signal that one sentence is over and another begins. Hats off!!!!

Here is the transcript of the article. It is moving and captures what would have happened that day at the Dharasana Salt Works:

Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of watchers groaned and sucked in their breaths in sympathetic pain at every blow.

Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with fractured skulls or broken shoulders. In two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies. Great patches of blood widened on their white clothes. The survivors without breaking ranks silently and doggedly marched on until struck down. When every one of the first column was knocked down stretcher bearers rushed up unmolested by the police and carried off the injured to a thatched hut which had been arranged as a temporary hospital.

There were not enough stretcher-bearers to carry off the wounded; I saw eighteen injured being carried off simultaneously, while forty-two still lay bleeding on the ground awaiting stretcher-bearers. The blankets used as stretchers were sodden with blood.

At times the spectacle of unresisting men being methodically bashed into a bloody pulp sickened me so much I had to turn away....I felt an indefinable sense of helpless rage and loathing, almost as much against the men who were submitting unresistingly to being beaten as against the police wielding the clubs...

Bodies toppled over in threes and fours, bleeding from great gashes on their scalps. Group after group walked forward, sat down, and submitted to being beaten into insensibility without raising an arm to fend off the blows. Finally the police became enraged by the non-resistance....They commenced savagely kicking the seated men in the abdomen and testicles. The injured men writhed and squealed in agony, which seemed to inflame the fury of the police....The police then began dragging the the sitting men by the arms or feet, sometimes for a hundred yards, and throwing them into ditches.

Miller's first attempts at telegraphing the story to his publisher in England were censored by the British telegraph operators in India. Only after threatening to expose British censorship was his story allowed to pass. The story appeared in 1,350 newspapers throughout the world and was read into the official record of the United States Senate by Senator John J. Blaine.