The Political Flexibility of Salt in British India

A Research Paper submitted to the Department of Engineering and Society

Presented to the Faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

Yonsei Kim
Spring, 2022

On my honor as a University Student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this
assignment as defined by the Honor Guidelines for Thesis-Related Assignments

Advisor
Bryn E. Seabrook, Department of Engineering and Society
India’s Oppression and Freedom from Salt

Currently, around 270 million metric tons of salt is produced globally, with India being

the third largest producer at around 29 million metric tons produced in 2020 (Garside, 2022).

However, producing salt used to be heavily taxed or even illegal to produce on an individual

level during in India’s history. Salt being accessible and cheap was important in India’s history

due to the poverty most Indian’s faced then and now, since salt was a cheap and necessary spice

that is added to every meal (Singh). Both the Mughals and British levied taxes on salt during

their reigns, however, the Mughals were much less efficient at enforcing the tax than the British

were (Moxham, 2001). The British were able to take advantage of the large amount of space and

time required to produce salt to regulate and enforce their monopoly. However, since the British

completely banned any collection of salt, Gandhi was able to start an unstoppable protest

because of how easy it is to collect salt on a small scale (Rathi). This contrast of salt usage for

political gain shows the flexibility of salt as a tool. This paper uses the framework of

Technological Politics in order to analyze how the methods of salt production allows it to be

wielded and can exemplify both sides of the political dichotomy as described by Langdon

Winner. This research answers the question: How was salt and its production used to shape the

political and social relationships between the Indians and the British in British India, and how

did each group use salt to gain an advantage?

Methodologies for Historical Research of Salt Regulation in India

The research question is addressed by analyzing historical events and records of the time

period. The main focus will be from when British interests start taking control of Indian land and

salt production to when Gandhi halts his salt march after gaining negotiating power. This time

period is relatively well-documented, especially with the correspondence between British

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companies and the British government, as well as the laws that were implemented and enforced.

These records will give insight into how the British used salt to strengthen their position, and

how they responded to Indian opposition. Gandhi’s responses and plan through his satyagraha is

also well-documented due to his own planning and the following he amassed. His actions have

been analyzed by many scholars, so finding why and how he was able to use salt effectively is

easily found. Technological politics gives a framework to analyze these historical events and

motivations and illustrate how salt was used during this period for political purposes.

Salt Production in British India

Salt is primarily produced via two different methods: solar evaporation and salt mining.

Solar evaporation is done by creating large ponds or flats to be filled with a shallow layer of salt

water. Chowdhury outlines several ways solar evaporation was set up in India during the 19 th

century (2019). To summarize the methods, canals or embankments were created to divert and

allow water into various ponds where the water would be left to evaporate. As the water

evaporated, the solution was either moved to a new pond for further evaporation, or more

seawater was added to allow for a thicker salt crust to be formed. Once a salt crust was formed,

the salt would be collected and stored in mounds. For large scale manufacturing, these were very

labor intensive due to the creation of the ponds and how the seawater was treated. These large

salt pans required a lot of land and time as well. How the drying ponds, or salt pans, were created

and maintained varied from location to location and by the group of people running the salt

production.

Salt was also created naturally without human intervention through solar evaporation.

These were called “spontaneous salts” or “swamp salts”, and were made very similarly to the

manmade methods, but the salt pans were naturally formed ditches where salt water was trapped

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by natural mud embankments (Chowdhury). These naturally salt producing sites were found in

the swamp, produced much higher quality salt, and were prone to being smuggled. During

British rule, most salt was produced through solar evaporation, and the quality of solar

evaporated was considered much higher than the salt produced from mining (Singh).

Brief History on Salt Tax in India

For over 5,000 years, India has produced salt on its own land, making salt a staple in their

cuisine (Rathi). While taxation had been present under the Mauryas and Mughal rule starting in

300 BC, these taxes would pale in comparison to the taxes imposed by the British and were not

as strictly enforced (Moxham, 2001). The British began taking control over the salt production in

India in the mid to late 1700s when the East India Company conquered and defeated the Mughal

princes (Moxham, 2001). As the 1700s and 1800s continued, the East India Company continued

to expand their methods of making a higher profit off of salt. For example, the Company began

to sell their wholesale salt through auction in order to force sellers to pay a higher price, and the

Company would implement the Bombay Salt Act and Indian Salt Act of 1882, which gave them

powers, such as searching and shutting down any contraband salt no matter the size (Moxham,

2001; “Defiance of Salt Tax”). The Company would also go so far as to raise the India tax to

make lower quality, imported salt from Britain cheaper than locally manufactured salt, and to

annex Orissa, a neighboring province, in order to quell salt smuggling and take over the Orissa

salt production (Singh).

Unfortunately, the Indians had little way to fight back against the British and the punitive

salt tax, and were forced to buy salt at ludicrous prices or not at all. The calls and pleas to ease

the salt tax came on deaf ears to the East India Company as both members of the British

Parliament and the Indian National Congress would both repeatedly speak out against the

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“barbaric” tax (“Defiance of the Salt Tax). However, Gandhi returned to India from South Africa

in 1915 to begin working towards the independence of India (Rathi). On March 2, 1930, Gnadhi

notified the Viceroy Lord Irwin that he would begin the salt march in ten days, where Gandhi

and his followers would walk to the coastal town of Dandi and make their own salt from

seawater. The production of any salt without a license would violate Salt Act and force the East

India Company forcefully stop the protest. This nonviolent protest started Gandhi’s Civil

Disobedience movement and as the police arrested Gandhi and violently beat the other

protesters, the international spotlight was brought to focus on the cruel treatment of the British of

the Indians by international reporters (“Gandhi’s Salt March…”). After Gandhi’s arrest, he

would be freed in 1931 in exchange for stopping the satyagraha and for getting negotiating

power in London to fight for India’s future. India received its independence in 1947.

Technological Politics

The framework that is employed in this paper is Technological Politics as defined by

Langdon Winner. In Do Artifacts Have Politics?, Winner outlines the Technological Politics

theory in order to add another perspective when analyzing the effects of technology on society

(1980). Theories such as technological determinism, actor-network theory, and social

determination of technology downplay the political aspects of technology or focus more on the

social forces around the technology and do not focus on the technology at all. Technological

politics focuses on the technology itself and its political nature and traits, while considering the

technical nature of the technology. Winner defines politics as the social relationships between

groups of people and how power and privilege are manipulated in those relationships. He

outlines two uses of technological politics; one for analyzing technologies that are not inherently

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political that has political effects, and one for technologies that can be seen as inherently

political. Both hold relevance for the analysis in this paper.

For analyzing cases where the technology itself does not inherently favor a political

agenda, the use and implementation of the technology can have political ramifications

intentionally or unintentionally. Winner uses the construction of bridges on New York parkways

as an example of a nonpolitical technology having a political effect. The bridges and overpasses

were purposefully built very low so that buses would be unable to use the parkways. Robert

Moses, the master builder for the road infrastructure, did this in order to stop lower class people

from easily using the parkways because they would only be able to take buses. Moses made it

incredibly difficult for lower class people to leave the areas they were living in because the

public transportation out of the areas they lived in was not well-connected due to the lack of bus

routes on parkways. This type of analysis can be used to analyze how the British and Gandhi

both used salt as a political tool for furthering a specific agenda.

The second type of analysis that Winner outlines is how certain technologies or systems

are inherently political. These systems require certain conditions to be in place, and promote

certain political structures; the main two structures being authoritarian and democratic. Winner

gives nuclear and solar power as examples of inherently political technologies that exist in the

same space. Nuclear is an inherently authoritarian technology because nuclear requires a strong

centralized power, maintaining authority, and extreme coordination. Solar power however is very

decentralized and can be widely distributed, meaning solar can be seen as a democratic

technology. This view on inherently political technologies is relevant because the production of

salt can lean one way or the other depending on the type of production.

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 This paper will use both ways of analyzing salt and its production methods to answer the

question of how salt is a politically flexible technology during the British India era.

The Politics Behind Salt

The usage of salt and its production from the mid-1700s to the 1930s to shape and

determine the political relationships between the British and the Indians in India can be

thoroughly examined through the framework of technological politics. The East India Company

was able to make use of salt regulations to keep the Indian people impoverished and

continuously profit from them. The large land requirement for the mass production of salt allows

salt to be wielded in an authoritarian manner, which the Company made use of through their

monopoly. However, Gandhi was able to use salt to break the iron grip the British had over the

Indians and completely flip the political dynamic. Salt collection on a small scale is to easily

accessible, and in a widespread coordinated effort like Gandhi’s Salt March, completely

unstoppable because of the democratic and decentralized nature evaporating seawater.

The British and the Authoritarian Nature of Salt

The East India Company used salt as a tool to systematically make a profit off the

Indians, which kept the Indians impoverished and unable to fight back. While others before him

had started to tax and control salt production in India, Warren Hastings began to take control and

extort the salt production in a systematic manner. In 1772, Warren Hastings became a new head

of the new Council in the Company, as well as the title of Governor-General (Moxham, 2001).

Before, the Company had allowed workers to manufacture salt on their own, but the salt would

be taxed, Hastings would completely take over the manufacturing. Starting in 1772, Hastings

would auction off salt works, and force the workers to sell the salt at a fixed price. This system

ensured the failure of the salt works as the workers were exploited and the salt works were sold

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to Company staff, allowing Hastings to take complete control of the salt production. In 1780, the

salt manufacturing and taxation was brought under complete government control under Hastings,

ending the free manufacturing and starting a government monopoly on salt. Hastings created a

bureaucracy around salt production, and made sure any salt sold to merchants would be sold

through his agency. The amount of control Hastings was able to exert on the salt industry was

because of the power the British had and how much space large scale salt production took. These

factors allowed Hastings to monitor and effectively collect the tax and profit off the salt market.

His successor, Lord Cornwallis, also found new ways to increase profit by selling salt to

merchants through an auction, forcing them to compete for their inventory, and stop the

merchants from taking advantage of the fixed price the Company sold the salt at (Moxham,

2001). These events in the late 1700s was only the beginning of the British using salt to shape

the power they had in India, and gave them the foothold because of the necessity of salt to all

households. The necessity of salt itself makes salt a political artifact because any control or

influence on salt can shape and change the way power dynamics between groups of people are

balanced. The British continued to expand their control of the salt market in India, and expanded

their power over the Indians in the process.

The Indians and the Democratic Nature of Salt

The accessible nature of salt also allows salt to be used and seen very democratically in

nature. Outside of mass production, salt production can be done on an individual and

decentralized manner very easily. Salt can be created spontaneously at a very high quality in

nature as discussed previously as well (Chowdhury, 2019). Gandhi took advantage of the

simplicity of salt production and the universality of salt to Indians in order to start his satyagraha,

the civil disobedience movement. Since salt was ubiquitous and every Indian needed it, and was

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affected by the salt tax, every Indian would understand the need for salt and why the salt tax

would be protested. Gandhi would also push this belief that salt is natural right, and that the salt

tax was a symbol of human oppression (“Defiance of Salt Tax”). Since salt was also able to be

made anywhere with seawater, Gandhi was also able to start his protest from anywhere on the

coast and begin the movement peacefully because they would be able to produce salt without

harming anyone. Gandhi’s protest and the motivations behind choosing salt shows how

democratic in nature salt truly can be, and how much the British had twisted salt to become an

authoritarian chain for their own gain.

The Salt March began March 12th, 1930, where Gandhi and his followers marched 240

miles from Sabarmati to Dandi, a coastal town (Rathi). Here, Gandhi and his followers would

pick up salt that naturally formed during the high tide and broke British law. This sparked civil

disobedience across the country, as many other nationalist groups began to procure their own

salt, forcing a response from the British. The arrests and abuse attracted the attention of the

international media as the British attacked the peaceful protesters (Rathi). Gandhi was arrested,

but because of how decentralized this protest was, the civil disobedience continued, highlighting

the genius of centering the protest around salt. The Salt March may have started with Gandi in

Dandi, but the democratic nature of salt allowed the movement to spread quickly and easily to all

parts of India since everybody could pick up and make salt if they were on the coast. The shift in

power dynamic as a massive number of people joined the protest shows how powerful a large

number of people could be in changing the status quo using something as simple as salt.

Limitations and Recommendations

This paper is limited by several factors. The sources of this paper are not primary sources

and provide a more general overview of the time period. Primary sources such as interview,

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newspapers, and first-hand accounts would have been useful for understanding a more grounded

and contemporary perspective of the time. The paper also fixates strongly on salt as the main

protest tool. As the protest continued, Indians would move to boycotting many British made

products to put more economic pressure (“Salt Production…”). Another limitation is the limited

scope of British regulations, as the British added more regulations on top of what was discussed.

Expanding the scope to the full timeline would give a fuller picture of how the British created an

authoritarian system around salt. Recommendations for further research on this topic would be to

have a more complete understanding of the history by including more contemporary sources and

perspective, and more case studies on how technological politics as a framework.

Conclusion

The flexibility of salt production left it open to be used in an authoritative manner for

oppression and profiteering like the East Indian Company and the British government used it for,

but also left it open for counter attack by Gandhi because of the ease of which salt can be

produced and found along the Indian coastline. The necessity and prevalence of salt acts as a

double-edged sword since salt can be used to make a lot of money but also be easily obtained in

some regions. This is an important idea to think about as limiting basic human necessities, either

through monopolies, taxation, or predatory production methods, are commonly used to oppress

and take advantage of the less advantaged and those stuck in poverty with no power to stop them.

The ability to change these technologies into authoritarian systems is only getting easier as well

as technology improves to widen the gap between those in high standing and those who are being

taken advantage of.

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