Thousands join Dandi March

Hundreds of people cheered crowds in the west Indian village of Dandi yesterday at the end of a 26-day re-enactment of Mahatma Gandhi's famous Salt March of 1930 which shook the British empire.

At the end of the march, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: "We will recreate the entire route of the Dandi yatra from Sabarmati Ashram to this place as a heritage path."

The prime minister also announced a development package worth Rs100 million (Dh8 million) for the ashram where the Mahatma stayed and conducted his experiments with non-violence.

In 1930, Gandhi undertook the march from his ashram to the shores of the Arabian Sea with 78 followers to flout an oppressive tax levied by the British colonial administration on salt that otherwise was freely available.

The Dandi March aroused Indian nationalist aspiration and is regarded as a milestone in the freedom struggle.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi said: "Gandhiji is more relevant to a feuding and divided world today than he ever was and India needs to rededicate itself to his philosophy in thoughts, words and deeds."

The venue of the public meeting marked to seat about 30,000 people was jampacked and the road leading from this tiny village to the nearest town, Navsari, 15km away, was choked with vehicles as well as men and women on foot.

Not since 1985 when the Congress was last voted to power in Gujarat with Madhavsinh Solanki sweeping the polls in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's assassination, has the party managed such a popular response.

In fact, few can remember such an outpouring of popular support at a Congress rally in the last 25 years.

"The thinly disguised political exercise has rejuvenated a moribund Congress in Gujarat," said a state Congress leader. Nostalgia of the old and curiosity of the young may have guided both to join in but there is doubt over whether the Congress has the acumen and the network to take advantage of this awakening.

Both the prime minister as well as the Congress president dwelt at length on the relevance of Gandhi not only to the past of India but to its future as well, and to mankind at large. "As time goes by, the world is increasingly waking up to the relevance of the apostle of peace and his philosophy of unity of mankind and global brotherhood. If the world is to shrink into a global village there can be no alternative but to go back to Mahatma Gandhi and his teachings," Sonia said.