When Bare Feet Shook an Empire

On March 12, 1930, a sixty-year-old man in a simple white dhoti walked out of Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, India, with seventy-eight followers behind him. Mohandas Gandhi had announced his intention to break British law — not with rifles or bombs, but by picking up salt from the sea. The British Salt Act of 1882 made it illegal for Indians to collect or sell their own salt, forcing them to buy the heavily taxed British product. For twenty-four days, Gandhi and his companions walked two hundred and forty miles through the villages of Gujarat, their numbers swelling with each passing mile. On the morning of April 6, at the coastal village of Dandi, Gandhi bent down, lifted a lump of natural salt from the mudflats, and held it up for the world to see.

He was arrested. Thousands who followed his example were arrested. British officers beat unarmed protestors at the Dharasana Salt Works a few weeks later, and not one hand was raised in retaliation. The empire had guns, prisons, and laws on its side — and it lost.

Paul wrote to the church in Rome, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21). That verse is not a suggestion for the timid. It takes far more courage to absorb a blow than to throw one. When we answer hatred with compassion, injustice with integrity, and cruelty with stubborn grace, we fight with the only weapons that have ever changed the human heart.