8Ec(9)
Gandhi and the Salt Act
Salt is very important for the body, especially in hot countries.
The British ruled India at the beginning of the twentieth century. There was plenty of salt available
in India, but the British government passed laws to ban the Indians from making their own salt;
they would have to buy it from the government instead.
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In March 1930, at the age of 61, Mahatma Gandhi led a 241 mile march to the sea. At dawn,
Gandhi walked down to the water’s edge and picked a pinch of salt from the sand. Thousands of
people quickly followed his example and made their own salt by taking a pan of sea water and
letting the Sun evaporate the water.
Many people were arrested for doing this but eventually the law was changed again to allow
anyone to make their own salt.
1 Why did the British government ban the Indians from making their own salt?
2 Why did people make salt from the sea water instead of picking the salt up from the beach as
Gandhi had done?
3 Would these people have made pure salt? Explain your answer.
4 In some countries there are salt lakes, which sometimes dry up in the summer. If you collected
salt from the lake bed it would be mixed with sand. Design a method to separate the sand from
the salt, using normal laboratory apparatus.
• Draw a diagram to illustrate each stage in your method.
• Explain why you need to carry out each step of the process.
I CAN...
• explain how people made their own salt in India
• explain how to get salt from a mixture of salt and sand.
Exploring Science
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