MAHATMA - Volume 3 (1930-1934) - Mahatma Gandhi

MAHATMA - Volume 3 (1930-1934)
and writing up the daily diary was incumbent on every marcher. "Ours is a
sacred pilgrimage," he said, "and we should be able to account for every minute
of our time." He retired at nine still talking to people and giving interviews
until he fell asleep. Long before his comrades were up he awoke and began
correspondence. At four in the morning he was seen writing letters by the
moonlight as the little lamp had gone out for want of oil and he would not wake
up anybody. At six, there was the call to the morning prayers. After the prayer
he delivered a sermon to the pilgrims on the march and answered questions.
The march commenced every day at 6.30 a.m.
Gandhi, leading his 78 followers, halted at Bareja and at Navagam on March 13,
at Vasna on the 14th, at Matar and Nadiad on the 15th. The marchers had a
very fatiguing journey. The enthusiasm of the crowds was so intense that even
four days after the commencement of the salt march, Mahadev Desai had
difficulty in seeing Gandhi at Nadiad. It was six in the evening, and thousands
were thronging the wide space outside the famous temple of Santram. Gandhi
was being gently massaged as he was having his evening meal in an attic and
speaking to the workers sitting around him. "Well," he said to the workers, "you
have miscalculated the distances between places. I had no intention of covering
more than ten or twelve miles at the outset, but we have been doing fifteen
miles every day." He decided to have a day of rest every Monday. Two members
of the party had felt the effects of fatigue and had to use a bullock cart. "God
willing I hope to do the whole march on foot," he said. "My feeling is like that of
the pilgrim to Amarnath or Badri-Kedar. For me this is nothing less than a holy
pilgrimage."
He reached Anand on Sunday evening, March 16. Monday, the day of rest, was
mainly devoted by Gandhi to writing replies to correspondents and articles for
Young India. In the issue of March 27, he gave a clarion call, "Duty of
Disloyalty". "There is no half-way house between active loyalty and active
disloyalty," said Gandhi:
"In the days of democracy there is no such thing as active loyalty to a person.
You are, therefore, loyal or disloyal to institutions. When you are disloyal you
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