Fiction: Azad takes up a fight for salt farmers, decades after his grandfather marched with Gandhi

The year the country became independent was also the year in which Azad’s father Ramsingh Patel was born. But even he used to say the British Raj was better. They respected the Agarias and valued them. What an odd idea, Azad told himself in childhood. Wars of independence were fought across the country, the Indian flag was hoisted at Red Fort, Nehru became the Prime Minister, and yet the British were to be considered the better option?

His grandfather Tribhuvan lived to be fifty-five. After Tribhuvan got his son Ramsingh married, he kept waiting eagerly for a grandchild to be born. In his head he had already installed himself in the grandfather’s seat. He had told his son that if it was a girl who came first, she should be named Sarojini. And if a boy, Azad. Tribhuvan never said anything good about the British, he had fought for azaadi, after all. At fifteen he had joined Gandhibaba on the Dandi salt satyagrah. Police batons had fractured his head and ribs. How will any of you know the joy and peace of living in an independent country? You have seen nothing but an independent country from the time you learnt to understand things.

The village of Kharaghoda. Azad’s village, the home of his father and his ancestors. The way to the Rann also passes through Kharaghoda. Of course, Agarias from more than a hundred such villages, some small, some large, go to the Rann to cultivate salt. The British accorded immense respect to Kharaghoda. Azad had never seen his father and grandfather talk to each other in his presence, he had never had the opportunity, or else he would have heard Tribhuvan Patel clear his throat and flare up, respect because of business interests, they made money, they collected taxes. Would the British have cared otherwise? As a boy, Azad had always seen his village in a shabby and decaying condition. It is in an even more rundown state at present, but when visitors arrive, it is his responsibility to take them around the village and show them the sights. Maybe there was some grace and beauty in his grandfather’s time. These are large villages, with up to ten thousand Agaria families living in each of them. No one has kept account of how long they have been farming salt in the desert.

Several thousand years, say the old men. The British got involved because they scented money. With the Salt Act, they gave themselves a monopoly. They were the rulers, they could do as they pleased. No one else could get into the business of making or selling salt. But did that mean a country where the sea yielded salt, where the deserts adjoining the sea were themselves full of salt, would actually have to import it? With this strategy, the British demonstrated that no local salt business could survive by competing with them. And if at all homegrown salt was to be sold, they alone would do it. The area between the Gulf of Kutch and the Gulf of Khambat caught their attention.

They observed the Agarias farming salt, they noted entire families leaving their homes for eight months from the end of one monsoon to the advent of the next. This was where the British constructed their salt factory. Broad-gauge train lines were laid in the middle of the nineteenth century. Goods trains would transport the salt from Kharaghoda to Biramgaon. The main line of the Bombay Baroda Central Railway passed through Biramgaon. From there a branch line led to Kharaghoda. The wagons of the goods trains on the mainline would be emptied out when it was time to load the salt – the period between April and the beginning of June. Loading was limited to just these three months, but Kharaghoda Station would be busy and noisy all the time. The salt extracted from the pans would be piled on the yellow-black sand of the desert. The British government laid the train lines so that they ran past them.

From the salt pans to the godowns. The wagons were wooden, for the iron ones would rust in the salt-laden wind. Four steam engines drew these wagons. Later, there was even a factory to manufacture them. The government kept plotting ways to put people to work. Four million maunds of salt were produced in each season. The salt company’s rule was that loading would go on from the crack of dawn till the evening. Azad’s father had heard the stories from Tribhuvan, and they had been passed on to Azad by his grandmother and mother. It was the year 1880 when the steam engines began running, filling the air with smoke – everyone would come running to see them. The train had to be raised slightly to affix the wagons to one another. There was a platform to enable this, it rose with a clatter when a lever was pressed. A group of villagers was put to work during the loading season – their job was to use blowers to clear the sand from the railway tracks, or else the wagons would slip in the humid desert air. There used to be a doctor’s compartment in the train, a doctor would travel in it in case any of the salt workers fell ill. Drummers would also ride in the train to the loading point, where they played their drums in an effort to reduce the perception of heat for the benefit of those who, roasted by the pre-monsoon sun, brought up blood in their mouths as they shovelled the salt into the wagons.

The old broken-down wagon factory is a dismal sight for Azad today. The wagons used to be hitched to steam engines, and, later, to diesel engines. They had left a long time ago with the machinery and two engines that were still useful. They, meaning the railway company of independent India. The salt wagons travelled on the railway tracks for ten years after independence before stopping once and for all.

The British salt factory closed down, making way for Hindustan Salts. The new company has teams of agents and sub-agents. They collect the harvest of salt directly from the farmers at the salt pans, in tractors or small or large trucks, depending on the quantity. Payloaders are used to load the salt. Drums are no longer played when the salt is being loaded. The tracks and tractors arrive at the godowns in Kharaghoda. Initially, there was just Hindustan Salts, but gradually more companies have come in with leases, small and large. Besides these, there are the salt artisans who have been given leases on the land, along with their cooperative societies. The way the British salt company used to indulge the Agarias and the village is unimaginable for any government today.

Excerpted with permission from A Touch of Salt, Anita Agnihotri, translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha, Penguin India.

Disclosure: Arunava Sinha is the Books and Ideas editor at Scroll.