Civil Disobedience Movement and Government of India Act, 1935

Gandhi picked up a fistful of illegally made salt on a beach in Gujarat and turned it into the most effective mass movement British India had yet seen. Five years later, Parliament answered with the longest, most detailed Act it had ever passed for any colony — federal on paper, autonomous in the provinces, and, in the event, only half of it ever actually came into force.

In two minutes

The Civil Disobedience Movement, launched with the Salt Satyagraha in 1930, forced the pace of constitutional negotiation that produced the Government of India Act, 1935 — granting provincial autonomy and proposing an all-India federation that never actually came into being.

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