Dance of the Caged Birds: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and a choreopolitical reading of Dandi and Dharasana protests.

The present paper aims to show Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as one of the significant propelling factors/actors who choreographed one of the most effective, followed by one of the most heartwrenching, performances in India's struggle for independence. After the success of his famous Dandi March against the British Salt Tax in colonial India on the 6th of April 1930, Gandhi planned another non-violent incursion of the Dharasana Salt Works in Gujrat. The declaration of his intentions to Lord Irwin led to immediate arrests of Gandhi and many other prominent Congress leaders including Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Undeterred the march was planned forward under the leadership of Abbas Tyabji and Kasturba. Consequently, they too were arrested. Finally, it was Sarojini Naidu and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad who led the protestors to the Dharasana Salt Works. After 28 hours of non-violent sit-in, and several arrests, the protestors attempted to enter the site and were mercilessly beaten up by the police. This paper revisits these two non-violent protests at a very crucial stage in the history of India's struggle for freedom, the Dandi March, and the Dharasana Salt Work raid. The modalities of these two protests were different. One focussed solely on peaceful marching and the making of contraband salt (which included natural salt and salt earth that were deemed illegal by the British government) by Gandhi in the shores of Dandi; and the other focussed on a march to Dharasana followed by a peaceful sit-in as well as offering a spectacle of confronting and absorbing violence. These were deliberate strategic moves to show the country and the world that it was time for the unjust and brutal British government to quit India. The paper attempts to show how bodies, under the tutelage of Gandhi, made deliberate coherent choices. A study of these protests shows the human body as a repository of signs and codes. Bodies may be used as vehicles of outrage and yet they can exhibit control and dignity in their capability of walking long paths as well as absorbing physical brutalities with a patience that can create fear in the hostile bodies that cause those brutalities. At a time when most protests are limited to online spread of petitions, and yet at also a time when India is waking up to numerous street protests and sit-ins from Shaheen Bagh8 to Singhu Border9, the paper focuses on how actual corporeal intrusion can bring about a crucial change. Gandhi, one of the pioneers of non-violent protests, recognised the crucial role that physicality plays in meaningful protests, in creating and promoting individual and mass agency as well as sociality. The paper attempts a choreopolitical analysis of the street protests and seeks answers to--how these bodies perform in the protests? Why did Gandhi choose "salt", "march", "Dandi" and "Dharasana" as major motifs of these protests? How do the protestors manipulate their own bodies? As spectacles, what impact do these protesting bodies have on the onlookers? How can we connect Gandhi's daily routine and a construction of a particular image of his body with the crucial moments of protests that in turn inspire the bodies that participate in the process of training their bodies into rigid non-cooperation as well as flexible sites that absorb police brutality?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]