As with many other commodities, Britain had kept India’s salt trade under its thumb since the 19th century, forbidding natives from manufacturing or selling the mineral and forcing them to buy it at high cost from British merchants. Since salt was a nutritional necessity in India’s steamy climate, Gandhi saw the salt laws as an inexcusable evil.
As recently as 1930 people were fighting just to get salt.
When Gandhi’s Salt March Rattled British Colonial Rule