Comprehension
The progress of salt march can also be traced from another source: The American news magazine Time. This, to begin with, wrote with disdain of Gandhi's "Spindly frame" and his "spidery loins". In its first report. Time was deeply skeptical of the marchers reaching their destination. It claimed that Gandhi "sank to the ground" at the end of the second day's walking; the magazine did not believe that "the emaciated saint would be physically able to much further".
Within a week, it had changed its mind. The massive popular following that the march had gathered, wrote Time, had made the British rulers "desperately anxious". Gandhi himself they now saluted as a "saint" and a "statesman who was using "Christian acts as a weapon against men with Christian beliefs". The salt march was notable for at least three reasons. First, it brought Gandhi to world attention, with the march being widely covered by the European and American press.
Second, it was the first nationalist activity in which women participated in large numbers. The socialist Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay had persuaded Gandhi not to restrict the protests to men alone. Kamaladevi was herself one of numerous women who courted arrest by breaking the salt or liquor laws. Third, and perhaps, the most significant, it was the salt march that forced upon the British the realization that their raj may not last for ever and that they would have to devolve some powers to Indians.
What was the initial response of western press to Ghandhiji's salt march ?
