Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi launched the Salt March on March 12, 1930, beginning a 240-mile trek to the sea to protest Britain’s salt monopoly

Gandhi and dozens of followers left Sabarmati Ashram and walked for 24 days until reaching the coastal village of Dandi, where on April 6 he symbolically made salt from seawater in defiance of colonial law. The Salt March galvanized Indians against British rule and became a seminal act of nonviolent civil disobedience