The 33 Strategies of War

by Robert Greene

The Salt March is perhaps the quintessential example of Gandhi’s strategic brilliance. First, he deliberately chose an issue that the British would consider harmless, even laughable. To respond with force to a march about salt would have given an Englishman trouble. Then, by identifying his apparently trivial issue in his letter to Irwin, Gandhi made space for himself in which to develop the march without fear of repression. He used that space to frame the march in an Indian context that would give it wide appeal. The religious symbolism he found for it had another function as well: it heightened the paralysis of the British, who were quite religious themselves in their own way and could not countenance repressing a spiritual event. Finally, like any good showman, Gandhi made the march dramatically visual and used the press to give it maximum exposure.