TY - JOUR
T1 - Salt and the National Imaginary
T2 - The Photojournalism of the Dandi Satyagraha
AU - deCourcy, Elisa
AU - Taylor, Miles
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - This article looks at how Gandhi used the Dandi Salt Satyagraha as a site for imagining anti-colonial nationalism. We focus on the visual dimensions of the Salt March and the divergent ways in which it was reported in the illustrated press in 1930. Developing Sumathi Ramaswamy’s idea of the ‘ambulatory aesthetic’ (2020), we highlight how Gandhi created a personified protest. Moreover, he chose salt as a talismanic object, ubiquitous both temporally, back through India’s colonial and pre-colonial past, and laterally, bridging religious identities but also illuminating class distinctions. We also describe how Gandhi’s curated defiance was deliberately mutated and muted by the British, initially by way of censorship, but mostly through using biased visual newspaper and magazine reportage of their own in order to marginalise Gandhi and the salt marchers.
AB - This article looks at how Gandhi used the Dandi Salt Satyagraha as a site for imagining anti-colonial nationalism. We focus on the visual dimensions of the Salt March and the divergent ways in which it was reported in the illustrated press in 1930. Developing Sumathi Ramaswamy’s idea of the ‘ambulatory aesthetic’ (2020), we highlight how Gandhi created a personified protest. Moreover, he chose salt as a talismanic object, ubiquitous both temporally, back through India’s colonial and pre-colonial past, and laterally, bridging religious identities but also illuminating class distinctions. We also describe how Gandhi’s curated defiance was deliberately mutated and muted by the British, initially by way of censorship, but mostly through using biased visual newspaper and magazine reportage of their own in order to marginalise Gandhi and the salt marchers.
KW - Caricature
KW - Gandhi
KW - Salt March
KW - censorship
KW - illustrated newspapers
KW - photojournalism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85169665706&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00856401.2023.2237304
DO - 10.1080/00856401.2023.2237304
M3 - Article
SN - 0085-6401
VL - 46
SP - 820
EP - 833
JO - South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies
JF - South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies
IS - 4
ER -