UPSC Prelims 2025, Question 71

The answer: publicly violating Salt Law at Dandi

Civil Disobedience, as Gandhi practised it from March-April 1930, meant open and deliberate violation of an unjust law rather than secret defiance, and the Salt Satyagraha was its defining act. Walking from Sabarmati to Dandi over twenty-four days, Gandhi broke the government's salt monopoly by making salt on the shore on 6 April 1930, inviting arrest and inaugurating the wider Civil Disobedience Movement across the country. In publicly owning this transgression of British law, Gandhi described his position as one where deliberate, non-violent lawbreaking against the state's authority was no longer incidental but a matter of settled conviction, declaring that sedition had become his religion. The statement belongs to this moment because Dandi was the occasion on which Gandhi moved from petitioning the government to openly, proudly breaking its law as a moral duty, the essence of civil disobedience.

The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.