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# Climate's salt march
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/18271/
- Published: 2005-05-22T19:05:45.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:33:26.000Z
- Author: openDemocracy Supporters
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:15

Reading the [international activists roundtable](http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-climate%5Fchange%5Fdebate/article%5F2520.jsp) in this debate, [Simon Heywood](http://www.opendemocracy.net/forums/thread.jspa?forumID=179&threadID=44315&messageID=62114#62114) observes:

*'It seems to me that \[climate activists\] are in the same quandary as Indian nationalists were in - until Gandhi turned up. That is to say, they are a small, fairly middle-class lobby group. Gandhi turned Indian nationalism into a mass movement, and the way he did it was:*

*a) to connect personally with Indian people; b) to incorporate their concerns - which were more local and economic in nature - into the otherwise rather more rarefied discourse of Indian nationalism.*

*Hence the famous salt march - salt wasn't a hugely important issue, but it was a good icon which existed at the crossover point between the British regime and most people's everyday concerns.*

*...If you apply this to today's greens, the lesson would seem to be that they need to look for issues which are both:*

*a) green and; b) of genuine, immediate concern to people outside the "green ghetto," that is to say, probably, smaller, more local, and more of a direct appeal to the (legitimate) self-interests of jo(e) public than more "rarefied" green issues like climate change'.*

Similar questions also arise in relation to the [UK roundtable](http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-climate%5Fchange%5Fdebate/article%5F2472.jsp).

CH