Walking to Dandi: In Search of Vikas (Hardbound-2022)

In February 2019, Harmony Siganporia walked from Dandi to Ahmedabad, retracing the route of Gandhi's Salt March in reverse. She walked this route of just under 400 kilometres over 25 days, much as Gandhi and the original band of Marchers did in 1930. The 'Dandi Path' is the setting against which she explores the story of modern Gujarat, tracing the contours of the state's seismic shift towards espousing the narrative of vikas, abandoning in the process the possibility of a quest for swaraj.

Gujarat has been described as the laboratory of Hindutva, and this book is an effort to explore this theme, even as it attempts to unearth whether there remain any competing epistemes to it; memories of the region's prior avatar as the setting against which Gandhi put into practice his experiments with truth, non-violent civil disobedience, and satyagraha.

This project investigates what―if anything―remains of the Salt March in Gujarat's cultural memory, while also attempting to fill out the contours of the 'single story' of vikas with which the State has become so closely associated.

Harmony Siganporia is an Associate Professor of Culture and Communication at MICA, Ahmedabad.