Webb Miller: The Man Who Showed The Indian Independence Struggle To The World
This fourth of July, as America celebrates their independence day, we go back in time to celebrate an American that drew the world’s attention to Indian independence struggle. The renowned and the much respected war journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Webb Miller, who with his significant contribution to journalism etched himself in world history to be remembered forever.
Before he depicted his harrowing account of Salt Satyagraha protest in Dharsana, Web Miller had witnessed many other historic moments. He had covered the Spanish Civil war, flew across the German lines while armistice was signed after World War I, interviewed infamous dictators Hitler and Mussolini, and was once even kidnapped.
However, his famous dispatch about the salt march in Dharsana resulted in more than mere journalism as his vivid description of the violence unleashed on non-violent protestors turned the world opinion about the British colonial rule in India. His report was widely circulated by the international media and was even read aloud in the U.S Congress. It also led Winston Churchill, a harsh critic of India and Mahatma Gandhi to remark that the salt march ‘inflicted such humiliation and defiance as has not been known since the British first trod the soil of Asia.”
In March 1930, while working for United Press, Miller was assigned to travel to India and interview Mahatma Gandhi who had embarked on the campaign of civil disobedience against the rule prohibiting Indians to make their own salt in their own country.
With his followers marching behind, Gandhi set upon a 240 mile walk to the coastal village of Dandi. Completing the distance in mere 24 days, on 6th of April he walked down to the sea and scooped the mudded salt. “With this,” he announced, “I am shaking the foundations of British Empire.”
As Miller arrived, Gandhi was already arrested. But when a civil disobedient informed him about demonstrations planned at Dharasana salt works in the outskirts of then Bombay, Miller decide to go. Willing to walk in the blazing heat, he reached just before the protest began and met with the Sarojini Naidu, who was mobilizing 2500 protesters, urging them to not resort to violence come what may.
“In eighteen years of reporting in twenty-two countries, during which I have witnessed innumerable civil disturbances, riots, and rebellions, I have never witnessed such harrowing scenes as at Darsana. It was astonishing and baffling to the western mind accustomed to see violence met with violence, to expect a blow to be returned. My reaction was of revulsion akin to the emotion one feels when seen a dumb animal beaten: partly anger partly humiliation. Sometimes the scenes were so painful, I had to turn away momentarily,” wrote Miller in his dispatch that has since become the historic report that was published in more than a thousand newspapers and flashed around the world.
Web Miller was the only foreign correspondent to witness this event, but when he tried to show it to the world with the power of his pen, he was met with resistance and censorship. Within hours of trying to cable his 2000 world report from Bombay, he received an anonymous reply penciled on a scrap of paper. It said- “Mr. Miller, the messages you deposited about Darshana have not been telegraphed.” But he did not relent, showing up at the office and saying, “This demonstration at Dharshana is the biggest story that has happened during the Gandhi rebellion. I am going to get it out to the world in full even if I am prevented from coming back to India.”
Finally, when his report was published it became that milestone of changing sympathies with world leaders no longer convinced about the British Raj being the so called benevolent caretakers of the poor unsophisticated Indians. This historic reporting introduced Mahatma Gandhi’s an staunch commitment to nonviolence and inspired many other leader including Martin Luther King Jr., who later credited the salt march as a crucial influence to his own philosophy.
Bringing a glimpse of what all went Indians relentlessly trying to reclaim their freedom, this report by Webb Miller also unleashed the practice of mass civil disobedience movements across the globe. Such was the importance of this American on Indian soil, it became the inspiration for the character of Vince Walker in the 1982 Academy Award winning epic Gandhi.
We wish the great nation of American and all its citizens a very happy independence day!
