History of the salt tax in British India

Taxation of salt has occurred in India since the earliest times.^{[citation needed]} However, this tax was greatly increased when the British East India Company began to establish its rule over provinces in India. In 1835, special taxes were imposed on Indian salt to facilitate its import. This paid huge dividends for the traders of the British East India Company. When the Crown took over the administration of India from the Company in 1858, the taxes were not replaced.

The stringent salt taxes imposed by the British were vehemently condemned by the Indian public. In 1885, at the first session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, a prominent Congress Leader, S. A. Saminatha Iyer, raised the issue of the salt tax.^[1] There were further protests throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries culminating in Mahatma Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha in 1930. This satyagraha was followed by other satyagrahas in other parts of the country.

After the arrest of Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu led the satyagrahis to Dharasana Salt works in Gujarat and was arrested by the police officers. C. Rajagopalachari broke the Salt Laws at Vedaranyam, in Madras Province in the same year. Thousands courted arrest and were imprisoned in large numbers. The administration eventually relented and invited Mahatma Gandhi to England to attend the Second Round Table Conference. Gandhi's Dandi March got wide news coverage and proved to be a turning point in the history of India's independence movement.

The salt tax, however, continued to remain in effect and was repealed only when Jawaharlal Nehru became the prime minister of the interim government in 1946. After independence, a salt tax was later re-introduced in India via the Salt Cess Act, 1953 before being scrapped and succeeded by the Goods and Services Tax in 2017, which does not tax salt. In Pakistan, table salt is currently taxed but iodised salt is not.