The Masque of Anarchy - Shelley's poem that influenced Gandhi

Few Indian can hold back their tears when watching the Dandi Satyagraha sequence in Richard Attenborough's film 'Gandhi', which shows rows and rows of satyagrahis taking lathi blows from police without raising their hands in defence.

- SATISH KUMAR SHARMA

And the true Gandhian would have some of those tears for the policemen and their masters too. For, the wounds on the body may heal but those on the soul...well!

Webb Miller, American journalist (fictionalized as Vince Walker, played by Martin Sheen in the movie) who had witnessed the actual event on 12 March 1930, wrote, "...Whatever moral ascendancy the West once held was lost here today. India is free, for she has taken all that steel and cruelty can give and she has neither cringed nor retreated."

Miller's powerful reportage of the event strengthened India's case for Independence in the western world.

The Dandi Satyagraha was the real-life enactment of the message in the lines "And if...the tyrants/Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew,--/What they like, that let them do.../With folded arms and steady eyes/And little fear, and less surprise/Look upon them as they slay/Till their rage has died away."