The Sanikatta Salt Works, known for Salt Satyagraha, is located in:

Correct — D, Karnataka. Sanikatta is a village in Kumta taluk of Uttara Kannada district on the Karnataka coast, a few kilometres from Gokarna, and its salt pans are the oldest and the largest in the State. Salt has been made there since about 1720 on the gazani, the tidal creek land beside the Aghanashini estuary; in 1775 a bund thrown across the channel through which sea water entered gave the place its name and let the salt fields be extended to some 469 acres. Under Tipu Sultan's administration the salt makers began paying tax on the produce, and in the twentieth century the village became the home of the Nagarbail Salt Co-operative Society, India's first co-operative of salt manufacturers. That is where the works are, and no other option contains a place of the name. The coast on which they stand is also the coast on which Karnataka's Salt Satyagraha was offered: on 13 April 1930 M. P. Nadkarni broke the salt law at Ankola in the same district before a very large gathering, the leaders were arrested, and the campaign continued for forty-five days and spread to about thirty centres including Mangalore, Kundapur, Udupi and Puttur.

• (a)Gujarat — The best-known salt of the movement is Gujarat's, because Gandhi picked up a handful at Dandi on 6 April 1930 and the Dharasana raid followed in May. But Dandi and Dharasana are not Sanikatta, which lies far south on the Kanara coast.
• (b)Tamil Nadu — Tamil Nadu's salt satyagraha ran to the Tanjore coast, where C. Rajagopalachari led the march to Vedaranyam in April 1930. That is the state's salt-law centre; Sanikatta is not in it.
• (c)Kerala — The stored answer, and the one to be careful about. There is no Sanikatta in Kerala; the name is a Kannada place-name in Kumta taluk. Kerala's celebrated satyagrahas of this period are the temple-entry campaigns at Vaikom and, in 1932, at Guruvayur under K. Kelappan.

The Salt Satyagraha was not one march but a national programme with local salt as its object. Gandhi's own march ended at Dandi on 6 April 1930; from there the Congress asked every coastal province to break the salt law where salt could actually be made or bought, and inland provinces to picket liquor and foreign cloth instead. That is why the campaign has a map of its own — Dandi and Dharasana in Gujarat, Vedaranyam on the Tanjore coast, Ankola and the Kanara pans in the Bombay Presidency's Kanara district, and pickets in the interior.

This is a place-name question, and the way to settle it is to read the name rather than the story. Sanikatta is Kannada in shape, and it sits in Uttara Kannada, a district whose coast has made salt for three centuries. A candidate who instead reaches for the most famous salt satyagraha will answer Gujarat, and a candidate who half-remembers a southern coastal campaign may answer Kerala or Tamil Nadu. The safer reasoning is to ask which of the four states has old, commercially significant salt pans on a creek coast with a name of this kind. One further note for honesty: the stem's own premise, that these particular works are known for the Salt Satyagraha, is the examiner's framing. What is documented beyond doubt is that Sanikatta is Karnataka's principal historic salt-making village and that Karnataka's salt-law defiance of April 1930 was offered on this same coast, at Ankola in the same district.

• Sanikatta is a village in Kumta taluk of Uttara Kannada district, Karnataka, near Gokarna and Tadadi port.
• Salt has been made there since about 1720, which makes it the oldest salt-manufacturing village in the State.
• A bund built across the tidal channel from the Aghanashini in 1775 gave the village its name and allowed the salt fields to be extended to about 469 acres.
• The Nagarbail Salt Co-operative Society, founded by salt manufacturers of this coast, was the first salt co-operative in India.
• Karnataka's Salt Satyagraha centred on Ankola in the same district, where M. P. Nadkarni broke the salt law on 13 April 1930; the campaign lasted forty-five days and spread to about thirty centres.

• Answering Gujarat by reflex because Dandi is the salt satyagraha everyone remembers.
• Assuming a south Indian coastal salt site must be in Kerala or Tamil Nadu; the Kanara coast of Karnataka has the older pans.
• Confusing Uttara Kannada, the coastal district, with Dakshina Kannada around Mangaluru.

As a place-to-State question, as a match between a satyagraha centre and its leader, or as a question on which substance the Dandi march was about.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Sanikatta, known for its old salt works, lies in which district?

  • (a)Dakshina Kannada
  • (b)Uttara Kannada
  • (c)Udupi
  • (d)Ratnagiri

  Answer(b) Uttara Kannada — Sanikatta is in Kumta taluk of that district, on the Karnataka coast near Gokarna.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who broke the salt law at Ankola on the Karnataka coast in April 1930?

  • (a)M. P. Nadkarni
  • (b)K. Kelappan
  • (c)C. Rajagopalachari
  • (d)Sarojini Naidu

  Answer(a) M. P. Nadkarni — he broke the salt law at Ankola on 13 April 1930; Rajagopalachari led the Vedaranyam march on the Tanjore coast in the same month.