Why in news:

• Playing the role of a riot cop dispersing a peaceful but illegal sit-in on the steps of France’s National Assembly, Non-Violent Civil Disobedience 101, a one-day basic training for people who have decided they may need to break the law to further a good cause.

Details:

• 55 people attended a course in Paris, the concern was
• climate change and the earth’s species are disappearing.
• A group called Extinction Rebellion launched a campaign in major cities worldwide.
• XR looked to historic examples of civil disobedience such as the push for Indian independence

Civil Disobedience Movement

• With no positive response forthcoming from the Government on eleven demands, the Congress Working Committee invested Gandhi with full powers to launch the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM).
• The observance of the Independence Day in 1930 was followed by the launching of the Civil Disobedience Movement under the leadership of Gandhi.
• It began with the famous Dandi March of Gandhi. On 12 March 1930, Gandhi left the Sabarmati Ashram at Ahmadabad on foot with 78 other members of the Ashram for Dandi, a village on the western sea-coast of India, at a distance of about 385 km from Ahmadabad. They reached Dandi on 6 April 1930. There, Gandhi broke the salt law.
• It was illegal for anyone to make salt as it was a government monopoly.
• Gandhi defied the government by picking up a handful of salt which had been formed by the evaporation of sea. The defiance of the salt law was followed by the spread of Civil Disobedience Movement all over the country
• In Tamil Nadu, C. Rajgopalchari led a march-similar to the Dandi march-from Trichinopoly to Vedaranyam.
• In Dharsana, in Gujarat, Sarojini Naidu, the famous poetess who was a prominent leader of the congress and had been president of the congress, led non-violent satyagrahis in a march to the salt depots owned by the government.
• Over 300 satyagrahis were severely injured and two killed in the brutal lathi charge by the police. There were demonstrations, hartals, boycott of foreign goods, and later refusal to pay taxes. Lakhs of people participated in the movement, including a large number of women.