historian Irfan Habib. Indian Independence Movement Abbas Tyabji attended, along with Mahatma Gandhi, the Social Conference held at Godhra in 1917. At the time, he was seen as a model of Britishness, leading a Western lifestyle and wearing impeccably tailored English suits. All of that changed after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, when he was appointed by the Indian National Congress as chairman of an independent fact-finding committee. He cross-examined hundreds of eyewitnesses and victims of the atrocities committed by Reginald Dyer, reacting with "nausea and revulsion." That experience drove him to become a loyal follower of Gandhi, giving strong support to the cause of the Indian National Congress. Leaving his Western style aristocratic life behind, he adopted many of the symbols of the Gandhi movement, burning his English clothes and spinning and wearing khadi. He traveled around the country in third-class railway carriages, staying in simple dharamsalas and ashrams, sleeping on the ground and walking miles preaching non-violent disobedience against the British Indian government. He continued this new lifestyle well past the age of seventy, including several years in British jails. In 1928, he supported Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in the Bardoli Satyagraha, which included a boycott of British cloth and goods. Tyabji's daughter, Sohaila, remembered loading a bullock cart with the family's foreign garments, onto which were loaded all her mother's "best Irish linen, bedspreads, table covers... ", her father's "angarkha, chowghas and English suits" and Sohaila's own "favourite caps of silk and velvet", all given to be burnt. Salt satyagraha In early 1930, the Indian National Congress declared Purna Swaraj, or independence from the British Raj. As their first act of civil disobedience, or satyagraha, Mahatma Gandhi chose a nationwide non-violent protest against the British salt tax. Congress officials were convinced that Gandhi would quickly be arrested, and chose Tyabji as Gandhi's immediate successor to lead the Salt Satyagraha in case of Gandhi's arrest. On 4 May 1930, after the Salt March to Dandi, Gandhi was arrested and Tyabji placed in charge of the next phase of the Salt Satyagraha, a raid on the Dharasana Salt Works in Gujarat. On 7 May 1930 Tyabji launched the Dharasana Satyagraha, addressing a meeting of the satyagrahis, and beginning the march with Gandhi's wife Kasturba at his side. An eyewitness remarked "It was a most solemn spectacle to see this Grand Old Man with his flowing snow-white beard marching at