Winston Churchill described Mahatma Gandhi as a ‘Seditious Middle Temple Lawyer’ now posing as a half naked fakir’. What provoked such a comment and what does it tell you about the symbolic strength of Mahatma Gandhiji’s dress?
Winston Churchill was an imperialist by nature and believed in the superiority of white men. He called Mahatma seditious because under Gandhi’s leadership the Congress launched Non-cooperation and Civil Disobedience Movement which was aimed at the British rule.
Gandhiji put on western clothes while practising as a lawyer in India and South Africa. Later on, he changed to loin clothes. He did so to identify himself with the peasants of India who were scantily dressed. But Mr Churchill saw it as a sign of inferiority and in order to denigrate called him a half naked fakir. Churchill could not understand Gandhiji’s depth of the love for his countrymen who could not afford full clothes.
Gandhiji’s dress was a sign of simplicity, purity and of poverty of millions of Indian. Even when Gandhiji went to England for attending the Second Round Table Conference in 1931, he refused to compromise and wore it even before King George V at the Buckingham Palace.
