HPI
LONDON, ENGLAND, December 30, 2006: In yesterday’s HPI, we reported that Chris McGovern, director of Englands History Curriculum Association, disputed a quote attributed to Winston Churchill calling Gandhi a “half-naked fakir.” While that definitely wasn’t a direct quote, it doesn’t seem to misrepresent the actual statement. Churchill said, “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor.”