“It is alarming and 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 organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor-King.“
“Seditious” and “fakir” I get, but what is disparaging about the Middle Temple?
(BTW, I believe Richard Attenborough turned this insult on its head in the shot of tiny Ben Kingsley going up the vast steps of the palace in humble but sure triumph)
I would assume its either (or some combination of):
A: He’s highlighting the fact this guy who is trying to impose his will on the great and the good of the British Raj is just a non-de-script middle-ranking lawyer of no consequence.
B: He’s highlighting that is he’s not some aesthetic holyman aloof from the dirty business of everyday life, he’s a lawyer, as central to the dirty business of everyday life as you can get.
As Askance points out, “Middle Temple” is one of the four “Inns of Court” in London - something like a combination of a guild and an American bar association. The name comes from the physical location of its building, not from any sense that its barristers are “middling”. I’m pretty sure @Kent_Clark is right, Churchill was pointing out that Gandhi was a British barrister, called to the bar in one of London’s four Inns of Court*, and thus a member of the British establishment, hence “seditious”.
*I’m probably bungling the correct terminology there.
And also this.
It would be akin to pointing out in a U.S. context that someone who portrays themselves as a champion of the forgotten working class against the Eastern Establishment and the urban elite is actually a wealthy businessman from a wealthy, urban, Eastern Establishment family.
Plus, it’s a demonstration by Churchill of his prodigious command of details, that he not only knows that Gandhi was called to the bar in one of the four Inns of Court, he knows off-hand which one.