Rishi Sunak, the former British Treasury chief who won the race to be the leader of the Conservative Party and is likely to become the country’s next Prime Minister, is getting cheers from an unlikely place: India, its former colony.
As the news became clear on October 24, social media and TV channels in India were awash with comments and reactions to the accomplishment by the 42-year-old who has spoken publicly about his Indian roots and Hindu faith.
For many Indians, who are celebrating Diwali, one of the most important Hindu festivals, it was the moment to say: He is one of our own. “It is a moment of pride for India that the country which ruled us for many years has now a Prime Minister of Indian heritage,” said Manoj Garg, a New Delhi businessman.
Indian roots
Sunak will be the first person of colour to take Britain’s top job, an accomplishment reflecting that of Kamala Harris, a woman of Indian heritage who became US Vice President last year.
Sunak’s grandparents hailed from Punjab state before the Indian subcontinent was divided into two countries — India and Pakistan — in 1947 after British colonial rule ended. They moved to East Africa in the late 1930s before finally settling in the UK in the 1960s. Sunak was born in 1980 in Southampton on England’s south coast.
His ancestral link is not his only association with India. He is married to Akshata Murty, whose father is Indian billionaire N.R. Narayana Murthy, founder of tech giant Infosys. In April 2022, it emerged that Murty, who owns a little less than a 1% stake in Infosys, did not pay UK taxes on her overseas income. The practice was legal, but it looked bad at a time when Sunak was raising taxes for millions of Britons as chancellor of the Exchequer.
Nonetheless, Sunak’s rise to power in British politics has amped up a sense of pride among Indians.
Star struck
Indian TV channels appeared star-struck by Sunak’s victory, with NDTV running the chyron “Indian son rises over the empire”. India Today news channel took a jibe at UK’s economic and political turbulence, using the Hindi term for someone of Indian background: “Battered Britain gets ‘desi’ big boss.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Sunak on Twitter and said he is looking forward to “working closely together on global issues”. “Special Diwali wishes to ‘living bridge’ of UK Indians as we transform historic ties into modern partnership,” Modi wrote.
Some said Sunak’s selection was particularly special for the country with its recent celebration of 75 years of independence from British colonial rule. “Today, as India celebrates Diwali in its 75th year as an independent nation, the U.K. gets an Indian-origin Prime Minister. History comes full circle,” lawmaker Raghav Chadha tweeted.
Others celebrated Sunak as a “proud Hindu,” saying he did not shy away from embracing his faith and Indian culture. They shared videos on Twitter showing Sunak taking his oath of allegiance as a lawmaker in 2020 on the Hindu holy book Bhagvad Gita.
Other videos shared on Twitter showed Sunak praying to a cow, considered holy by Hindus, when he was running for Britain’s top job for the first time in August. In a Hindu ritual conducted in London, Sunak touched the cow’s feet while his wife offered carrots to it. Sunak also performed “aarti” in front of the cow — a Hindu ritual involving the waving of oil lamps.
Sunak has been public about his Indian origins and love for cricket. He has also talked about his abstinence from beef on religious grounds. “I am thoroughly British, this is my home and my country, but my cultural heritage is Indian,” he told reporters in 2020.
Abrupt contest
The leadership contest, triggered by Liz Truss’s resignation on October 20, had required candidates to secure the support of at least 100 Conservative MPs by 2:00 PM (1300 GMT) on October 24. Penny Mordaunt, the last rival left in the Conservative Party’s leadership race after former Prime Minister Boris Johnson dramatically pulled out, failed to secure the necessary 100 nominations.
“Rishi Sunak is therefore elected as leader of the Conservative party,” senior backbencher Graham Brady said, as Mordaunt and Truss pledged their full support for Sunak. However, nearly three hours after Brady’s announcement, there was still no word from Johnson — even as Sunak urged his warring party to “unite or die”, according to Tory MPs present in a closed-doors meeting.
Addressing the public for the first time, Sunak said: “The United Kingdom is a great country, but there is no doubt we face a profound economic challenge. We now need stability and unity and I will make it my utmost priority to bring our party and our country together”.
Just seven weeks after he lost out to Truss following Johnson’s own removal from office, Sunak pulled off a stunning reversal in fortunes, and is vowing to do the same for Britain on a platform of fiscal responsibility.
Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon, whose nationalist government in Edinburgh wants to hold an independence referendum next year, was among the first to congratulate Sunak. “I wish him well... notwithstanding our political differences,” she said. “That he becomes the first British Asian — indeed the first from any minority ethnic background — to become PM is a genuinely significant moment.”
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