Rishi Sunak Scripts History

 

Rishi Sunak Scripts History

It is unbelievable that a colored man could become the Prime Minister of a country that had the long history of racial discrimination, considered non-whites as an inferior race. The United Kingdom that has 85% Christian white population chose Rishi Sunak- an Indian origin British citizen and a practicing Hindu- as the Head of the Government. The Indian immigrants in Britain constitute little more than 1.4 million- 2.3% of the population. Joe Biden says Sunak becoming the British Prime Minister is ‘a groundbreaking milestone.’  Winston Churchill called the Hindus ‘beastly people with beastly religion’.  

Sunak’s appointment as the Prime Minister is an astonishing development, considering the fact that the British Empire -the largest in history- had ruled over nearly 50 % of the world population of mixed colors and races. It shows that Britain has outgrown its racism.  It is a triumph of multiculturalism.   At 42, Sunak is the second youngest British Prime Minister since 1801, when the William Pitt the younger became the Prime Minister at the age of 24.   

 

Sunak is not of English, Scottish or Anglo-Saxon origin, but of an entirely different race and religion.  In Britain, there is an established church and Christianity is the official religion of the State.  The Institution of Prime Minister was created in 1721 with Robert Walpole becoming the first Prime minister of Great Britain under the Monarch King George III.  Sunak took oath as an MP in 2015 on Bhagavad Gita, and his wife Akshata Murthy (daughter of the Infosys Founder Narayana Murthy) also a practicing Hindu and is still an Indian citizen. That the Conservative Party chose a man with such background as its leader and elevated him to the most powerful position is a remarkable feat which the rest of the world should emulate. Brittan, the mother of true democracy, has shown willingness to absorb and assimilate the people of different faiths, particularly those from its erstwhile colonies, into its multi- religious -cultural -racial and ethnic society. A Christian State makes a Hindu the Head of the Government.  It is a watershed moment in British history.  Sunak, a child of the British Empire, scripting its history.

 

For Sunak, his Punjabi and practicing Hindu backgrounds have always been part of his public identity.  It is perfectly possible to hold both identities and be British.  It speaks volumes about the way people of Indian origin have successfully integrated into mainstream British society.  Sunak becoming the Prime Minister, though in a way an ‘Obama moment’, could happen only in a truly liberal democracy like Brittan. He is a secular Hindu. India, if it once was the crown jewel of the British Empire, is now the crown jewel of the Brexit, in that Sunak is assigned the task of rescuing Britain from the ’profound economic crisis’ that it is facing today.

 

It is nigh impossible for a Sunak from a religious minority community becoming Prime Minister of India, where 80% are Hindus, as long as majoritarianism determines the nature of polity, though India is a secular state and doesn’t have a state religion, unlike Britain. In just seven years of Parliamentary experience, Sunak rose to become the Prime Minister, no one bothering about his religious and ethnic background. In his first speech immediately after meeting the King Charles III on 25 October 2022, he entered the 10 Downing Street and said outside the black door that his government would ensure ‘integrity, professionalism and accountability at all levels’.

 

The reason why India cannot think of a Muslim becoming a Prime Ministers is not difficult to find. For one thing the Hindutva ideology that the political dispensation professes believes in one culture and one language. It doesn’t endorse the multi culturalism that the founding fathers of the Republic enshrined in the Constitution. Otherwise, how does one understand the hate speeches against a particular community regularly made by Ministers, MPs, MLAs, and members of the ruling party and the Sangh Parivar, and the Prime Minister keeping studied silence.  The Supreme Court of India has now ordered crackdown on hate-mongers directing the police to take suo motu action against those making hate speeches without waiting for any formal complaint. The argument that Abdul Kalam and Manmohan Singh who belonged to religious minority communities could become the President and the Prime Miniate evades today’s political reality.  Abdul Kalam occupied a ceremonial position of the Head of the State when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. Though he belonged to the BJP, Vajpayee believed in the Nehruvian philosophy of inclusive leadership while his successor spares no stone unturned to discredit Nehru. Today there is not a single Muslim MP from the ruling party.

 

The new Prime Minister Sunak had faced a barrage of questions and answered them in the House of Commons, the very next day after taking over as the Prime Minister. As per the convention, the British Prime Minister takes questions from the Opposition every Wednesday in the House of Commons and answers them instantly.  Our Prime Minister doesn’t even think it necessary to attend the Parliament when it is in session, leave alone taking questions from the opposition and answering them on the floor of the House. The opposition parties in India accuse the government not allowing the Parliament to function smoothly by denying them opportunity to discus and debate important national issues. The opposition is virtually defunct in the Parliament. Narendra Modi does not believe in consulting the opposition and recognizing its role in a Parliamentary democracy.

 

Sunak’s rise as the British Prime Minister is a lesson for India.  He is chosen the leader by the British people, among whom immigrant Indians constitute a negligible percentage. In contrast what we see in India is assertion of Hindu majoritarian identity practically in every walk of life. Sonia Gandhi who married into the first political family of the Indian Grand Old Party, lived all her adult life in India, won Parliamentary elections and led her party to power twice is still referred as a ‘foreigner.’ The efforts are made to change non-Hindu names of cities, towns, streets and heritage structures, erasing the history from pubic memory. And those in power encourage the public to boycott the business establishments of a minority community.  A lesson to learn from Britain: how to become an all-inclusive tolerant multicultural society.