Photo courtesy of Chris McAndrew via Wikimedia Commons. Rishi Sunak, above, is the first person of color and of Indian origin elected as U.K. prime minister.
By Kaveri Pillai ’23
Opinion Editor
As an Indian Hindu living overseas, I started Diwali with lighting a diya in front of the Lord Ganesha idol on my desk. Within seconds of putting in a silent prayer for the god of new beginnings, I received news of new beginnings being celebrated elsewhere — the United Kingdom had elected Rishi Sunak to be their new prime minister. At the age of 42, Sunak is the first person of color and the first person of South Asian descent to become prime minister of the U.K, according to Reuters.
Like many Indians across the globe, I couldn’t ignore how momentous a win this was. One of the most prominent colonial nations is now going to be governed by a man of Indian origin. Even the prime minister of India — Narendra Modi — posted a tweet on Oct. 24, 2022 commending Sunak’s win, saying “Special Diwali wishes to the ‘living bridge’ of U.K. Indians, as we transform our historic ties into a modern partnership.” Yet, my initial joy was quickly replaced with concern as I perused text messages and news notifications celebrating his win.
While I cannot refute the shocking coincidence of people celebrating Diwali and Sunak’s win on the same day, Modi’s tweet and the many posts claiming Sunak to be an Indian for Indians opens up the floor to critique. It is convenient to place Sunak on a pedestal for breaking the proverbial racial glass ceiling instead of holding him accountable for his political beliefs. With the U.K. entering a dreary economic period and Sunak making promises for recovery and stability, one needs to go beyond simply celebrating his election.
It is our responsibility to acknowledge the precedent this election has set for people of color and the Indian diasporic community in the U.K. while questioning the possibility of typecasting him as a supporter of people of color when that is hardly the case. His conservative political beliefs and controversial past as the British finance minister, on the contrary, have hurt — and may continue to hurt — low-income communities and people of color. By simply focusing on and idealizing Sunak being a representation of the Indian community, we fail to critique an elected public servant and discourage dissent against those in power, putting democracy and the people’s voices in jeopardy.
While this critique in no manner diminishes the importance of a person of color being elected to the U.K.’s highest political post, it is important to understand what image of the Indian diaspora is being propagated here. While media companies rejoice on Diwali being celebrated on the same day as Sunak’s election, their inability to acknowledge Diwali as a Hindu — not Indian — festival homogenizes the Indian demographic. This propagates the idea of the successful Indian being Hindu, not of another religious background. Further, it makes becoming a prime minister seem simply attainable to the select few who fit criteria set by a superior group of predominantly white British people. Even if one were to go beyond the media’s portrayal of a man of Indian origin succeeding in the U.K., Sunak’s biography sent another alarming message to the public.
According to a CNN article, Sunak was born to Indian origin parents who left East Africa for the U.K. in the 1960s, where he proceeded to study politics, philosophy and economics at Winchester College and Oxford University. He received his MBA as a Fulbright Scholar from Stanford University in the United States, according to Fulbright. To add to his rather glitzy academic background, the same CNN piece cited the Sunday Times Rich List of the U.K. 's 250 wealthiest people which mentioned his joint net worth with his wife Akshata Murthy to be 730 million pounds. Sunak also worked at banks and hedge funds, including Goldman Sachs, before starting off his political career in 2015 as a member of parliament for Richmand, York, according to gov.uk.
Evidently, it is hard to root for a man with such a grotesque amount of wealth and privilege. In a viral interview clip, Sunak’s claim to have “no working class friends” only makes it clearer that the approximate 1.7 million Indians living in the U.K. — a number cited by the Economic Times — hardly mirror Sunak. If anything, Sunak is probably the most digestible version of a person of color for a place like the U.K. that has such a strong, white colonial legacy and prospers on the exclusion of nonwhite and poor people. Without any comment being made about his politics, this image of a person of color walking through life like an Englishman disregards the struggle of many migrants in the U.K. and fails to echo the concerns of marginalized communities in the country.
It is easy for us to dismiss the kind of work Sunak can do for underrepresented and marginalized communities in the U.K. simply based on his pedigree, but it is also his inept policies enacted during his tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer and his stringent conservative beliefs that mark him as bad news for low-income communities and people of color. His views on Brexit and immigration and economic expenditure align with quintessential Tory Party philosophy and beg us to question whether, no matter one’s ethnicity, political conservatives could ever help socioeconomic minorities.
For one, the 2016 Brexit referendum led by the conservatives hinted at the U.K.’s shift toward stricter laws of isolationism and anti-immigration. According to a New York Times article Sunak, an all-time supporter of the British withdrawal from the European Union, claimed it to be a “once-in-a-generation opportunity for our country to take back control of its destiny.” Reuters, too, echoed Sunak’s alliance with the conservative party’s growing intolerance to migrants and asylum seekers, with the U.K.’s prime minister stating that he wants the net migration rate to fall. The Quint speculated on how Sunak’s views on immigration could translate into his policy agenda by mentioning the government’s upcoming actions to tighten the definition of asylum’ put in a parliamentary cap for people who seek to migrate and his support for the controversial Rwandan asylum policy that essentially sends in illegal immigrants to Rwanda “where they will be assessed for resettlement.”
These moves alone from the new government will set a regressive track for the supposed progress of the U.K. Sunak aims to build. Moreover, the reappointment of Home Secretary Suella Braverman marks the beginning of the end of the U.K. being a safe haven to people across the border. As mentioned in a Washington Post article, the irony of Braveman once “[complaining] that Indians were the migrant group that most overstayed their visas” and her admitting at a Tory Party conference that a “front page photograph of a flight deporting illegal immigrants was her ‘obsession’” disregards any Indian-claiming that’s being done with Sunak. If the leader of a nation truly had people of color and people of low income in mind, no matter nationality or ethnicity, Braveman as a voice in their cabinet would be antithetical to any shred of inclusive and community-centric belief. Categorizing Sunak as a voice of Indian migrants, especially after one is aware of his political beliefs and to what extent he could go to legalize his anti-immigrant sentiments, is absurd.
His tenure as the chancellor didn’t make him a man of the people either. A Yahoo News article predicted that due to inflation and a rise in energy bills almost up to 2,800 pounds, the proposed 15 billion pounds financial support relief package would fail to aid working class families. Instead, pensioners largely benefited from this action. A Guardian article addressed Sunak’s big agenda on introducing tax cuts, a fiscal policy that benefits upper classes, and has pushed approximately 1.3 million people under the poverty line. With an October predicted inflation rate of 8.7 percent, Sunak’s sheer disregard for low-income communities suffering with loss of jobs, houses and wages, push us further to discuss if the people’s representative is as out of touch as he appears to be and if he truly knows nothing about the “working class.”
The Tory nominee portrayed to be a beacon of hope for people of color pinches me as I sit a couple thousand miles away from the prime minister’s office on 10 Downing Street. The media’s emphasis on color-coding his win and equating his government to India in the U.K., removes any kind of space for a critical judgment of Sunak’s political portfolio. Sunak’s campaign promise for newfound “integrity, professionalism and accountability” in the British government is tainted with the neglect and disrespect shown toward marginalized communities. The responsibility placed on Sunak’s shoulders to be an Indian for Indians stands in contrast to the fact that he is the face of the conservative party that hasn’t uprooted itself from its colonial legacy.
What I see is a country barely staying afloat in a sea of economic strife and division as a stagnant political party dominated by entitled and smug old men puppeteers, a man of Indian origin — who is as privileged and out of touch as his peers — to save its legacy. The image being sold of a palatable Indian British politician misleads perception of a diasporic community and sets unrealistic hopes for what can be done to help them. It is our responsibility to elect people who don’t just look like us but can fight for us and to challenge those in power to represent the needs of those that go unnoticed, even when it’s inconvenient to do so.