The United Kingdom has done it – they’ve finally got a Prime Minister from a minority ethnic community. Mr Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, became the first “Indian-Origin” Prime Minister at the age of 42, and he is the youngest Prime Minister in the last two centuries.
Unfortunately, the part of Mr Sunak that has received the most attention is the fact that he is of “Indian-Origin.” His rise to the Premiership gives the British establishment an “aspirational” story to sell to the rest of the world. Having grown up in a “White Anglo-Saxon country,” as one of a handful of ethnic minorities, I get the fascination that the global Indian community has with Mr Sunak. When you grow up with the idea drummed into your head that you need to be “grateful” to the ethnic majority and as much as ethnicity may not figure in your day-to-day interactions, you will feel a certain need to see one of your own coming to the top.
Ironically, it was Wion, an Indian news channel, that made the point that the Indians who have climbed to the top of the corporate ladder elsewhere, do not owe any loyalty to India or to the Indian diaspora. They owe their loyalty to shareholders, who are more often than not based in the West.
This then leads to the point that Mr Sunak is inevitably going to disappoint someone, and the community that is probably going to be disappointed is non-other than the global Indian diaspora.