Britain is having its “Obama moment!” rejoiced the person in charge of the Hindu temple of Southampton where Rishi Sunak, the very new British Prime Minister, practiced the Hindu worship all his youth. A temple founded by his grandfather in the 1970s.
The announcement of his election as leader of the Conservative Party, and therefore as Prime Minister, officially enthroned by King Charles III on Tuesday, October 25, delighted the Indian and Hindu community across the Channel. His election in full during Diwali, the festival of lights dear to Hindus, is seen as providential by his co-religionists, and undoubtedly by millions of Britons. Diwali indeed celebrates the victory of light over darkness, intelligence over ignorance and good over evil. And the fifth British Prime Minister in six years will need a lot of luck and a helping hand from Providence, to stabilize the country’s finances, and to get the country out of the rut in which the Liz Truss government has put it. precipitated in just 44 days.
When his election was announced, the temple of his youth had a prayer sung in front of statues of Krishna and Radha, a diya oil lamp burned and a bell rung. Ram Dass Sunak, Rishi Sunak’s paternal grandfather, an Anglo-Indian immigrant from West Africa arrived in Britain in the 1960s. Yashvir, Rishi Sunak’s father, is a doctor and his mother, Usha , pharmacist. A practicing Hindu, Sunak is not only the first British of Indian origin to lead the government but also the first practicing Hindu to occupy 10 Downing Street. Educated at Winchester, one of the most prestigious and expensive boarding schools in the UK, followed by a degree in political science at Oxford and then an MBA at Stanford in California, he began his career in finance before taking the path of politics after his marriage in 2009.
The Sunak couple are richer than King Charles III
Matt Hancock, Boris Johnson’s former health minister, exclaimed: ‘What a wonderful illustration of our country: a Christian king, a Hindu prime minister, a Jewish home secretary [Suella Braverman est en réalité bouddhiste, NDLR] and a Muslim London mayor.”
Rishi Sunak is also the richest prime minister in British history. In particular by his marriage to the daughter of Indian billionaire Narayana Murty, founder of the Indian tech giant Infosys. The Sunak couple, whose fortune is estimated according to the magazine Forbes at $810 million, is therefore better off than King Charles III, whose personal wealth is around $500 million. With their two daughters, the Sunaks live in upmarket Kensington in a house they bought in 2010 for $7.1 million. Under these conditions, and even if many Britons welcome the entry of a Briton of Indian origin to Downing Street, many wonder if he will have “common touch”, in other words the ability to speak everyone and to understand the purchasing power crisis that the country is currently going through.
In the meantime, India is exulting and Narendra Modi was the first foreign leader to greet the arrival of a Hindu in Downing Street: “All my Diwali wishes to the one who embodies the living link between India and Great Britain. Brittany !” A former Indian official, Ma Ibrahimi, saw “a revenge of history” 75 years after the end of British colonization and the sign of “destiny”.