Speaking in a lighter vein, the news is that India has entered the finals. Not of the cricket World Cup, which is still a while away, but the finals of something even diehard cricket fans should concede, is equally, if not more momentous. Rishi Sunak, a British national of Indian origin is in the finals, competing for the prize of the prime ministership of the United Kingdom. The English bookies will be kept busy till 5 September when final results will be announced. Meanwhile, the pros and cons of Sunak’s candidature vis a vis Liz Truss will continue to be debated. It is a measure of the changing times, and a tribute to British democratic institutions that Sunak made it this far, there is no question that his loyalty will be first and foremost to the British people, as it should be, and now in the ‘finals’ there are good reasons why sensible Conservative Party members should be voting for him instead of his more populist rival.
Soon after Boris Johnson announced his resignation, the press showed up at Rishi Sunak’s London house. Akshata Murty served them biscuits and tea in expensive cups that prompted a Twitter user to comment caustically that the price of a single cup could have fed a British family for two days. Others suggested she was the spoilt daughter of an Indian billionaire, and probably never made a cup of tea in her life. Such attacks were clearly unfair, made by people looking for any excuse to berate her and her husband. Now, in the run up to the D Day, till 5 September when the results will be announced, as part of the usual mudslinging, Rishi will be unfairly targeted simply because his wife is so wealthy. It should be remembered here though that Rishi himself comes from a modest background, and used to work as a waiter at a restaurant in Town Quay, Southampton.
Interestingly enough, within Europe itself, there have been two other prime ministers with Indian roots and ancestry.
Leo Varadkar became prime minister of Ireland (what the Irish call Taoiseach) five years ago on 14 June 2017. A well-informed Indian will be able to conclude from the last name that an ancestor hailed from the state of Maharashtra. Indeed, Leo’s father Dr Ashok Varadkar hails from Mumbai. Varadkar is openly gay, and his election was unusual if you consider that Ireland is a Catholic country with a conservative society. In Leo’s case, while on the one hand there would have been genuine Maratha pride that one of their own had made it to the top-level post in an important European country, at the same time, possibly the Maharashtrians didn’t want to be too welcoming of an openly gay head of state! Varadkar isn’t the only European leader of consequence who traces his roots back to India; there is also the present Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa whose family hailed from Goa. Mr Costa’s father was born in Maputo, Mozambique to a Goan family.
As former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi was a resident of 11, Downing Street and literarily lived a stone’s throw away from the residence of the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. If he moves to Number 10, he will be moving to a house that was just next to where he and his family lived previously – but what a political earthquake that move will be!
Most Britons are aware that Sunak’s father-in-law is an Indian billionaire named Narayana Murthy, but relatively few will know that his mother-in-law Sudha Murthy is a prolific and highly regarded author in India. One of her most popular children’s stories has the evocative title ‘How I Taught My Grandmother to Read.’ In a few weeks from now, if all goes well, she could start to pen a new book with the title: ‘How My Son-in-Law Became the British Prime Minister’.
In an earlier era, a British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, made a remark on the Father of the Indian Nation that has been oft quoted since. In 1931, Churchill spoke of him as ‘a seditious fakir striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace’ who had come to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor. Now, ninety years later, there could be, not a fakir, but a rishi, spelled with a capital R, who will drive down in an official car from 10, Downing Street to Buckingham Palace to parley directly with the Queen of England during their weekly meetings as per established convention.
That brings me to the reason why the British should vote for Rishi Sunak. A rishi refers to a man often advanced in his years who possesses great wisdom. Sunak too is wise beyond his years. He may even become a real rishi in the future, all power to his spiritual advancement, but even now he can stake a claim to being a financial wizard of sorts, a minister who stabilised the British economy with very many positive measures taken during the height of the corona pandemic. Rather than whine about how an Emma Lacey cup could have fed a British family for two days, the Twitter user should rather have acknowledged Sunak’s initiative in launching Furlough a 69-billion-pound lifesaver, unveiled in March 2020, at the height of the crisis by the Chancellor, that saved nine million jobs. In a talk on Australian television, while discussing his book ‘Inglorious Empire’ celebrated author Shashi Tharoor compared Churchill with Hitler and Stalin on account of four million Indian lives lost in 1943 due to food being needlessly diverted to British troops that caused the Bengal famine. In sharp contrast Sunak, who took his oath in Parliament on the Bhagawad Gita, saved millions of English livelihoods. He deserves to be Prime Minister.
(The author is a prolific author of 34 books across multiple genres. He has worked for the United Nations for over two decades across three continents in several countries.)