42-year-old British-Indian Rishi Sunak becoming the youngest Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK) may have great symbolic value for India, but that does not mean India-UK relations will be “special ” right now. onwards.
However, Sunak’s heritage – he is a practicing Hindu – reflects the growing power of the Indian diaspora around the world. But his case is special because he has succeeded in politics as a Hindu, something that is apparently not possible in the United States, although the Indian diaspora there is just as, if not more, powerful in terms of education. , work and social status.
Indian-Americans, including Vice President Kamala Harris, who have held important political positions such as Governors, are Christians.
Even Harris has typically downplayed her Indian connection (her mother was Indian), preferring to be known as a black leader (her father is black). In this sense, Great Britain’s acceptance of a Hindu prime minister means that the country, essentially white and Christian, is more open, diverse and tolerant of multiple faiths than the United States.
Coincidentally, Sunak is married to an Indian who is the daughter of an IT czar and has an Indian passport. As Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Sunak had taken the oath holding the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu holy book.
And while he campaigned for the Tory leadership earlier this year, he tweeted pictures and videos of himself praying on Lord Krishna’s birthday and performing cow worship, a ritual in Hinduism.
It is a coincidence, indeed, that he has been chosen to be the next British Prime Minister on the day of the holy Indian festival of Deepavali, which he celebrates every year with a sense of pride.
In fact, the UK is now the sixth country where a person of Indian origin will hold the highest position. Sunak will be the first person of Indian or even Asian origin to hold this post.
However, this trend of people of Indian origin holding powerful positions is not limited to the UK. Below are some prominent people of Indian origin who occupy high positions in other parts of the world:
1. Antonio Costa, Prime Minister, Portugal
2. Mohammed Irfan, President, Guyana
3. Pravind Jugnauth, Prime Minister, Mauritius
4. Prithvirajsing Roopun, President, Mauritius
5. Chandrikapersad Santokhi, President, Suriname
6. Kamala Harris, Vice President, United States
According to Indiaspora, a US-based non-profit organization representing the Indian-origin community globally, in Mauritius, nine heads of state, including Mr. Jugnauth and Mr. Roopun, were of Indian origin.
Similarly, Suriname has seen five presidents from the community. Also, four heads of state in Guyana and three in Singapore were of Indian origin. Apart from these countries, Trinidad & Tobago, Portugal, Malaysia, Fiji, Ireland and Seychelles have also elected a head of state of Indian origin.
Common occurrence
But then, people of foreign origin becoming Heads of Government is a common phenomenon in established democracies. The example of the United States is particularly striking.
There have been 23 US presidents of “Irish” descent, some of whom were publicly proud of their ancestry. Famous among them have been Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S Grant, John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and the current president Joe Biden.
Even President Barack Obama’s mother’s family tree has been traced back to his “great-great-great-great-grandfather” Joseph Kearney, a shoemaker. So much so that, as President, Obama had visited an Irish village where his great-great-great-grandfather made shoes.
Notably, more than any president since John F. Kennedy, Biden’s Irish heritage is central to his public persona. Coincidentally, Biden is the second Catholic after Kennedy to become US president, and both are of Irish descent.
As Politico magazine’s Ben Schreckinger writes, “Biden has had plenty of reason to draw on his Irish heritage over the years. In another era, it helped him channel a Kennedy mystique when, as a senator from again in the years after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, he was seen as the heir to Camelot.
Later, she helped Biden serve as a bridge to Irish Americans and other white Catholics who have drifted away from the Democratic Party in recent decades. All the while, it’s helped him solidify a personal brand built on the average Joe connection.”
The point to be made here is that politicians like Biden emphasizing their ethnic origin does not mean that America’s relationship with the “mother country” gets special treatment when they are in office.
It is true that the United States played an important role in brokering a peace agreement between London and separatists in the North Island who wanted to join Ireland, but this was done according to the goals or wider interests of US foreign policy- of; it has nothing to do with the ethnicity of the President in office.
Of course, it is true that Biden, then a senator, had expressed support for the Irish cause and had sometimes taken action in the Senate. In 1985, he opposed an extradition treaty with Britain that would have affected members of the Irish Republican Army who had fled to the United States.
Having problems with the British administration of justice in Northern Ireland, he managed to water down the deal. Otherwise, however, Biden went along with President George W. Bush’s (senior) general goal of a peaceful resolution of the Irish issue.
In reality, Irish ancestry is invariably emphasized by US presidents or presidential candidates for political reasons.
As John Robert Greene, historian and author of dozens of books on US presidents, points out, “It’s very simple, the Catholic vote. There is no great love of Irish tradition, with the possible exception of JFK and Ronald Reagan, there is no great love of Irish culture, with the possible exception of JFK, Reagan, and Bill Clinton, but there is a great love of votes Catholics and especially the Irish Catholic Votes’.
Similarly, the fact that Barack Obama was the first African-American elected President in US history did not necessarily make his legacy in Africa particularly historic.
Obama was highly sensitive to accusations of favoritism and criticism that he might be too focused on the continent of his relatives and his late father, although he became the first sitting president to visit Kenya, the country of his father. his, in 2015. But Obama secured the support of African Americans during his eight years in office.
Rishi Sunak – Good for India-UK relations?
If one goes by the American example, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is likely to be equally sensitive to accusations of favoritism and to criticism that he may be too India-focused over his relatives and his father-in-law.
But it is highly unlikely that he will change the course of Indo-UK relations agreed during the days of Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Boris Johnson. The Indo-UK Free Trade Agreement will remain in flux and deepening bilateral defense cooperation will continue to face the challenges of a rising but hegemonic China.
In fact, Sunak is not known for any major foreign policy issues. As a supporter of his previous leader Boris Johnson, he has been pro-Brexit and suspicious of China. Otherwise, one cannot find any significant foreign policy statements that he made in general and on India in particular as a leading Conservative leader of Great Britain.
And this means that, as has been the case with Irish-American leaders in garnering the Catholic vote, Sunak’s rise must be seen in the context of the growing importance of the British-Indian vote, especially the Hindu vote, in late British politics.
As a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study suggests, the demographic weight and political influence of British Indians in the United Kingdom continues to grow.
There are more than one million Britons of Indian origin in the UK, according to the latest government figures, from 2021. Around 86 per cent of the population of England and Wales is white, with people from Asian ethnic groups making up the second largest place. group, at 7.5 percent, followed by black ethnic groups at 3.3 percent, according to census data.
As for people of Indian origin in the UK, numbering 1.4 million, they make up 2.5 per cent of the total British population. But this figure was from the 2011 census; the number must have increased today. It’s no wonder why the 2019 British election saw fifteen members of parliament (MPs) of Indian origin take office, including two high-profile cabinet ministers. Sunak was one of them.
Incidentally, nine of the UK’s top 100 entrepreneurs and three of the UK’s twenty richest people are Indians. Many Indian business tycoons own second homes in the UK and the country continues to be a prized destination for Indian students pursuing higher education abroad (students from India represent the second largest contingent of foreign students in the UK after China).
The growth of the Indian community has been accompanied by changes in its political leanings, the Carnegie study says. Historically, the British Indian community has strongly supported the centre-left Labor Party, but has been slowly gravitating towards Labour’s main rival, the centre-right Conservative Party.
This shift appears to have been driven largely by Hindus and Christians, many of whom have defected from the Labor Party, although their Muslim and Sikh counterparts have remained staunch Labor supporters.
The rise of Sunak, therefore, will further consolidate the preference of Hindus and Christians of Indian origin, far outnumbering their Muslim and Sikh counterparts (a significant portion of whom happen to be supporters of the Khalistan idea and have close ties to Kashmiri separatists with the help of Pakistan), to the Conservatives.
But this trend will not necessarily have much impact on the UK’s already growing ties with India. As the Carnegie study adds, “When it comes to foreign policy, few British Indians rate UK-India relations as a major political issue…. (they) perceive no party with an advantage in the administration of UK-India relations”.
- Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda has been commenting on politics, foreign policy on strategic issues for nearly three decades. A former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Fellowship, he is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies.
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