CHANDIGARH: New British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is the grandson of a Punjabi couple who hailed from Gujranwala, now in Pakistan. Two years after his paternal grandfather Ramdas Sunak left for Kenya to work as a clerk in Nairobi in 1935, his wife Suhag Rani Sunak joined him. In Pakistan, locals have no knowledge as to which particular place or house his grandparents lived in.
Talking to this newspaper over phone from Pakistan, Dr Qamar Cheema, Professor of International Politics at the University of Islamabad, said, “It is a matter of pride for both India and Pakistan that if you work hard, you embrace Western societies in letter and spirit.” Rishi’s grandmother first went to Delhi along with her mother-in-law, and left for Nairobi in 1937. “The present generation in Gujranwala has no knowledge about them, but locals feel proud that someone from their town is the British PM,” Prof Cheema added.
Ramdas had three sons and three daughters. Rishi’s father Yashveer was born in 1949 in Nairobi and moved to UK in 1966 to graduate in medicine. He married Usha in 1977. Three years later on May 12, 1980, Rishi was born in Southampton.