Rishi Sunak’s tryst with history amid bevy of challenges
Any which way you look at it, there is something very striking about a person of identifiably Indian origin becoming Britain’s prime minister. Memories of an empire on which the sun was to never set guarantees that. The ascension of Rishi Sunak is therefore given to us as something of a benchmark post-colonial moment. A class of Indians, whose dreams for a generation or more have mainly consisted of moving West and “making it”, are brimming over with a sense of self-worth. A child of immigrants getting to be prime minister of the host country? What could be a more potent symbol of upward mobility? Endorsement of Britain’s political system, whose relative openness allowed this to happen, frames that rosy picture.
Others were more cynical. Some saw in Sunak—a former hedge fund manager and son-in-law of one of India’s biggest infoczars, N R Narayana Murthy—merely another well-placed apparatchik of global finance. Elite private schooling, Oxford, a stint in Goldman Sachs...he ticked all the dots necessary for class to trump race. Moreover, as many pointed out, he is richer than the king of England, perhaps the richest occupant of 10, Downing Street ever.
In terms of the place of identity in politics, comparisons were also inevitably made to India and its rather complex response to the figure of Sonia Gandhi—which perhaps goaded her famous renunciation of formal power when it was within reach in 2004. A touch of hypocrisy is not absent in all the vicarious delight, then. Sunak hardly represents, in an active political sense, Britain’s immigrants. His views on immigration are likely softer than the classic Tory position, enunciated by Enoch Powell back in the Sixties with the famous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, only in the realm of rhetoric.
Being Britain’s PM is also not a trophy but a job. As the third one in two months, at a time when war is threatening to unravel the world economy even further, Sunak, who has voted thrice for Brexit, will have plenty of reality to handle after the confetti is swept into the garbage bins. Labour, unsurprisingly, has a hefty edge in popular support right now after the shambolic procession of Conservative prime ministers. Boris Johnson and Liz Truss failed before him. Indeed, he handled the finance portfolio during Covid-19, an onerous task. But if he fails now, he would be seen more as a fall guy than a world-historical figure.