As Rishi Sunak prepares to become the UK’s next prime minister at the start of the festival of Diwali – when Hindus pray to the goddess Lakshmi for prosperity and success – in India some Hindus celebrated the fact that someone sharing their religion had reached such high office in the UK.
“To have a Hindu inside 10 Downing Street is something astonishing and of great joy, and that too on Diwali,” said Satish Verma, a supermarket owner in Delhi. “Although he is British, it will make us Hindus proud that one of us made it so big.”
Sunak, who will be the UK’s first prime minister of colour and the first Hindu prime minister, has made his commitment to his faith clear by performing puja, an act of worship, and by taking the oath as an MP on the Hindu religious text, the Bhagavad Gita.
For the architect Shashank Jain, though, Sunak’s faith is irrelevant. It is simply a matter of pride that someone of Indian heritage has reached the highest office in another country.
“It is definitely a moment of national pride and my only hope is that he will bring in good policies for relations between India and Britain, although this may be misplaced as, after all, he belongs to that country, not India,” said Jain.
Although Indians are usually eager to claim the accomplishments of Indians based abroad as their own and take pride in them – whether it’s Indians heading Google and Microsoft or Kamala Harris becoming the US vice-president – the difference with Sunak is that his connections with India are more tenuous, given he was born and raised in England.
There is no village or town in India that journalists can rush to in order to interview aunts, uncles or teachers about what little Rishi was like as a child or describe the environment he grew up in.
Unlike Harris, who has relatives in south India, it’s believed Sunak has no relatives in India. His only relatives in the country are his parents-in-law, who are well known thanks to the company Infosys, which his father-in-law, Narayana Murthy, co-founded and built into a software giant.
Murthy retired in 2011 and he and his wife, Sudha, have been leading a quiet, private and modest life in a small flat in Bangalore, south India, filled with books and music and not commenting on issues of the day. It is unlikely they will talk to the press about Sunak, knowing that every word might trigger a controversy for their son-in-law, particularly after the row over the non-dom tax status of his wife, Akshata Murty.
Sunak’s religion may be seized on by elements of the Hindu right, according to Suhel Seth, a marketing expert and managing partner of Counselage. He said they could “appropriate” his victory on social media as some sort of vindication of India’s Hindu nationalist government.
“The Hindu right will say: ‘Look, an Indian-origin man took over as PM on Diwali and so it means the Hindu gods have blessed him,’” Seth said. “And the extreme Hindu right will say: ‘It means India has arrived globally and it is thanks to Modi raising India’s standing in the world that we have ‘reverse colonialism’, as in the formerly ruled now ruling the former ruler, Britain.”
Rakesh Tripathi, a spokesperson for the ruling Bharatiya Janata party, welcomed Sunak’s victory and, while praising Modi in the same breath for “elevating” India’s image in the world, did not suggest any cause-and-effect.
“I am proud as an Indian to see an Indian-origin prime minister of Britain and my only hope is that he will be good for bilateral relations,” Tripathi said.
For the columnist and author Kancha Iliaih Shepherd, it was a question of fascination over what possible dichotomies lay ahead for Britain with a Hindu prime minister.
“Apart from the obvious question of how it will affect UK-India relations, the deeper questions are what will it do to Britain’s civilisational ethos and more broadly, to the western ethos? Liz Truss read from the Bible for the queen’s funeral service at Westminster Abbey. Will Sunak be able to do the same? It opens up a host of other questions,” Shepherd said.
As Hindus light their diyas, clay lamps, and burst firecrackers on Monday night, some will feel their cup truly runneth over: India defeated Pakistan in a match in the T20 World Cup in Australia on Sunday and now Sunak is to be prime minister.
