Ruling the Rulers

Rishi Sunak, the recently elected Indian-origin prime minister of the United Kingdom, has created history by becoming the first coloured premier of a country, which once ruled almost one-fourth of the world’s population.

By 1920, the British Empire had captured 13.7 square miles of the world’s total land, i.e., some 24 per cent of the planet Earth was under the British ‘Raj’ then. And talking specifically about the Subcontinent (the undivided India), the Union Jacks after winning the War of Independence in 1857, went on to rule the country for 90 years before the South Asian freedom fighters took them by the scruff of their neck for an independent land.

The, almost century old, freedom struggle eventually saw the emergence of Pakistan on the globe, besides a free India in 1947; with Pakistan becoming the then first country in the world to emerge on the world’s map solely on the basis of religion, while Israel became the second, the following year, to seek independence on the slogan of religion. But as they say that it always comes back to you, and the irony of the fact is that an Indian-origin and very much an Indian looking 42-year-old alumnus of Oxford and Stanford, Rishi Sunak has become the latest resident of the 10 Downing Street.

The famous Black Door will now see, anything but a white-coloured prime minister stepping out to address the nation of a majority for whom the colour of the skin matters the most. The UK has never had a black or even a brown skinned premier before Sunak. He has not only brought about a significant change but has also brought along a sour history of his ancestors who remained under the British rule for nearly a century.

Rishi Sunak was born in Southampton; his father in Kenya, while his mother’s birthplace is Tanzania. His paternal grandfather hailed from Gujranwala (now a city in Pakistan), and his maternal grandfather was from Ludhiana (undivided India) — after the partition, the city is still part of India. The Sunaks migrated to the UK for greener pastures in the late 1960s when the African nation got independence from their masters (Britishers).

How all this have come to place after decades, as the ones who were once ruled, are now the rulers of the ones who had ruled them.

Sunak, currently the most talked about British politician, took over the reins of the United Kingdom as the country’s 16th prime minister on October 25, 2022. And since then, has been under the hammer of not just the opposition parties but his Conservative Party members, as well, which he leads with Dominic Raab as its deputy.

When Theresa May took charge of the premier’s office on July 13, 2016 as the 13th prime minister, the critics had started wondering “will the 13th prove lucky for the thirteenth?”. Theresa was the 13th 10 Downing Street resident of the country who was sworn in under the then Queen Elizabeth II — the longest serving monarch of the British Empire from 1953 to 2022.

However, the newly-appointed premier’s first week in the office has turned out to be a nightmare. Sunak’s first big decision has seemingly turned out to be a blunder. His appointment of Suella Braverman as the home secretary, for which he has received some serious bashing from not just fellow politicians but also the British media, has backfired immediately.

The media, in particular, has been hostile right from the word go, as they lambasted the newly-elected prime minister by publishing Keir Starmer’s harsh take on the decision as a “grubby deal”. Braverman will be nothing but trouble with her “unravelling account” of leak to the right wing allies and her adamant pledge to cut the net immigration to an impossible “tens of thousands”.

Starmer is the leader of the Labour Party of the UK and a strong critic of Sunak.

With the country’s economy in tatters, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, demanding a second referendum on independence in a year’s time, revelations surfacing earlier this year regarding his wife’s tax evasion on her overseas income and a plethora of problems lurking around, Sunak is up the creek without a paddle. So, what lies ahead of him can well be gauged by his opening spell at the helm of affairs but one thing is for sure that it is not going to be hunky-dory.