Following his victory on Monday in the race to lead Britain’s Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak will become the first non-white head of government to lead a former imperial country that once ruled India, much of Africa and many other parts of the world. planet.
It happened at the beginning of Diwali, the Hindu festival of light that celebrates the triumph of good over evil, for some religiously minded, a coincidence written in the stars.
The Indian Prime Minister, the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi, congratulated him on Twitter while extending his wishes to the entire Indian community in the United Kingdom.
UK-born Sunak’s success also crossed the Atlantic.
Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California, recalled that his own grandfather fought for years against the British mandate in India.
Remarkable to see @RishiSunak, a British Indian of Hindu faith, become Prime Minister on Diwali. Regardless of politics, it is a symbolic step to move beyond a world of settlers,” he tweeted.
But for many Asians in the UK, and for the country in general, the arrival of a non-white as prime minister is as important as their economic creed.
A great day
“It is a great day for the Indian community. But even more so it is a time when we look back and think ‘how can we move forward from here?'” Kirtan Patel, a financial analyst, told AFP visiting a Hindu temple in the London Borough of Neasden on the occasion of Diwali.
Anand Menon, Professor of Politics at King’s College London, considers Sunak’s ethnicity to be “really important”, although “what reassures me, really, is the few comments that it has elicited, in the sense that it seems that we have normalized it,” he told the BBC.
unimaginable
But although it may now seem “normal”, a black or simply non-white British prime minister would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.