Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: It might have been too much for the Conservative Britons to elect—and accept—Rishi Sunak as their new Prime Minister.
He may have been a member of the Conservative Party, but his riches and his Hinduness were among the chief reasons why over 20,000 voters—mostly elderly, White Britons—rejected him, the media reported.
Sunak is among the richest men in Britain, thanks to his past career as a banker-entrepreneur and his marriage to Akshata Murthy.
Sitting on a family fortune of 730 million pound-sterling (nearly Rs. 6,700 crores), some claimed that Sunak, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer (Britain’s Finance Minister), was richer than even Queen Elizabeth II, who would have to invite him to be the next PM, had the Tories elected him.
He was believed to be the richest man in the House of Commons because of his previous careers, including as a banker with the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, and his marriage to Akshata Murthy, daughter of Indian billionaire NR Narayan Murthy, co-founder of Infosys, India’s IT behemoth.
His rivals used Sunak’s wealth as a weapon to attack him when the country is reeling under economic crises because of inflation and unemployment, according to the media reports.
Most of Sunak’s wealth came from his wife, whom he married in 2009. Her shares in the company are said to be worth around 430 million pound-sterling, making her richer than the British Queen.
Her family also has a 900 million pound joint venture with Amazon in India, while Akshata herself owns a UK-based venture capital company and is a director or direct shareholder at five other UK companies. Sunak also had shares in a company which he transferred to his wife before becoming a Member of Parliament (House of Commons).
Two other factors worked against Sunak in his race to 10 Downing Street.
One, as a staunch Hindu, he regularly visited temples, performed worship, took part in rituals, and celebrated Hindu festivals. These actions alarmed the Conservative British elder voters, who are already worried about the future of Christianity in their country.
The British monarchists, part of the Conservative vote bank, had not yet assimilated the fact that even the East India Company, which ruled the Indian subcontinent for over ten decades before handing it over to the Crown in 1857, is now owned by an Indian business owner Sanjiv Mehta. He acquired the closed company in 2010 and revived it in other businesses.
Had Sunak now become the British PM, they would have seen it as India’s another ‘sweet revenge’ on its former rulers.
An additional reason that worked against Sunak was the outgoing PM Boris Johnson’s alleged enmity. Johnson worked behind the scenes to ensure Sunak’s defeat and the victory of anyone but a “Brown” fellow so that only a White could occupy 10 Downing Street.
That White is a woman: Mary Elizabeth Truss, or Liz Truss, the third woman British PM after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.
In her Cabinet, however, there is no White man in the top jobs!
And Suella Braverman, 42, a Buddhist who took her oath of office in Parliament on the Dhammapada, has replaced another Indian-Briton Home Secretary, Priti Patel. Suella is the daughter of Hindu Tamil mother Uma Pillay and Goan-origin father Christie Fernandes. Her mother migrated to the UK from Mauritius, while her father came from Kenya in the 1960s.
Before Sunak challenged Johnson in the Tory leadership race, former Attorney-General Suella Braverman was among the first contenders to throw her hat in the ring to replace the then PM after they forced the latter to resign amid multiple scandals. But, after being knocked out of the race in the second round of the initial ballot, she threw her support behind Liz Truss and has now been rewarded.
The Goa-origin Cambridge University graduate married Rael Braverman in 2018.
Braverman is a Buddhist who attends the London Buddhist Centre regularly and took her oath of office in Parliament on the “Dhammapada,” the scripture of Lord Buddha’s sayings.