‘From Age of Empire to Rishi Raj’: India reacts to Sunak’s appointment as British PM

India has joyfully claimed Britain’s new prime minister Rishi Sunak as one of its own, with his appointment winning the approval of numerous commentators, media outlets, politicians and business leaders.

“From Age of Empire to Rishi Raj” blazed the lead headline on Wednesday in the widely circulated Times of India, which also published an editorial page commentary titled “Behind 10 Browning Street”, referring to a politician of Indian origin taking up residence in 10 Downing Street.

“A Britain no longer great, a kingdom hardly united, has chosen a child of the Empire to restore its economic and political stability, 75 years after Indian independence,” wrote Sanjaya Baru, one-time media adviser to former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, in his analysis.

One of India’s leading industrialists, Anand Mahindra, concurred, recalling Winston Churchill reportedly describing Indian politicians and leaders as people of “low calibre” and “men of straw” just before India’s independence in 1947.

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“Today, during the 75th year of our independence, we’re poised to see a man of Indian origin anointed as PM of the UK. Life is beautiful,” he said.

A cross-section of India’s domestic electronic, print and social media also extolled the 42-year-old British premier’s rise.

“Indian son rises over Empire”, streamed a headline on the New Delhi TV news channel for most of Tuesday, deriding the colonial-era adage that the sun never set on the British Empire. Its rival, India Today TV, continually flashed the header “Battered Britain gets ‘desi’ [Indian] boss” during its news broadcasts.

Indian MPs also hailed Mr Sunak’s appointment as a “Diwali gift” on the annual Festival of Lights that was celebrated on Monday. “As India observes its 75th year as an independent nation, the UK gets an Indian-origin PM,” said MP Raghav Chadha. History had come full cycle, he added.

Several newspapers and social media platforms also dwelt on Mr Sunak’s self-proclaimed Hindu heritage, which served to identify him closely with India.

Clips also featured Mr Sunak serving community meals at a Hindu temple and taking oath as a newly elected MP from Richmond in North Yorkshire on the Bhagwat Gita, one of Hinduism’s holiest scriptures. Many newspapers reported that Mr Sunak said he had classified himself as “British-Indian” in the UK census.

These narratives were supplemented by glowing accounts of Mr Sunak’s paternal and maternal grandparents’ past in India’s northern Punjab province, before the two families migrated to east Africa in the 1930s. Mr Sunak’s father, a doctor, and mother, a pharmacist, moved to Britain in the 1960s, where the nw millionaire prime minister was born and educated.

Some periodicals catalogued at least eight other countries including Guyana, Jamaica, Mauritius, Portugal, Seychelles, Singapore and Suriname where a person of Indian origin was at present either head of government or state, or both.

Under the headline “Desi politicians hit sweet spot abroad”, the Tribune newspaper in north India also included Leo Varadkar, who is set to return as Taoiseach in December, in this list.

But Lord Meghnanad Desai, an economist of Indian-origin and member of UK’s House of Lords, sounded a cautionary note over Indian commentators laying claim to Mr Sunak and talking of an Indian running the UK.

Mr Sunak, he stated in The Indian Express, was no more Indian than Barack Obama was Kenyan, referring to the former US president’s father, who was a senior government economist in Kenya.

The important point, Lord Desai stressed, was that Mr Sunak is a British citizen.