Politics were put to one side by many members of the UK’s east African Asian community this week as they contemplated the tumultuous postcolonial history leading up to Rishi Sunak’s appointment as prime minister.
“It’s a proud moment for Britain and an amazing achievement for an Asian person to hold that title and go into Downing Street. I wouldn’t say everything was racist when I came but we have come a long way,” said Manjula Sood, former lord mayor of Leicester — the first Asian woman to hold that title — and a longtime Labour party councillor.
Sunak, who became the UK’s first non-white and first Hindu prime minister on Diwali, comes from a family of “twice migrants” — people who left pre-partition India during colonial times and settled in other parts of the British empire including Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
They earned the sobriquet rebuilding their lives from scratch when they came to Britain in the turbulent years after those colonies and others gained independence.
Much of the community in the UK, which spans multiple religions, has traditionally supported the Labour party, although that may have shifted somewhat as the Conservative party has embraced more diversity and since prime minister David Cameron spoke in 2012 of creating an “aspiration nation”.
But even if many of these Labour voters have misgivings about Tory policy, they have for the moment parked their political allegiance in view of this week’s milestone in Britain’s multicultural evolution.
Sood, whose father worked as a doctor in the Kenyan prison system, was breaking glass ceilings from almost the week she arrived in the east Midlands city of Leicester in 1970. She became the city’s first Asian primary school teacher — the “only brown face at the school” — and in her second job fended off a headteacher who insisted she discard her sari in favour of western dress.
Sood said she began to receive hate mail upon being elected as a city councillor in 1982, but had also been supported by many English people on her way. She saw Sunak’s journey as having been enabled by the battles that people of her generation fought.
A friend of Sunak’s mother’s family, who settled in Leicester around the same time as her, Sood perceived his success as the fruit of hard work, sacrifice and education — values widely shared by the east African Asian community and immigrants more broadly.
“Many parents have put a ceiling on their own desires but made sure their children were ready,” she said. “Rishi’s family is an example for everyone, irrespective of their religion or faith, that this country is inclusive: if you work hard, you can achieve things.”
In the political cacophony of recent times, some MPs have suggested Sunak becoming prime minister shows the UK has moved on from debates around race and ethnicity. Business secretary Grant Shapps this week described race as an “afterthought” in the public conversation around the new premier, who was elected by fellow MPs.
People from the Asian community were not so unmoved.
Nisha Popat, who works in arts management and this year helped organise an exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the expulsion of Asians from Uganda by the dictator Idi Amin, said she was raised in Leicester at a time when skinheads were a menace on the streets and “being called a Paki every day” was normal.
Popat said a surge in English nationalism after the Brexit vote in 2016, alongside more sinister undercurrents of xenophobia, had forced her to re-evaluate the extent to which the country her daughters were growing up in had moved on.
Yet having an Asian at the top, she said, was an inspiration, and an important foundation in the battle to eliminate discrimination.
“As an Asian woman you grew up looking for those role models . . . You want to see somebody like you who has got to that level.”
Lord Jitesh Gadhia, a Tory donor and peer, agreed that the moment carried great significance “specifically” for members of the east African Asian community.
“Migrants are already highly motivated and want to improve their lives. Those moving twice in a single generation are doubly motivated,” he said, remarking on the tough circumstances families including his endured upon arriving in the UK from Uganda in 1972. “Coming from a displaced community to now being at the top of this country is huge.”
Sunak’s father, a GP, and mother, a pharmacist, moved to the UK from Kenya and Tanzania respectively. They met in the 1960s while studying and settled in the port city of Southampton, where the prime minister grew up.
That their son went on to become a multi-millionaire having attended an elite private school before Oxford and Stanford universities — where he met his wife, Akshata Murthy, the daughter of the billionaire founder of Indian IT group Infosys — did not necessarily mean he was “out of touch”, said Tari Sian, owner of NuSound Radio in east London, which targets the south Asian community.
“When you climb a ladder, you don’t forget the previous steps you have taken. In Rishi’s case, he remembers where he came from, how hard his parents worked.”
Sunak’s identity alone, however, will not in and of itself win over younger generations. Some have objected to the hard line on immigration pushed by other members of the community who have served in senior government roles. These include former home secretary Priti Patel, whose family came from Uganda.
Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a non-partisan think-tank that works on integration and race relations, said that once the initial elation had passed, young people, in particular, would judge Sunak on his delivery in policy areas such as climate change, immigration and tax.
“Yes, there is pride within parts of British Indian and Asian communities. It doesn’t mean they will support him politically,” said Katwala, adding that many who came to the UK from east Africa decades ago remained committed Labour voters.
“But for the older generation this is a huge transformation of the country.”
