By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 26, 2022 — I lived in England for slightly more than a year in the late 1960s when I was on a journalistic training course and worked as a reporter on the staff of the London Evening Standard. As Black man who was a committed Black Power advocate when I moved to London in November 1968, I soon discovered that racism is not as widespread in Great Britain as it is in the United States, but it does openly exist in some areas of the country.
To a great extent, classism – a form of prejudice that is just as evil as racial discrimination — is prevalent in many sectors of British society and openly practiced by persons belonging to a particular social class.
That’s why when Rishi Sunak, who is of Indian descent, became the British Prime Minister I was not as shocked as some people proclaimed they were in published articles mainly because he is essentially an African, not by birth but through his roots, which historians trace to east Africa. This fact alone ordinarily would have made his election as Great Britain’s Prime Minister astonishing, but in reality, it is not, because Prime Minister Sunak is a certified member of Great Britain’s elite upper class and he is filthy rich.
Sunak’s father, Yashvir Sunak, was born and raised in colonial Kenya while his mother, Usha Sunak, was born in mainland Tanzania, then called Tanganyika. They migrated from east Africa with their families to the United Kingdom in the 1960s. His grandparents were born in Punjab, India.
According to London-based historian Levin Opiyo, Sunak’s grandfather Ram Dass married Suhag Rani in the 1930s and began making plans to migrate to Kenya at a time when the colonial government needed skilled workers in a country where most Africans lacked formal education to be hired.
“As the government strived to address the situation by encouraging Africans to attend mission schools, it sought a temporary solution—encouraging skilled Indians to migrate to Kenya to fill the gap,” Opiyo writes. Indians would later dominate Kenya’s middle class, with their number rising to 150,000 by the end of World War l.
Opiyo notes that Sunak’s grandfather, Ram Dass, in search of new opportunities bought a one-way ticket to Kenya, then took a train to Nairobi, where he began working as a casual laborer while studying accounting.
“Soon he got a job in the office of chief secretary in Nairobi as a clerk. Two years later, in 1937, as soon as he was settled, Dass invited his wife to join him in Nairobi. They were blessed with six children — three girls and three boys. One of the boys was Yashvir (Sunak’s father),” Opiyo writes.
While Yashvir’s sisters went to advance their education in India, he and his male siblings were sent to study in the UK. Yashvir started his O-level studies in 1966 in Liverpool before “proceeding to do medicine and graduating in 1974” and becoming a general practitioner.
In 1972, Sunak’s mother Usha, who was born in Tanzania “to a tax official from Punjab,” graduated with a degree in pharmacy from Aston University. “The two were introduced to each other by friends and married in 1977 in Leicester,” Opiyo writes. “They were blessed with three children, among them Sunak, the new British prime minister,” Opiyo writes. Sunak was born in Southampton in 1980.
When he became prime minister on Oct. 25, some citizens in Kenya and Tanzania — especially those of Indian descent — were proud to see a man whose parents were born and raised in their territory take over the UK’s top political office. Their hope is that he will strengthen diplomatic ties and advocate for minorities, but this optimism should be tempered by the fact that he is part of the conservative party whose policies have not always favored these groups. Enthusiasm remains nonetheless.
“It’s another Obama moment for us. We pride ourselves in seeing him steering UK’s rocky boat back to stability,” said Julia Onyango, a fishmonger based in Kisumu, Kenya, a city located 58 kms from former US President Barack Obama’s K’Ogalo village, where his father was born.
Facebook user Abdi Yufuf wondered, “So Kenya is the River Jordan where world leaders should cross to reach the promised land?”
Patel Suri, a Tanzanian investor of Indian descent based in Dar es Salaam, said, “Indians are smart people. You will find them playing the role of CEO in many Big Tech companies across the world. Rishi Sunak is no different. He is intelligent and the right choice for Prime Minister at this point of the political and economic challenges.”
Clearly, everything about Prime Minister Sunak and his wife Akshata Murthy Sunak suggest that they are members of Great Britain’s elite upper class, and they are very, very rich. Mrs. Sunak is the daughter of Narayana Murthy, an Indian billionaire who in 1981 founded Infosys, a highly innovative software services global company listed on NYSE in the US as a $75 billion company. Mrs. Sunak’s 0.91 per cent stake in Infosys has an estimated value of £690 million ($780m) and she is personally worth about £500 million, while Mr. Sunak’s wealth is valued at £200 million.
She went on to study economics and French at the top liberal Claremont McKenna College in California and later studied for an MBA at Stanford University, where she met Rishi Sunak, who received his undergraduate degree at Oxford and attended Stanford on a Fulbright scholarship.
According to one published report, the couple, who have two daughters and a dog, “live a lavish lifestyle, and were said to have spent £400,000 on a swimming pool at their country pad in the summer.”
“They own at least four properties, including a £7 milion five-bedroom house in Kensington. They also own a flat in Santa Monica, California,” the report noted. “It is not known whether they will move into Downing Street, which would represent a significant downsize from their sprawling £2m Grade II-listed Georgian manor house in Yorkshire.”
