I just hope that Rishi Sunak is not just a photo-op. Many have raved about him being the first leader of colour as prime minister, and a youthful one at that. I only recall when a certain black man emerged in the United States and all swooned over how sweet it was that dawn. America, they purred, had crossed the racial line.
In the slavery era though, blacks who crossed the famous Missouri line had stepped into freedom. Later, they discovered how steep it was. In Obama’s case, it was the Democratic Party, a party of liberals and colour. But his triumph chastened the American white with a racial remorse. They coagulated in a Tea Party so that Obama should crack rather than bask in his victory. In Sunak’s, it was conservative party. It was the same party that spearheaded the squelching of his home country, India.
Their hero, Mahatma Ghandi, endured a racial taunt from a British hero with the soul of a bard. Winston Churchill described Ghandi as “a half-naked kafir.” Churchill’s father was one of the policy makers of India. The other consequential non-caucasian person, Benjamin Disraeli, was also a conservative. He, sometimes a proud Jew, theorised that votes should not be counted but weighed. Sunak would love that because if the votes are counted today, Labour might win. He mounts the throne not from popular count, but on an insular wave.
We can muse on the British remorse as well. They cheated Sunak and gave it to one of their own, Liz Truss, who failed. It is like the lines in the Book of Ezekiel, “I will overturn, overturn and overturn it; and it shall be no more until he whose right it is; and I will give it to him.” It is British emilokan moment. The world watches if some cranky whites will not erupt in a racist reflex like their cousins across the pond.
Again, let us not forget that Sunak neither says amen nor Allah, yet neither the church mensch nor the Muslim avatar is crying over the God he worships. A lesson for us who would rather know the faith than the fate of a child in school or the value of their pocketbooks. That is why Britain is a developed country.
