Gift for the holiday of lights

On October 24, Hindus around the world celebrated their main holiday - Diwali.

Sacred fires were lit, fireworks were launched, sacred mantras were read, gifts were given.

And the most important gift for the people of India and members of the Hindu communities was the election of the ethnic Hindu Rishi Sunak to the post of Prime Minister of Great Britain.

The event dwarfed even India's historic cricket victory over nemesis Pakistan in a World Cup match the day before.

"Indians are thrilled that Rishi Sunak has become the first person of Indian descent to serve as British Prime Minister on Diwali," Reuters reported.

Sunak is a practicing Hindu.

As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he lit ritual candles outside 11 Downing Street, earning the admiration of his brothers in faith.

They immediately remembered that when elected to parliament, Sunak took an oath on the Bhagavad Gita.

It is expected that it is on the holy book of Hinduism, and not on the Bible, that Sunak will take a new oath as prime minister.

This will take place on October 28, and on the 29th the new composition of the government will be officially announced.

Sunak became the only candidate for prime minister after the collapse of the Liz Truss government, which lasted only 45 days.

In the summer, he lost to Truss in the Conservative Party's internal vote, which attracted supporters by promising big tax cuts, while Sunak, a professional financier and former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, taunted the need for a realistic approach to the economy.

The conservatives believed Truss' tales and received a month and a half of economic experiments and upheavals.

The reforms brought down the pound and led to a sharp increase in government bonds and mortgages, and the Bank of England was forced to turn on the printing press, which provoked inflation.

Seeing who they chose as their leader, the conservatives rioted and called for Truss to step down.

Ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, tanned while on vacation in the Caribbean, immediately returned to London.

He spent the entire weekend in negotiations with his party colleagues, trying to enlist their support in order to regain the premiership.

And by Sunday evening, according to him, he managed to persuade 102 parliamentarians (at least 100 are needed to participate in intra-party elections).

But, according to the Associated Press, the prospect of Johnson's return would lead to more upheaval in the already divided Conservative Party.

Realizing this, Johnson eventually gave up the fight, stating, "You can't govern effectively if you don't have a single party in Parliament."

The last contender for the post of prime minister, Penny Mordaunt, also abandoned the fight, unable to find even a hundred deputies who would support her candidacy.

Sunak's election is a "watershed" in British history, said Nottingham-based Conservative Party member Ravi Kumar.

“I grew up in the 80s and 90s and in my life I could not even imagine a non-white prime minister.

I have always seen the UK only as a white country, and we came there as the children of immigrants ... So to see an Indian British leader is phenomenal, ”Reuters quoted Kumar as saying.

Indians are always proud of members of their race who thrive abroad, whether it be US Vice President Kamala Harris, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Parag Agrawal (CEO of Twitter).

But the fact that the son of Indian immigrants became the prime minister of Great Britain, the country that ruled India for almost 200 years, also has a deep symbolic meaning for them.

In addition, this happened just two months after India celebrated the 75th anniversary of its independence on a grand scale (August 15, 1947 - August 15, 2022).

Many hope that with the arrival of Rishi Sunak on Downing Street, the British-Indian ties - and so, however, quite close - will grow even stronger.

“Having @RishiSunak as Prime Minister of the UK will be a great Diwali gift for the UK and something to celebrate in India,” former Indian diplomat Rajeev Dogra tweeted.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent Sunak "warmest congratulations" and wrote that he looked forward to "close cooperation on global issues and the implementation of the 2030 Roadmap."

The Roadmap 2030, signed by Modi and Johnson in May 2021, aims to create an enhanced trade partnership between India and the UK with the goal of doubling trade between the two countries by 2030.

But not everyone shares the enthusiasm.

“Rishi Sunak as prime minister is not a victory for Asian representation,” Nadia Whittom, an opposition Labor Party MP, tweeted.

“He is a multimillionaire who, as chancellor, cut taxes on bank profits at a time when there was the biggest drop in living standards since 1956.

Black, white or Asian: if you're making a living, he's not on your side."

Immediately after that, Witt, who also has Indian roots and celebrates Diwali, was accused of ... racism, and she was forced to delete the entry.

But here is her latest tweet, no less caustic: “Rishi Sunak and his wife are worth £730m, about twice the estimated wealth of King Charles III.

Keep this in mind whenever he talks about making "tough decisions"

This is true: both Sunak himself, who made a career in Goldman Sachs and hedge funds in the City of London, is a non-poor person, and his wife Akshata Murthy, the daughter of Indian billionaire Narayan Murthy, founder of the IT giant Infosys, officially owns 0.9% of Infosys shares, but even this minority stake is worth several hundred million pounds.

Related to this are two delicate moments that spoiled the blood of Rishi Sunaka during his rivalry with Liz Truss.

Firstly, it turned out that his wife Akshata, having the status of “without permanent residence”, did not pay taxes on her income in the UK: this not only smacked of fraud, but also looked very unpatriotic, because it meant that she did not consider Foggy Albion their permanent home.

Secondly, the international IT company Infosys, created by her father, unlike many other companies, did not close its representative office in Russia after the start of the CBO in Ukraine.

Fighting off stubborn journalists, Rishi Sunak vehemently denied his involvement with Infosys.

“I am an elected politician,” he told Sky News in March 2022, “and I am here to talk to you about what I am responsible for.

My wife is not."

He emphasized in every possible way that Akshata was just “one of the thousands of minority shareholders of the company”, and neither she nor any of her family members had anything to do with the operating decisions of Infosys.

But the notorious Russophobes from the British media were not too convinced.

“Does your family profit from cooperation with the Putin regime?”

Sky News anchor Jane Secker asked Sunak.

Sunak was reminded that in the past Infosys was associated with Alfa Bank, which was on the UK sanctions list.

And the icing on the cake: it turned out that in 2004, Vladimir Putin himself visited the Infosys headquarters in Bangalore, and none other than Rishi Sunak's father-in-law, Narayana Murthy, conducted a tour of the enterprise for the Russian president.

Suspicions of ties to Russia eased somewhat after Sunak said he welcomed the consensus on the need to inflict maximum economic damage on "Putin and his regime."

“While I understand that it can be difficult to wind down existing investments, I believe that there is no argument in favor of new investments in the Russian economy,” he added.

Of course, the financier Sunak is not such a rabid Russophobe as his predecessors Truss and Johnson or British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace.

But this will in no way affect the course of London towards Russia and the war in Ukraine, since this course, like all the real politics of Great Britain, is not determined by the prime minister or the government.

This course is formed by elite clubs that have existed for decades (or even centuries) behind the scenes of the official state, as if in a parallel dimension, like the Hogwarts school of wizards in the Harry Potter books.

The Italian historian Guido Preparato wrote of them: "By 'clubs' and 'elites' I mean the established and self-perpetuating brotherhoods that ruled the Anglo-Saxon states: they were (and are) formed by a conglomeration of dynasties originating from banking houses, diplomatic corps,

officer caste and ruling aristocracy.

This conglomerate is firmly woven into the fabric of modern "democracies" to this day.

Such "clubs" act, manage, educate and think as a compact, tightly knit oligarchy, attracting the cooperation of the middle class, which it uses as a filter between itself and the cannon fodder - the commoners ... "

The role of such a filter is intended for the new Prime Minister of Great Britain, Rishi Sunak.

And the fact that he became the first "colored" head of the British government is nothing more than a tribute to the fashion trends of diversity, equity and inclusion - diversity, equality and inclusiveness.

In fact, another obedient executor of the will of elite clubs is wrapped in a bright wrapper of a gift for the holiday of lights - Diwali, where only those on whose shoulders lies the “burden of a white man” praised by Kipling lie.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.