Raising false expectations

A practising Hindu has become the UK PM. That fact has attracted much more attention in India than it has in Great Britain. There, the colour of Rishi’s skin is more of an issue than his religion. In our India, where religion holds centre stage and is used to garner electoral votes, a non-Hindu becoming the Prime Minister has become impossible since the advent of the present rulers with their concept of Hindutva.

Sunak and Braverman may be proclaimed as PIOs, but over two decades, they have metamorphosed into Brits.

Rishi Sunak’s rise to this position is a result of several factors and a combination of those factors, not the least of which is individual grit and merit. If he is a good Hindu, as he himself has proclaimed, he will admit that it was his ‘karma’ that led him on the path to eminence. There is only one instance of such a spectacular rise in recent history that can be compared to Sunak’s. The rise of Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan student in the US, is the only comparable story in modern-day politics.

The US has come a long way since the Civil War that led to the abolition of slavery. Similarly, the UK has changed considerably since the fall of the Empire. The migration of natives of the old colonies into the UK has created a situation where far-right politicians, now ruling the country, are seeking legal paths to discourage further influx into their land.

Suella Braverman is described as an Interior Minister of Indian descent. Her father is reported to be from Goa and her mother is a Tamilian from Mauritius. Braverman is not a surname among the Christians of Goa. It is an English surname, which the minister probably acquired on her marriage to an Englishman. Christians in Goa were all Hindus, belonging to various castes. On conversion, all families converted by a Portuguese Catholic priest on any particular day were assigned the surname of that priest. My Saraswat Hindu ancestors were renamed Ribeiro after Fr Ribeiro, who presided at the baptism ceremony.

Portuguese missionaries adopted this practice wherever they converted natives to their beliefs. The current Sri Lanka T20 World Cup team has a D’Silva and a Mendis opening their batting. Both openers have Portuguese surnames, obviously acquired when their Sinhalese ancestors were converted by Portuguese missionaries. In Kerala, I came across a ‘Ribeiro’, a full-blooded Malayali, working in a coir factory. He spoke only Malayalam, forcing me to talk to him via an interpreter. He professed to be a ‘Latin Catholic’, a term I have heard often in Kerala when referring to those converted in the 16th century or later by Portuguese missionaries.

Braverman’s father was a certain Christie Fernandes, whose parents left Goa for Kenya in search of a white-collar job. What caught my attention was that Suella’s father had studied at Dr Ribeiro’s Goan High School in Nairobi. Incidentally, my own wife had studied in that school till the age of 10 when her Goan parents left Kenya to return to India because of the Mau Mau.

Braverman’s reappointment by Sunak has attracted negative comments in India. The original natives of Britain, however, will be happy. They would like a hardliner of coloured skin to discourage the influx of the less educated into their country. The minister, herself the child of immigrants, is all set to discourage immigration from South Asia. Both Sunak and Braverman may be proclaimed as PIOs, which they surely are, but over time, they have metamorphosed into Brits, speaking like them, thinking like them and eating like them. (Rishi professes to be a good Hindu. He does not eat beef himself, but I reckon that he is used to sitting at the dinner table even when beef is served).

The new British PM is not the first Prime Minister of a European country with family roots in India. Leo Varadkar, with an Indian father, but an Irish mother, became the PM of Ireland a decade or so ago. Antonio Costa, Portugal PM, left Goa as a young man to study in Portugal, like many young men and women of privileged families in Goa. Like mine, his ancestors were Saraswat Hindus converted by the Portuguese in the 16th century. In those days, Portugal was the leading maritime power in Europe, before the neighbouring Spain overtook it. England went on to overtake Spain, till the US replaced it with its superior maritime strength four centuries later.

Indians are jubilant when PIOs achieve name and fame in the advanced countries of the world. Kamala Harris, daughter of a Tamilian immigrant and an African-American father from the West Indies, became the Vice-President of the US. Are any of these men or women going to favour India if they have to make a decision that impinges on our interests? I am sure that at the back of their minds, their Indian connections could play a part at the time of deciding, but a very small part it is bound to be. The country of their adoption will matter more than the country of their roots to politicians at that level in the power-wielding structure. Their loyalty will naturally lie with the country they now call their own.

So, there is no necessity of getting hot and bothered when Braverman (nee Fernandes) makes it difficult for unskilled labourers to migrate into Great Britain. They would accept jobs that the locals refuse, but there are other downsides to accepting such cheap labour. Besides the burden on the welfare budget, there is the concomitant problem of clashing cultures and ways of life.

Recently, Great Britain had the sad experience of dealing with communal riots between Hindu and Muslim migrants, a phenomenon till then unknown in that country. The possibility, neigh the probability, of such clashes escalating with increased migration will be factored in by Interior Ministry officials and police chiefs in England, Scotland and Wales.

When India plays cricket against England in a five-day Test or a One-day International or a T20 game, most locals of Indian descent come in droves to cheer our “men in blue”. But cricket is different from migration. The two cannot be compared. The locals will not forgive their elected politicians, hailing from the sub-continent, if they decide to cheer the countries of their origin when their own standards of living are affected in any way.