Leap of Faith: in the minority
The UK has its first ethnic minority leader – but does it change anything?
I’m a sucker for ritual, I just love it. Seeing Rishi Sunak on bended knee outside Number 10 lighting a Diya (traditional oil lamp) for Diwali gave me a comforting inner glow. When one minority group is able to be open and proud of their religious traditions and practices, it gives us all the ability to follow suit, elevating our own cultural norms. I loved the pride of Hindus around the UK seeing themselves in a man who had reached the highest strata of British society. If Rishi can do it then surely any Rohan, Arjun, or Nikhil, (the Christian counterparts of Tom, Dick, and Harry) can find that their political careers take them all the way to Downing Street. As the Hindu community claimed him as “one of them”, I wondered whether that’s how his fellow MPs and Cabinet colleagues see him.
I’m no more convinced that this is a huge leap forward in the opening up of British society or change in culture than if we cited Benjamin Disraeli the first Jewish Prime Minister. That didn’t mark a seismic shift in antisemitism in Britain and this doesn’t show us that glass ceilings for ethnic minorities are shattering all over the country from law firms to the West End stage. Disraeli was born to Jewish parents and his family left synagogue life following a broiges before his Bar Mitzvah. He was shrewdly baptised which opened doors to social advantages and enabled his progression. His Jewish roots, rather silenced by the time he reached adulthood, could be seen as refreshing and open for the 1870s or could teach us that parts of one’s identity get overshadowed in the eyes of others when different characteristics are seen as more significant.
Sunak was voted in by his colleagues. What first comes to mind when thinking of him – the Hindu on bended knee, the Oxford/Stanford graduate, the hedge fund manager, or the son-in-law to a billionaire? At what point do certain identity characteristics become that which define us in others’ eyes? Perhaps it’s why politicians like Sadiq Khan take great pride in reminding us that his dad was a bus driver and that his working class Pakistani roots make him a man of the people. If we want to represent a particular part of our identity, we have to work hard not to let it get hidden under a bushel.
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