{"id":49727,"date":"2022-10-29T00:20:42","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T15:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2022\/oct\/28\/rishi-sunak-britain-first-hindu-prime-minister-destroying-tories-pitiful-vision-of-diversity"},"modified":"2022-10-29T00:20:42","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T15:20:42","slug":"britains-first-hindu-prime-minister-is-destroying-tories-pitiful-vision-of-diversity-pankaj-mishra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=49727","title":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s first Hindu prime minister is destroying Tories\u2019 pitiful vision of diversity | Pankaj Mishra"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We should quickly abandon wishful thinking in order to be truly ready for Rishi Sunak<\/p>\n<p>The world has watched in appalled fascination as the UK\u2019s ruling party scrapes the bottom of its human resources barrel: it found there its first Black chancellor of the exchequer and then, to clear up his mess, its first Hindu prime minister. Yet exultant noises from India as well as Britain would make us believe that some historic milestone has been reached.<\/p>\n<p>Hindu supremacists have pounced on the possibility that Rishi Sunak, a self-proclaimed devout Hindu, is a <em>desi<\/em> bro, even an undercover agent of the \u201cGlobal Indian Takeover\u201d \u2013 the title of a once regular feature in the Times of India. Evidently, he observes upper-caste taboos against beef and alcohol and always keeps his statuette of Ganesha, the guarantor of worldly success, close to him. \u201cIndian son rises over the empire\u201d was one typical headline in India this week.<\/p>\n<p><em>Pankaj Mishra\u2019s most recent book is Run and Hide: A Novel.<\/em><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2022\/oct\/28\/rishi-sunak-britain-first-hindu-prime-minister-destroying-tories-pitiful-vision-of-diversity\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We should quickly abandon wishful thinking in order to be truly ready for Rishi SunakThe world has watched in appalled fascination as the UK\u2019s ruling party scrapes the bottom of its human resources barrel: it found there its first Black chancellor of t&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3389,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[904,516,62,4,362,371,1158,61,52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatives","category-hinduism","category-india","category-politics","category-race","category-religion","category-rishi-sunak","category-south-and-central-asia","category-uk-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49728,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49727\/revisions\/49728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}