Rishi Sunak: Tracing UK' new PM roots in East Africa

UK politician Rishi Sunak who is set to be the new Prime Minister PHOTO/Courtesy

On Monday, Conservatives settled on Rishi Sunak as the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom [UK] after unprecedented exit of Liz Truss, who served as PM for just 45 days, with her only notable contribution being taking charge of Queen Elizabeth II burial.

After the exit of Boris Johnson, stiff competition emerged between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak on who should take over, but the former was preferred. In fact, the latter faced hostility in what was at times blamed on his ancestral roots.

But Rishi Sunak beat all odds to become the first PM of Indian origin to lead one of the most powerful economies in the world, in the latest dramatic changes in global leadership. Historian Odhiambo Levin Opiyo traces Sunak's roots to a former British protectorate; the present day Kenya.

Just at the beginning of the colonial rule in Kenya, the government was in dire need of literate and skilled labourers to work in the civil service. The biggest hurdle was that Africans lacked formal education and the necessary skills to be hired.

As the government strived to address the situation by encouraging Africans to attend mission schools, it sorts a temporary solution, that of encouraging skilled Indians to migrate to Kenya to fill the gap, writes Mr. Opiyo, a renowned journalist.

Some Indians who had arrived in Kenya at the turn of the century to work on the railway also wrote to their friends and families back at home to inform them about the opportunities. By the end of World War l, the number of Asians in Nairobi stood at 150, 000. They dominated the colony's Middle class working as clerks, shopkeepers and skilled craftsmen.

The rising tensions between Hindus and Muslims in 1935, saw more Indians arrive in Kenya, to take up opportunities. It was during this period that Sunak's grandfather Ram Dass who had just married Suhag Rani began making plans to migrate to Kenya.

Since he wasn't sure of the situation in the new country, he decided to leave his young wife behind promising to bring her to Kenya as soon as he was stable and familiar with the country.

Ram Dass, consequently, bought a one-way ticket to Kenya and boarded a ship that set sail for Mombasa. He then took a train to Nairobi where he began working as a casual laborer while studying accountancy.

Soon he got a job in the office of Chief Secretary in Nairobi as a clerk, records indicate. Two years later in 1937, as soon as he was settled, Ram Dass invited his wife to join him in Nairobi. They have been blessed with six children three girls and three boys. One of the boys was Yashvir ( Sunak's father).

While the girls went for further studies in India, the boys among them Yashvir (Sunak's father) were sent to the UK to study in Liverpool in 1966.

They were soon joined by their parents who like most Asians had been affected by the Kenya government's Africanisation program and the citizenship crisis. At Liverpool, Yashvir enrolled at a school for his O levels before proceeding to do medicine graduating in 1974.

Two years earlier a young girl called Usha (Sunak's mother) who had been born in Tanzania to a tax official from Punjab, had just graduated with a degree in pharmacology from Aston University.

The two were introduced to each other by friends and married in 1977 in Leicester. They were blessed with three children among them Sunak, the new British Prime Minister.

GAROWE ONLINE