The taking over of Shri Rishi Sunak, a person of Indian origin, as the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is certainly a matter of rejoice for every Indian. The event has injected a sense of pride and honour for everyone in the country. The ruling BJP-led NDA has welcomed the development. However, many politicians have jumped in to play politics in the country and are explaining and exploiting the event in their own peculiar style to hammer out the ruling alliance and derive political-electoral benefits. It is only by chance that the new UK PM happens to belong to a minority community in the UK. For the British people, the Conservative Party to which he belongs, and the British Parliament, Sunak’s caste and religion had nothing to do with their choice. Thus, politicians in India are belittling his achievement by underling only his caste and religion as if he had no other merit. This has exposed their narrowmindedness. The same champions of the rights of minorities in India did not press for a minority PM when their party won a majority in alliance with other parties.
It is and should be a matter of pride for India that Shri Rishi Sunak has risen to hold the high office of the Prime Minister of the UK. This news became handy for non-NDA politicians in the country to stoop so low as to use this incident in the UK to make the waters of Indian politics still muddier with their narrow politics. It is a matter of regret that in their anxiety to extract political advantage out of this happening in the UK, politicians in the country have tried to paint the event to look as if Shri Rishi Sunak possessed no other merit except that he belongs to a minority community. Their shortsightedness stands exposed before the world community.
Similarly, the erudite former Home and Finance Minister P Chidambaran slammed the “majoritarianism” in the country. Shri Shashi Tharoor went to the extent of asking whether “Sunak-type appointment could be possible for Muslims and Christians in India”. The Congress party was quick to “snub” both for their comments. Their utterances look very funny. In India, a person is “appointed” as Prime Minister by the President — and in the UK by the King — not arbitrarily but only when he/she has been elected by the party which holds a majority in Parliament. Not going much earlier, both these senior Congress leaders should have made their party elect a Muslim or a Christian as leader of their parliamentary party by virtue of which he could be “appointed” as PM by the President of India when the Congress Party won a majority in alliance with other parties in 2004 and 2009. Why did they not do it then, they owe an explanation to the nation.
In the just-concluded elections for the post of the President of INC, why did both these gentlemen not demand that the party should shun “majoritarianism” and that a Muslim or a Christian should head the party? Needless to remind the Congress party that since Independence the Party has not “selected, elected or appointed” a single Muslim or Christian as head of the party. Why?
Shri Chidambaram’s condemnation of “majoritarianism” too appears ludicrous. Democracy means rule by the majority. No leader can run a Government unless he commands a majority in Parliament.
At the same time, India hopes that the relations between the two countries would be more friendly and helpful for each other to usher in peace and prosperity in India and the world.
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