Rishi Sunak Shows What India Is Missing

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Sunak’s story strikes a chord with Indians. His rise from the middle class—his father was a doctor, his mother a pharmacist—to the pinnacle of political power has a fairy-tale quality. As the first nonwhite British prime minister, and at 42 the youngest in more than 200 years, Mr. Sunak has entered the history books even before he’s had a chance to show what sort of legacy he’ll leave.

The new prime minister is a practicing Hindu who was sworn in as an MP on the

Bhagavad Gita,

and has recalled his pride at lighting diyas (traditional earthen lamps) on Diwali in front of 11 Downing Street in his previous job as chancellor of the Exchequer. He is a self-confessed teetotaler “Coke addict” (the beverage) who forswears beef. As a symbol of devotion, he wears a red thread on his right wrist. He is married to the daughter of tech billionaire N.R.

Narayana Murthy,

a household name in India.

Much of the Indian response to Mr. Sunak has been playful. On social media you can find memes of James Bond ordering a martini in Hindi and others that swap Mr. Sunak’s photo for a look-alike, former Indian cricketer Ashish Nehra. But some Indian commentary carries an edge of ugly ethnic triumphalism. Prominent former Indian diplomat Kanwal Sibal tweeted about the “poetic justice” of an Indian leading the nation that once colonized India. An op-ed in the Deccan Herald spoke approvingly of “reverse cultural colonisation of the U.K.” by Indian immigrants.

In reality, India, which borrowed Westminster-style parliamentary democracy from Britain, still has much to learn about political representation from its former rulers. Asians—overwhelmingly from the Indian subcontinent—make up only 7% of Britain’s population and Indians only around 2%. And yet Conservative Party MPs chose Mr. Sunak to lead them. No nation is completely race-blind, but modern Britain (like the U.S.) comes close to this ideal.

Historically, India too has much to be proud of in this regard. In 2004, for instance, the overwhelmingly Hindu majority nation elected a party led by an Italian born Catholic (Sonia Gandhi) that chose a Sikh (Manmohan Singh) as prime minister. APJ Abdul Kalam, the president who swore in Mr. Singh, was Muslim.

With the advent of hard-line Hindu nationalism under Prime Minister

Narendra Modi,

however, India has moved toward religious chauvinism. Muslims account for 14% of the population, but the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party does not have a single Muslim MP. For the first time in independent Indian history, Muslims find no place in the cabinet.

Many BJP-ruled states have passed laws designed to restrict the ability of Muslims and Christians to eat beef, proselytize or marry Hindu women. Hindu Nationalists who crow about Mr. Sunak’s achievement appear blind to what his victory really says about Britain. It does not reflect Hindu ascendance in a former colonial power. It reflects a mature democracy that strives to give all its people a share of political power.

For the West, Mr. Sunak marks a more hopeful possibility: a potential broadening of the conservative tent in all major Anglophone democracies. Not that long ago, the Labour Party had a virtual lock on nonwhite voters in Britain. But a 2021 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report by

Milan Vaishnav

and colleagues found that about 3 in 10 British-Indian voters support the Conservative Party while 4 in 10 support Labour. (Subcontinental voters of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin still overwhelmingly prefer Labour.) Outside Britain, left-wing parties remain dominant. Mr. Vaishnav’s research shows that 15% of Indians in the U.S., 19% in Canada and 26% in Australia prefer conservative parties.

These are modest figures, but there’s a chance for growth as leftwing parties spiral toward madness on race, gender, immigration and taxation. In 2020 President Trump gained impressively with Hispanic, black and Asian voters compared with other recent Republican presidential candidates. Indian-American politicians such as

Bobby Jindal

and

Nikki Haley

have already made successful careers as GOP politicians.

Mehmet Oz

may soon join their ranks as America’s first Muslim senator after he battered his opponent for a Pennsylvania seat,

John Fetterman,

in Tuesday’s debate.

For good reason, Anglosphere conservatives have long mistrusted the gaudy identity politics of the left with its obsession with race and gender. Yet by forging political bonds based on shared values, they’re breaking the left’s monopoly on diversity in the West. Prime Minister Sunak may end up speeding up a natural and salutary process. India’s rulers could learn a thing or two from his example.