Rishi Sunak: Hindus React to UK's First Asian PM

Rishi Sunak made history as the first Chancellor of the Exchequer to celebrate Diwali, lighting candles on the steps of his official residence at No. 11 Downing Street.

Two years later, on the day of the same festival, the 42-year-old Conservative was preparing to move into the prime minister’s lodgings next door, as both the first person of color and the first Hindu to take the country’s top job.

He is at the same time a symbol of how far the country has come on race and how entrenched the economic and class barriers to social mobility have become.

At Neasden Temple in north London, one of the largest and oldest traditionally built Hindu places of worship in the country, tens of thousands of people funneled through the gates on Monday dressed in their best for Diwali, representing the triumph of good over evil and new beginnings.

Many lauded Sunak’s achievement and what it means for the 1.4 million British people of Indian descent, the largest and wealthiest ethnic minority in the UK, particularly when it comes to home ownership.

Sixteen-year-old Swarda Yeolekar said her parents were thrilled about his meteoric rise to power, some 75 years after India won independence from British rule. But she, as part of a younger generation often more concerned about opportunity and exclusion, had different priorities.

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