With the British general election due on July 4, what’s the future for “India’s son-in-law”, Rishi Sunak?

When he became “Britain’s first Hindu Prime Minister” in October 2022, Indians
everywhere bathed in his reflected glory.

In a comment quickly picked up by the British media, his mother-in-law Sudha Murty talked about how she had made her husband N.R. Narayana Murthy a successful businessman while her daughter Akshata “has managed to make her husband the Prime Minister of the UK”.

A delighted King Charles, who holds a weekly audience with the Prime Minister, gifted him a box of Diwali mithai.

Rishi’s elevation marked a truly historic moment for a multicultural Britain. Rishi, who has always emphasised his Hindu upbringing, had lit diyas outside his residence, 11 Downing Street, when he was chancellor of the exchequer under Boris Johnson. And when he moved next door to No. 10, he was happy to be photographed with a statue of Ganesh on his table.

On his one prime ministerial trip to India during the G20 summit in September last year, he and Akshata found time to visit the Swaminarayan Akshardham temple in Delhi. And last week Rishi was surrounded by committed supporters in saffron when he canvassed Hindu voters in the Shree Kutch Satsang Swaminarayan Temple in Harrow, north London.

To English journalists, he explained: “In Hinduism, there’s a concept of duty called dharma, which is roughly translated as being about doing your duty and not having a focus on the outcomes of it….”

Rishi added: “That is something I was raised with, and that is also something that gives me the strength to deal with the things that you’re describing (dire opinion polls), because I get fulfilment from just doing what I believe is right.”

All this partly explains why a campaigner for Nigel Farage’s Reform party — this is made up mostly of defectors from the far Right of the Conservative party plus others with near-fascist, “anti-immigrant” inclinations — described Rishi last week with an expletive.

Compared with the Opposition Labour party, the Tory leadership has been much more diverse. However, it is fair to say Rishi has had to put up with an undercurrent of racism.

Some of it is overt. When he and Truss contested the Tory party leadership in the summer of 2022 following Boris’s resignation, a man called Jerry told LBC: “Rishi isn’t even British… he doesn’t love England. Having a British passport doesn’t mean you are a true British patriot…. 85 per cent of the British people are white English people, and they want a Prime Minister that reflects that….”

In early June, when Britain, France and America commemorated the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Rishi, who doesn’t much believe in ceremonials, made the serious mistake of cutting short his trip to events marking the sacrifices made during World War II.

Farage called him a Paki without using the word: “This man is not patriotic. Doesn’t believe in the country. It’s people, its history or frankly even its culture. If you’re a patriotic voter, don’t vote for Rishi Sunak.”

To be sure, cartoons are meant to be caricatures. But one cartoonist in a national newspaper depicts Rishi in a way that sends the subliminal message that “he’s not quite one of us”.

There are subtler ways in which Rishi has been undermined. Although it is suggested Reform will take votes from Tory candidates and thus help Labour, Farage has been given huge amounts of space in the Daily Telegraph, totally out of proportion to his importance. Even Farage’s bombastic claims — that he was now set to be Opposition leader in the next Parliament and a future Prime Minister — have merited serious coverage in the paper.

The newspaper has also given a column to one of his enemies, Suella Braverman, whom Rishi had to sack as home secretary. Although of Goan origin, she has campaigned for Indian student numbers to be cut and for Britain to take an even harder line on immigration than the Prime Minister.

Right-wing politicians ignore the fact that, according to the 2024 Grant Thornton “India meets Britain Tracker” report, 971 companies from India, with combined revenues of £68.09 billion, employed 118,430 people, mainly white, in 2023.

Rishi himself has tried to appease his Right-wingers, on visas for example, which is one reason he has failed to clinch a free trade agreement with India.

Boris has not campaigned at all but has sent letters supporting only the Tory MPs who had called for Rishi to step down.

An Indian peer confided to The Telegraph in India: “I’m so disappointed in Rishi. When he first became an MP, his father-in-law asked me to keep an eye on him. When I bumped into him, I said I hoped he would campaign to stay in Europe. He said, no, he supported Brexit. I was shocked.”

Rishi still has the support of the vast majority of Indians. But among Left-wingers, the comedian Nish Kumar has developed a show on how he feels “about being a British Indian man who isn’t going to vote for a British Indian Prime Minister”.

The politics of envy is such that Rishi has been accused of being richer than King Charles, and of being a man who wears £500 Prada shoes and is “out of touch” with ordinary voters.

Rishi’s hope of preventing a Labour “supermajority” is for the British people to recognise he saved millions of jobs during the pandemic with his “furlough scheme” when he was chancellor. He has also reduced inflation from 11 per cent, triggered by Truss’s disastrous unfunded budget, to 2 per cent.

Rishi’s rise in politics has been quick, perhaps too quick. From the time he was first elected an MP in 2015 at the age of 34, he was tipped for stardom as the most brilliant person of his generation. But there is an old adage in Britain that all political careers end in failure.

The satirical magazine Private Eye put Rishi on its cover numerous times. These will soon become collector’s items.