Rishi celebrates Diwali festival as the new Hindu PM drops into ‘brilliant’ reception at No10 

Rishi Sunak last night celebrated Diwali as Britain’s new Hindu Prime Minister dropped into a ‘brilliant’ reception at No10. 

Sharing an image of the gathering on Twitter, he said he will do everything possible in his role to ‘build a Britain where our children and our grandchildren can light their Diyas and look to the future with hope’.

Mr Sunak officially became the country’s first British-Asian PM on Tuesday after succeeding in his second bid for the top job. The UK’s first and only other minority prime minister was Benjamin Disraeli, who was Jewish, in 1874.

Groups heralded the move a ‘historic moment’ that shows the highest office ‘can be open to those of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds’.

The news of Mr Sunak’s success in the Tory leadership contest came during Diwali – a religious festival celebrated across the world, symbolising the victory of light over darkness, and good over evil.

The new Prime Minister was born in 1980 in Southampton to parents of Punjabi descent. His grandparents were born in India and emigrated to the UK from East Africa in the 1960s.

His parents saved up to send him to the £42,000-per-year Winchester College, and he later went to Oxford, where he studied PPE.

Mr Sunak has previously spoken of how did the books at his mother’s pharmacy in Southampton while he was growing up.

After attending Oxford he studied at California’s Stanford University where he met his wife.

Mr Sunak married Akshata Murty, an Indian tech billionaire’s daughter, and built a multi million-pound fortune that saw him dubbed the ‘Maharajah of the Dales’.

Her father, NR Narayana Murthy, is India’s sixth-wealthiest man thanks to his ownership of multinational business technology giant Infosys.

The couple married in her home city of Bangalore in 2009 in a two-day ceremony attended by 1,000 guests.

Thanks to his own banking fortune and that of his wife he is believed to be one of the richest members of Parliament, and owns a magnificent Georgian manor house in the small village of Kirby Sigston, just outside Northallerton in North Yorkshire.

Mr Sunak has praised his father-in-law’s favourite saying: ‘In God we trust – but everyone else needs to bring data to the table.’

After the couple returned to Britain, Mr Sunak worked for a London hedge fund before setting up his own business, Theleme Partners, in 2010, with an initial fund of $700million. He was based in the UK and the United States before entering politics and winning Richmond in 2015.

Mr Sunak’s rise to the top took much of the country by surprise.

A junior local government minister under Theresa May, he was elevated to chief secretary to the Treasury by Boris Johnson, serving under Sajid Javid.

But in February 2020 he was handed the top job of chancellor when Mr Javid sensationally quit amid bitter infighting between No 10 and No 11 involving Dominic Cummings. He was told to sack his chief aides and walked out after refusing.

Mr Sunak was a relative unknown, but was quickly thrust into the limelight when Covid struck the country weeks later.

He oversaw a massive campaign of public spending, the largest ever known in peacetime, including the furlough scheme that prevented millions of people losing their jobs but took UK borrowing to eyewatering levels.

The end of his time as chancellor was as swift as his assent. After months of chaos under Mr Johnson, Mr Sunak followed Mr Javid out of the Cabinet, resigning over the behaviour of the prime minister.

Minutes after Mr Javid stepped down as health secretary he too walked out on the PM. Their decision sparked an exodus of ministers that forced Mr Johnson to finally call an end to his scandal-plagued premiership.

Mr Sunak was the clear favourite of Tory MPs during the summer leadership election. But he lost out after it became clear that Conservative Party members preferred Liz Truss.

His economic position during the campaign, that tackling soaring inflation was more important than the tax cuts promised by Ms Truss, went down badly.

It was a bad-tempered contest, with Mr Sunak lashing out at her ‘fairytale economics’ live on television. But in the end he appears to have been proved right, with her time in power lasting just weeks as the markets reacted badly to her attempts to stimulate growth with borrowing-funded tax cuts.

In one of the televised hustings Mr Sunak defended his record in No 11 against criticism that the UK had the highest tax burden in 70 years.

‘I don’t think the responsible thing to do right now is launch into some unfunded spree of borrowing and more debt, that will just make inflation worse, it will make the problem longer,’ he said.

Ms Truss pinned the blame on the Bank of England, saying ‘we have inflation because of our monetary policy, we haven’t been tough enough on the monetary supply, that’s the way that I would address that issue’.

But the former chancellor told her: ‘Borrowing your way out of inflation isn’t a plan, it’s a fairytale.’

Ms Truss responded: ‘I think it is wrong to put taxes up.’

Mr Sunak also faced anger from some Tory members who felt he was to blame for Mr Johnson quitting. But he also received support and defended himself, often robustly, in the face of critical audience questions.

Mr Sunak’s victory would come after questions about his and his wife’s tax affairs.

In April it was revealed he had held a US Green Card – which carries American residency and tax requirements – while in office.

But Lord Geidt, the adviser on ministerial standards, cleared Mr Sunak of wrongdoing after the chancellor referred himself for investigation.

There was also uproar over Ms Murty’s tax status and her shareholding in her father’s tech firm while living in a grace-and-favour apartment in Downing Street.

Ms Murty legally avoided a huge UK tax bill by paying £30,000 a year to register as being based in India.

The India-born 42-year-old later said she would give up her right to pay only ‘international tax’ on her foreign fortune.

The move, designed to save Mr Sunak’s political career, is likely to cost Ms Murty millions of pounds a year in extra tax.

Mr Sunak insisted she hadn’t ‘done anything wrong’ while accusing his critics of ‘smearing her to get at him’.

In his May 2021 annual statement the independent adviser on ministers’ interests said he had ‘gone through the individual returns’ of members of the Cabinet, including their tax affairs and the interests of their spouses.

He went on to say that ‘any issues have been resolved to my satisfaction’, suggesting he was happy with Ms Murty’s tax status, her shareholding in Infosys and the Green Card.

It came after Labour London mayor Sadiq Khan has said it is a ‘source of pride’ for many that Mr Sunak is the country’s first British-Asian Prime Minister, as it demonstrates that those who work hard ‘can achieve almost anything’.

Mr Khan, a Muslim of Pakistani heritage, said people must ‘put aside party politics’ when such milestones come around, as he said there will be other opportunities to challenge Mr Sunak on his policies.

Speaking during a visit to Shree Swaminarayan Mandir in Kingsbury, north London, to meet the local community and join the Diwali and Hindu new year celebrations, he said the appointment of the new PM shows that Britain does not just tolerate diversity, but celebrates it.

‘I’m really proud. I’m somebody who’s a British-Asian, I’m somebody born and raised here,’ he said.

‘These sorts of times you’ve got to put aside party politics.

‘I think it’s a source of pride to many of us that Rishi Sunak’s the Prime Minister of our country. It demonstrates that, you know, if you work hard, you can achieve almost anything.

‘Which other country can say we’ve got a Christian King, a Hindu Prime Minister, and a mayor of Islamic faith?

‘And that just shows that in this country, we don’t just, you know, tolerate diversity – we respect it, we celebrate it and we embrace it.’

Mr Khan said there will be a chance to challenge the Prime Minister on his policies.

But he said, on this occasion: ‘I celebrate the fact that we have a Prime Minister of Hindu faith.’

‘And just think about the children, my children, other people’s children, people of colour, who will be inspired by the fact that the Prime Minister of our country is Rishi Sunak,’ he added.