Rishi Sunak is set to become the UK's next prime minister, the first non-white person to hold the post in over 200 years. His election was necessitated after Conservative Party's Liz Truss stepped down last week amid the economic crisis. Sunak is now faced with the challenges of steering the UK out of the crisis, though he has been credited with he is helping minimise the impact of Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns with a furlough scheme.
He served as the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022. He resigned in July this year after a "difference of opinion" with the then-prime minister Boris Johnson.
While Sunak's election was welcomed by all world leaders, the news evoked an exuberant response in India owing to Sunak's origins in the sub-continent.
Here is all you need to know about Rishi Sunak's Indian connections:
What is Sunak's connection to India?
Rishi Sunak hasn't lived in India and doesn't have any relatives here, unlike Kamala Harris, the US vice president who made headlines in India after her win in 2020. He is married to Akshata Murty, daughter of Indian billionaire and Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy. The two had met at Stanford University in California where Sunak was doing his MBA.
His father was a doctor in the National Health Service and his mother ran her chemist shop. While Sunak's parents are of Indian descent, he was born in Southampton.
What is Rishi Sunak's native place?
It was his maternal and paternal grandfather who had moved to East Africa from pre-partition India. His paternal grandfather was from Gujranwala, which is now in Pakistan. Sunak's father, Yashvir, his mother, Usha, were born and brought up in present-day Kenya and Tanzania, respectively.
Sunak's grandparents were among many who migrated to British East Africa after its formation in 1885. The Indian population grew well economically, but the region started becoming less hospitable for Indians. This triggered another wave of migration and a significant proportion of the Indians left Kenya and Tanzania to settle in the US, Canada and the UK.
His parents were brought up in East Africa from where they migrated to the UK in 1960s as the resentment for the Asian community grew. In fact, in 1972, Uganda President Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of the British Asian community with a notice of 90 days as he accused the community of "disloyalty, non-integration, and commercial malpractice".
Who is Rishi Sunak's wife?
Rishi Sunak is married to Akshata Murty, the daughter of Indian billionaire Narayana Murthy. Sunak and his wife are the 222nd richest people in Britain, with a combined fortune of £730m as of 2022. Sunak is believed to be the richest man in the House Of Commons. Akshata's stake in Infosys worth $700 million makes her richer than the late Queen Elizabeth II.
However, the couple was embroiled in controversy in April this year after it surfaced that Akshata had non-domicile tax status. This meant that she did not have to pay UK taxes on income earned elsewhere. With her non-dom status, Murty reportedly did not have to pay UK taxes on the earnings, to the tune of £11.5 million annually, which she got from her stake in her father's IT business based in India.
Non-dom tax status allows a person who was born in another country to pay tax in the UK only on their UK income. "The system has allowed wealthy foreign immigrants to enjoy all the benefits of living in the UK, while paying very little in UK taxes because they make the bulk, if not all, of their income abroad," The Conversation explains.
