Rishi Sunak and his parents Yashvir and Usha, who were born and grew up in Kenya and Tanzania respectively before moving to the UK in the 1960s
Kenyans were delighted this week by the rise of Rishi Sunak, whose father was born in the country, to the highest office in Britain. As the new prime minister met the King, Kenyan press, social media users and politicians were extolling his heritage as a son of Indian immigrants born in Africa.
“Tracing his roots to our beloved country Kenya, Sunak is among the many prominent personalities we, as a nation, can take pride in,” Aden Duale, the new defence minister, said. “It’s really cool,” beamed David, a 35-year-old Nairobi taxi driver. Sunak was also compared to Barack Obama, who was born to a Kenyan father.
Proudest of all was the small, tight-knit Indian Kenyan community, known by the Swahili word muindis. For them, Sunak embodies their continued success and upward mobility, even through turbulent times.
Sunak’s father Yashvir, a family doctor, and mother Usha, a pharmacist, were born and grew up in present-day Kenya and Tanzania respectively before moving to the UK in the 1960s.
His maternal grandfather, Raghubir Sain Berry, originally from Punjab, worked in Tanganyika, now Tanzania, as a tax official and had an arranged marriage with Sraksha, then 16, with whom he had three
Sunak’s paternal grandfather Ramdas Sunak left Punjab to work as a clerk in Nairobi in 1935. His wife, Suhag Rani Sunak, moved to Kenya in 1937.
Indians first arrived in East Africa as traders 400 years ago, and their population soared in the 19th and 20th centuries. While many were indentured labourers, drafted in by the British to build train lines, others migrated in search of economic opportunity and quickly established themselves in trade and commerce, Parveen Akhtar, a political scientist at Aston University, said.
As independence movements gathered pace in the 1960s, East Africa became less hospitable to Indian migrants. In Uganda those expelled by Idi Amin included the parents of Priti Patel. A significant proportion of the Indian diaspora left East Africa and settled in the UK, United States and Canada.
“By the time the East African Indians came to the UK they were twice migrants, unlike the majority of South Asians in the UK who were first-time migrants and had often come from rural areas,” Akhtar said. “The story of upward mobility of the East African Indians is remarkable and underpinned by their previous success in East Africa. The knowledge and skills they had learnt in their ‘first’ migration’ were put to good
Today, she said, the East African Indian community in the UK is relatively affluent and has impressive levels of higher education.
For those that remained in Kenya, life was harder. “The trend since independence has been one of diminishing Asian influence,” Aly-Khan Satchu, an economist and well known Indian Kenyan, said.
However, the muindis continued to prosper and in 2017 were awarded official status as Kenya’s 44th tribe. In the 2019 census, they numbered 47,555 people.
In the capital of Nairobi they have left their mark. Parklands, a mostly Indian neighbourhood, is home to numerous Hindu temples. Indian soap operas are shown on Kenyan television and the Chandarana supermarket chain is one of Kenya’s largest. Head to a cinema in Nairobi and you will find a larger selection of Bollywood movies than
For the Indian Kenyan community, Sunak joins a list of titans that includes the industrialist Manu Chandaria, of the Comcraft Group of Companies, a billion-dollar enterprise that has a presence in more than 40 countries, and the textile magnate Jaswinder “Jas” Bedi. The economist Sushil Wadhwani, who was born in Mombasa, was recently appointed by Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, to an economic advisory committee.
“I come from a similar background,” Satchu said after Sunak’s first speech as prime minister. “Absolutely, I feel pride”
Below are my comments published in the Times – 28 October 2022.
The achievements of East African Indians is beyond imagination. From Educational achievements, enterprise, politics and much more. We believe the education system in East Africa was exceptional..
Nitin Mehta
27 October 2022
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