Indian-origin British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says he faced racism as a child and it hurt him. He also said that his parents used to send him to attend drama classes to ‘speak properly’ without accentuation.
Rishi Sunak was elected unopposed as the new leader of the ruling Conservative Party on Diwali 2022. A new history was born in Britain when King Charles III appointed him as Britain’s first Indian-origin Prime Minister.
A devout Hindu and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the 43-year-old is also Britain’s youngest Prime Minister in its 210-year history. In an interview with ITV News, he shared his memories of his parents making sure that he spoke correctly and without accentuation. He added that racial abuse penetrates the mind and hurts more than anything else. At the same time, he said, what he experienced will not happen to his children now.
Talking about her Indian heritage, Sunak said that her parents wanted her children, including her brother, sister and herself, to adapt to British ways and not be hindered in any way.
“The mother was always careful about how her children spoke. My mother always made sure that we spoke without accent and in the right way. For that, they used to make us participate in drama classes,” he added.
He said that any type of racial abuse is unacceptable and said that when he talks to world leaders, most of them point to the UK as an example of how to eliminate racial abuse.
Sunak said that he never dreamed that he would be the Prime Minister of Britain from a minority community. He stated that there was no such example before him and such a thing had never happened before.
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