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KATHMANDU, NOVEMBER 2
At long last, Rishi Sunak has become the PM of Great Britain. A few others of Indian origin have also become prime ministers in other countries, including Ireland, where openly gay Leo Varadker will return as prime minister for his remaining stint. But Rishi is the prime minister of Great Britain, the colonial power that ruled India for 200 years and exported its indentured labourers from Surinam to Mauritius to slog on sugarcane farms.
Indians are making waves.
The new breed of bright middle-class Indians hop directly from their country to the Western climes to illuminate the world with their knowledge. Today, from Google to Microsoft, IBM and scores of other giant corporations have Indians or people of Indian origin occupying the top posts, not to mention the political battleground.
Sabir Bhatia opened the doors to the new world for Indian immigrants and workers.
Bhatia enjoys the credit for creating Hotmail. Sabir reportedly sold his invention to Bill Gates for a mind-boggling $400 million.
He could have sold it today for more than 44 billion dollars that Musk paid for the Twitter bird.
Indians and people of Indian origin have been making great strides in numerous fields, however, it is the first time a person of Indian origin has become a prime minister of GB.
Bobby Jindal, the darling of India, joined the race of presidential candidates in the US. Jindal blew up India's love by telling them not to use hyphenated Indian-American adjectives to describe his nationality.
He alienated Indians by telling them the truth: that he was American, not Indian-American.
The mayor of London had the same problem.
During his visit to Pakistan, one asked him how he felt coming home. He replied: "Home is London, mate."
We will have to wait and watch the response to the sacking of Parag Agarwal by Musk from Twitter. Will the Indians shun Twitter for firing their 'brother'? South Asians, particularly Indians, are sentimental people, who tend to mix business with personal feelings.
Luckily, we are less sentimental.
We are immune to our people's failure or success.
That is perhaps because none of our emigrants has made it big abroad.
In the past, my father's elder brother, who was among the four Nepalis to sail to the US before I came to the world, returned to the Himalayas with a single-minded determination to force out his younger siblings' families from the ancestral home.
Young Rishi's meteoric rise to the top post in seven years should inspire aspirations among the Nepalis diaspora, spanning the world. We hope to hear about a Nepali prime minister, a top-notch tech or industrialist abroad in the days ahead.
A version of this article appears in the print on November 3, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
