UK's First Hindu PM — Zarna Joshi

Trigger Warning Racism, Hinduphobia, mention of genocide

Screenshot Image description: A color picture of an Indian man standing in a dark suit and white shirt outside a grey brick building with “10” on the black door. He stands in front of a brown wooden lectern which has the UK coat of arms on it in white on a black background. It is daytime. The man has short black hair that is starting to grey at the temples. He is in the midst of speaking and is wearing a serious expression. A caption beneath the picture shows grey text on a white background that reads: “Rishi Sunak delivers his first speech after becoming prime minister, outside No. 10 Downing St. on Tuesday.”

To all the non-Hindus weighing in on Rishi Sunak becoming the first Hindu Prime Minister of the UK: Shut up.

No one needs to hear your Hinduphobic ranting. All you ever do is take up space with your hate and your Abrahamic supremacist cult mentality.

Like this white passing random: Nadia Whittome. She literally has the audacity to say things out loud about a visibly brown Hindu man called Rishi Sunak under the guise of defending “Asian representation”.

Screenshot. Image description: A person with very light skin stands in a black coat outside in front of shops on a street during the daytime. She is looking into the distance behind the camera, slightly smiling. She has dark chin length curly hair and dark eyes. She is wearing gold earrings. She has a brown shoulder strap on her shoulder. Behind her on the left is a dark car. Behind her on the right are two people walking past.

Nadia Edith Whittome is an example of the modern rot within the Labour party. I’m not talking about the corporate rot that’s been there for decades. I’m talking about the modern rot that’s all about “representation” and “anti-racism” while being the most supremacist colonizing people on the planet. For them, it’s all about looking like you care about social justice, not actually doing anything about social justice. They live for tweeting and ignore the job of actually working to pass legislation. They are virulently racist and imperialist.

Nadia says she cares about working people but she literally dropped her work as a Member of Parliament to “go back to social work” during the pandemic, as if that’s what the British taxpayer was paying her for. It was a photo op. Pure performative nonsense that in practical terms means she was running away from her responsibility of making tough decisions in Parliament during a global pandemic. She was badly needed and her constituents had sent her to Parliament to work for them, and she abdicated her responsibility.

Screenshot Image description: Tweet from Nadia Whittome shows black text on a white background that reads: “The government is not going far or fast enough to stop the spread, and #CoronavirusBillUK risks worsening the social care crisis. Tomorrow I return part-time to my previous job as a care worker because our care system is in danger of falling apart at the seams during #COVID19.” Below that is a video of Nadia Whittome speaking in a room wearing a grey top. Behind her are beige walls. The caption over the screen reads: “Like most MPs, I’m practicing social distancing, so I wasn’t in the Coronavirus Bill debate”.

Remember AOC handing out food to New York apartments during the lockdown when she was desperately needed in Congress to get her people UBI and rent forgiveness? Remember when AOC slept on the steps of Congress instead of getting her constituents housing with actual legislation? Well, Nadia Whittome is the UK’s AOC. Meanwhile, AOC, with her working class background and her bronx accent — that only comes out when she’s talking to enraged constituents — is simply the Democratic Party’s Sarah Palin who was famous for going hunting and fishing and talking “folksy”. These politicians “representation” of their working class base while doing nothing for that working class base is an insult to the intelligence of the working class.

And yes, it really is that bad when we’re talking about Nadia Whittome. Just like AOC, Nadia is a master of social media, dropping revolutionary tweets that lead to absolutely nothing in the real world. Just like AOC, Whittome is propped up by her friends in the media who shamelessly write glowing pieces about her performative actions with zero critical analysis.

Nadia says she gives part of her salary as an MP away to charity. Great. Wonderful. How about she actually change things in Parliament to help people at a systemic level instead of running away from her responsibility? How about that? Also, I don’t like people who boast about their charity. Meanwhile, she lives rent free with her mother in a house her mother owns. Of course she has the luxury of giving away some of her £84,144 salary. That’s just the base line of how much she makes, by the way. MPs get to claim expenses to cover the cost of running their office, paying staff, having somewhere to live, travel between their constituency and London, and more.

Nadia wants you to believe she’s worried about “Asian” representation while telling you that Rishi Sunak isn’t a win for “Asian” representation.

Screenshot Image description: Black text on a white background reads: “Outrage as Labour MP says Rishi Sunak as PM ‘isn’t a win for Asian representation’”.

Rishi Sunak isn’t “Asian”, Nadia. Do you know how big the continent of Asia is, Nadia? Do you know how ridiculous it is to call an Indian person Asian, Nadia? Do you know that the term “South Asia” is a CIA racist colonizer talking point designed to erase the ancient Indigenous Hindu civilization of the Indian subcontinent, Nadia? Rishi Sunak is not “Asian”, Nadia. He is not “South Asian”. He is a British Hindu of Indian Punjabi descent via African countries due to colonialism. You, Nadia, are a white passing woman who was raised by your Indian Catholic mother. Are you not aware that white people and Catholics operated an Inquisition in India, exterminating Hindus for centuries. Catholics are still doing that with Pope Jean Paul II calling for a “Crusade” in India in 1999. What does your mother think about the Catholic genocide of Hindus, Nadia? What do you think about the Catholic genocide of Hindus, Nadia? Did you know that there’s a genocide of Punjabi Hindus happening right now, Nadia? Did you know that Rishi Sunak comes from that threatened and traumatized and displaced community, Nadia?

Shut up, Nadia. No one needs to hear your anti-Hindu Abrahamic supremacist nonsense that has destroyed the world and Indigenous nations for the last 1,600 years.

For everyone who is not Hindu, take a very close look at those who are “speaking out” about Rishi not being a “win” for Asian representation. They are all anti-Hindu. You know why? Because the Labour Party is so Hinduphobic that Hindus were forced out of the party and thus there are very few or even no Hindus around in the Labour party to be their tokens in speaking up about Rishi Sunak. That’s the material point. The Labour party hates Hindus. In fact, the Labour base is so virulently unashamedly Hinduphobic that the corporate leaders of the party (who are trying to win Hindus back into the fold) are having to speak up about it.

Screenshot Image description: Black text on a white background that reads: “Nadia Whittome, a Nottingham MP who is a member of the Left-wing Socialist Campaign Group, caused outrage after she said Mr Sunak was “not on your side” as Britain’s first prime minister of Asian heritage. // The tweet in which she made the claim was deleted on Monday after Ms Whittome was contacted by Labour headquarters and urged to take it down.”

Let’s be clear: Hindus used to be the base of the Labour party because they were the working class. They supported Labour for decades. That didn’t change because Hindus left the Labour party. It changed because Labour threw Hindus out. I know this because at the time I tried explaining to Labour party members that Labour policies under Corbyn were Hinduphobic. I was shouted down multiple times and I wasn’t even in the UK at the time. Imagine how bad it was for Hindus actually in the UK and in those Labour party meetings, trying to explain and being told to shut up. I have personal accounts from Hindus how Corbyn refused to meet with them. Its people like Nadia Whittome who are perfect examples of how that happened. And Labour called it “social justice”.

So when Hindus, politically homeless, wish Rishi Sunak well seeing that he is the first Hindu Prime Minister of a country that stole $45 trillion from their Indigenous land of India, it is because they are finally seeing some kind of power for them in a land where they have none. If you have not studied Hindu colonial trauma, shut up and learn about it.

Those Hindus are, of course, wrong to celebrate Rishi’s appointment as Prime Minister.

Rishi Sunak isn’t going to care about Hindus just like he’s not going to care about any other marginalized people. He’s going to do what is good for him because he’s a politician. That’s what politicians do.

Hindus: Never trust a politician. Not Whittome. Not Sunak. Not Corbyn. Not anyone.

Rishi Sunak’s massive wealth through his wife is just one part of what makes him objectionable. He’s about big business. He’s about propping up the British capitalism that destroyed India’s economy and stole that $45 trillion from us. He’s there to be the brown face of the British empire — their brown Hindu stooge. Just like Nehru was their brown Hindu stooge.

Rishi’s identity as a Hindu is being used as a political distraction so that the people ignore the fact that the UK is literally collapsing. The country that Hindus have worked in and paid taxes for and contributed so much to doesn’t give a damn about Hindus. It never has. It never will. There was a brief period during the 90s when Hindus thought that maybe Hindus were a little bit accepted in the UK. They thought that because Tony Blair did a Diwali celebration. I remember when I was a teenager growing up in the UK in those same 90s. We had a Hindu temple subjected to so many terrorist threats that Hindu men from the community took turns standing guard overnight. That went on for years. Meanwhile in present day UK there are calls to shut down our temples, protests and violence and intimidation against our temples and our students, vandalization of our temples, and constant Hinduphobic and racist representations in the media and in schools. So when you really think about it: No, Hindus have never been accepted in the UK by the Abrahamic supremacist majority.

Rishi Sunak as the Prime Minister is not going to change that. If anything, his Hindu identity will make things infinitely more dangerous for Hindus because the Hinduphobic population will blame Hindus and Hinduism for what Rishi Sunak and his Conservative party do in their pro-corporate, capitalist policies.

Understand this: Rishi Sunak accessed political power by betraying his Hindu background, not by following it. It’s not Hindu to be in league with white supremacy, to be in league with imperialism, to be in league with economic carnivorism. That’s what the Conservative party stands for and always has.

When Labour threw Hindus out, the Conservatives saw an opportunity to scoop the Hindu vote. So they threw out little crumbs of talking points that basically amounted to: “Of course we care about Hindus, we’re not racist or Hinduphobic at all.” But they’ve always been racist and Hinduphobic. It was the Conservative party hero Winston Churchill who said that Hindus “were a foul race”. Churchill’s policies fueled the 1943 Bengali Famine which starved at least 3 million Indians to death. It was the Conservative Party that was firmly against India’s Independence. Becoming a part of the Hinduphobic Conservative party is not going to protect anyone from the Hinduphobic Labour party.

The Conservatives thinks that Hindus are silly enough to fall for their manipulations, though. Notice how they’re doing it again by making Rishi Sunak the Prime Minister on Diwali. Do you think that was a coincidence? Of course not. It was a carefully calculated political maneuver by the collapsing ruling party of a collapsing imperialist nation.

Hindus will do well to remember that Boris Johnson was the Conservative Prime Minister for much of this pandemic. A lot of frontline Hindu NHS staff died because of his horrific management of that crisis. Notice how no one points out how so many who died were Hindu. They gloss over the numbers saying “Indian” or “Asian” or “Black and brown” to erase the fact that lots of Indigenous Hindus were dying while serving the health of a majority Christian and Abrahamic population which hates Hindu existence. The fact that so many Conservative party members are dropping their membership now that a brown Hindu man called Rishi Sunak is in charge is yet more proof of their racism and Hinduphobia.

The only bright spot about Rishi Sunak that I can see is that he is not loyal to Boris Johnson but does that really recommend him? Thirst for power and political back stabbing are not sterling character traits and they are certainly not Hindu traits.

Meanwhile, he hasn’t even been voted into power by the people yet. He’s been appointed leader of the Conservative party by political machinations and is therefore the Prime Minister by default. The fact that the UK hasn’t seen a democratic vote over leadership for many of the recent appointed Prime Ministers is yet another sign of its collapse as a nation. History will say that Hindus were a part of that collapse because of Rishi Sunak. Do you see? Rishi Sunak has literally been put in charge of a destroyed country so the 1% can blame brown Indigenous Hindus for the destruction of a country the 1% destroyed.

Rishi Sunak is a political operator who knows his place. He knows he’s there to serve the corporate elite. He is not there for Hindus. He is not there for Indians. He is there for himself as he serves his corporate masters. And Hindus will lose.

What Nadia is doing by focusing on the “Asian” identity is make Rishi’s ethnicity the focus of the public’s attention instead of his pro-corporate policies. It’s a calculated attack against his entire community. It’s called reverse psychology. You tell someone not to see something and then all they can see is that thing you told them not to look at. Meanwhile, she’s ensuring that anyone who identifies as “Asian” gets to weigh in on Rishi’s identity as if they know anything the Hindu community is going through. It’s a colonizer’s tactic to decide the identity of a colonized person. Rishi is “Asian” because the Abrahamics say he is. That’s Abrahamic supremacy. And what are the Abrahamics doing with this Abrahamic supremacist mental gymnastics? They’re talking about how Rishi doesn’t “represent” them. So what does that mean? What are they implying? They’re implying that Rishi’s policies and Rishi’s actions represent Hindus but not Asians. It’s the most twisted of racist Abrahamic supremacist gaslighting. It’s divide and conquer. It’s psychological warfare aimed at the Hindu community and it will justify increasing violence against Hindus in the UK.

Don’t believe me? Just watch.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain has proven its imperialist racist Abrahamic supremacist character over and over again. They have brown stooges like Nadia and Rishi to protect it. That will never change until the UK as a nation does some serious decolonizing. That means they need to pay India back the $45 trillion they stole. They also need to pay back all the other nations they stole from, such as African nations, Middle Eastern nations, Island nations, and more. They also need to get out of many countries by removing their king’s position as head of state of those countries. Then they need to look at what their land actually was before they were forced into Christianity and imperialism. Who were you, Brittania, before you became the empire?

Until the UK finds the answer to this fundamental question of identity, they’ll go back and forth between their token stooges like Nadia and Rishi, desperately pretending they’re not racist and imperialist when, in fact, their every action is proof positive that they are still the empire. “Representation” has always been their trick.