“HURRAY,” rejoiced many Asians on seeing Rishi Sunak — our desi boy, a Hindu, an Indian, a Kenyan, a Pakistani, a British Asian, become the Prime Minister. October 24 was seen by many Indians and British Asians a day to celebrate a “double Diwali.”

BBC South Asia Correspondent Rajini Vaidyanathan tweeted that Sunak becoming PM was being seen as “landmark moment” in India, while Indian broadcaster NDTV boomed: “Indian son rises over the empire. History comes full circle in Britain.”

Countering all this was presenter Ravish Kumar, also of NDTV, who correctly portrayed Sunak as a representative of the tax-dodging rich and multinational corporations.

People celebrating the “landmark moment” of victory over the British empire and the “rise of India’s son” seem to have forgotten Sunak belongs to the same class as did their old colonial masters.

Presenting him as reversal of colonial history is an insult to all the people of India who were looted to the bare bones, suffered extreme poverty and brutal atrocities under the brutal colonial regime.

They seem to have forgotten the crimes against humanity committed by the British empire in India. Ten man-made famines killed 29 million Indians by one estimate. The 1943 Bengal Famine alone killed more than three million. Ten million were butchered during and at the end of the 1857-59 first war of independence.

The Ghadar Arms Uprising in 1914 was crushed, hundreds were hanged and thousands more were imprisoned indefinitely. More than 1,500 lives were lost at the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in 1919, an unforgivable, criminal act that was globally condemned.

Nearly 104 years later and yet no-one has been brought to justice. Despite calls from all corners of the world, the British government has stopped short at delivering a formal apology to the people of India.

Will Sunak and his crony Cabinet have the courtesy to say sorry to the people of his ancestral district Gujranwala, for the humiliation and suffering they endured in the three months of martial law that followed the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre?

Calling Sunak “an Indian son rising over the empire” is an insult to all Indians who devoted their lives to throwing off the imperial yoke for a system free from exploitation, an insult to those who dreamt of an India free from poverty, living in peace and equality.

Sunak is the 222nd richest person in Britain, worth £730 million. He attended Britain’s best school and university, giving him an opportunity to enter the world of Goldman Sachs and tax-dodging hedge funds, before being gifted a directorship of his billionaire father-in-law’s investment firm.

Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murthy, shamelessly milked the furlough scheme and used her non-domicile tax status to avoid paying taxes while living at 11 Downing Street.

In order to follow in his wife’s footsteps, he continued to hold his US Green Card until 2021, 18 months after becoming chancellor of the exchequer. He has shares in Moderna, the company that produces one of the government-endorsed Covid vaccinations, a possible conflict of interest.

Sunak has carefully chosen his Cabinet, not forgetting those who helped him reach the premiership or those who share the same links to multinational corporations.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he brought in Suella Braverman, the hard-liner who dreams of flying migrants to Rwanda by the planeload. She unashamedly asserts her pride in the British empire.

She forgets how her ancestors were uprooted and used by their colonial rulers to strengthen the empire in Africa. She stresses that she should not be judged by the colour of her skin, but by her commitment to the wealthy and opposition to refugees.

In selecting Braverman, Sunak clearly intends to carry on the anti-immigrant bigotry of his predecessors. It is a card played by politicians of every colour to divert public attention from the failures of capitalist system.

Britain, world’s fifth-largest economy, has more foodbanks than ever, and the rising cost of living is crushing the British public. Instead of introducing schemes to raise people’s standard of living, Sunak and the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, have warned the public to be ready for “tough decisions” in the form of austerity.

Instead of targeting the companies like Shell that have doubled and tripled their profits, the poorest and most marginalised sections of our society shall be the ones to receive the coming “tough decisions” and be crushed even deeper under pro-corporate policies.

Sunak’s priorities do not include public services or those suffering widening inequality and homelessness. As a multimillionaire tax-cutter, Sunak must not be judged by the colour of his skin, but by his ideological stance and his position in in the dominant socio-economic structure.

Like today’s British Asians, African-Americans rejoiced in the victory of Barack Obama, in whom they invested their hopes only to suffer broken hearts and shattered dreams when he sided with the rich and powerful.

Black, brown and other minorities are not on Sunak’s priorities list, nor are the poor. The British capitalist system is not made to accept those who stand for the many, as we have witnessed in the extent the Labour Party went to to remove Jeremy Corbyn, whose stand for peace, equality and socialism shook the world imperialist elite.

We must look critically at the rejoicing of the pro-BJP hypocrites, the so-called friends of India: under the BJP government, Indian Muslims and Dalits are treated worse than second-class citizens, their loyalty is questioned and they are degraded and vilified.

We, the working people, should not be in any doubt about what our Tory rulers and BJP supporters want us to celebrate. Sunak, “the Asian and Hindu representative,” is a tiny part of the cruel capitalist machine — the replacement driver of the Tory train. We must rise up and replace the entire rotten machine with a socialist system.

Joginder Bains is a member of the Indian Workers’ Association.