Ireland. US. UK.

It began in Ireland.  In 2017.

In 2021, it (almost) happened in the US.

And it is the UK's turn now in 2022.

What is the "it?"  An offspring of an Indian immigrant being elected to the highest office.

In June 2017, in this blog-post: I commented on Leo Varadkar becoming the Prime Minister of  Ireland.  What made that so special for me to blog about it?  

Mr. Varadkar was born in Dublin in 1979, the son of an Irish Catholic nurse from County Waterford and a Hindu doctor from Mumbai, India. His parents met in England in the 1960s and lived in India for a time before moving to Ireland.

A son of an Indian immigrant in Ireland goes on to become the country's leader, at a young 38 years of age.

In fall 2020, a daughter of an Indian immigrant to the US, Kamala Harris, became the Democratic Party's nominee for the vice presidency, and in January 2021 she was sworn into that office.  A heartbeat away from the presidency.  (This would not have been possible without Barack Obama as the president for two full terms.)

And now, in the UK, a son of Indian immigrants is on the verge of becoming the country's Prime Minister.  Rishi Sunak was the last candidate standing in the chaotic and confusing political race to become the country's third prime minister this year.

Plenty will be written by pundits and historians on Sunak as the Prime Minister noting the many firsts.  As much as I am thrilled that people of Indian descent have been elected to such high offices, I want to remind myself and anybody reading this post about how wrong Republicans in this country are, as much as Conservatives were in the UK.  The reactionaries falsely believe that immigration is bad, especially when they are brown-skinned.

In the UK, when browns like Sunak's parents started arriving in large numbers starting in the 1960s, a leading Conservative Party leader, Enoch Powell, made a loud and racist speech on April 20,1968, that is referred to as the "Rivers of Blood" speech.

Powell said that if immigration to Britain from the country’s former colonies continued, a violent clash between white and black communities was inevitable. “As I look ahead,” Powell said, “I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood,’” an allusion to a line in Virgil’s Aeneid. He maintained that it would not be enough to close Britain’s borders—some of the immigrants already settled in the country would need to be sent “home.” If not, he declared, attributing a quote to one of his constituents, “in this country, in 15 or 20 years’ time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”

Note his worry that "the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”  Given the minority status of the browns, why would Powell worry that browns would gain that much power?  Isn't it easy for an overwhelming majority to easily keep the browns under control in a country where Winston Churchill famously declared his intention to “Keep England White”?  What were Powell and his sympathizers worried about?

Powell, and his fellow passengers on the political Titanic, knew something that is not explicitly stated in their anti-brown rhetoric: "the fear was not that immigrants wouldn’t integrate: the fear was that they would."

Immigrants, especially the children of immigrants, integrate into society, so much so that in a liberal democracy they too stand an equal chance of getting elected into offices, including the highest office in the land.  Fifty-four years after Powell's speech, a son of immigrants of Indian origin is making history after getting elected as the leader of the Conservative Party, and will soon be sworn in as the Prime Minister.

Here in the US too, racist conservatives know well that a fully-functioning liberal democracy provides equal opportunity to non-whites too.  Like Powell, they too worry that "the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.” 

Unlike Powell, these American racists have, therefore, launched a full-fledged assault on liberal democracy itself.  Refusing to accept election results, carrying out a coup attempt on January 6th, gerrymandering districts in order to retain power, rigging local election laws, and more are their ways to kill liberal democracy that could make possible for browns and supporters of browns to gain political power.

They might succeed.  But their success will be short-lived.  Progress is unstoppable.  Sunak is the latest piece of evidence along what MLK referred to as the moral arc of the universe.  We should do our part by voting for progress.  The future is ours!