Britain has outgrown their racism, says Shashi Tharoor over Sunak rise

New Delhi, Oct 26: Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday said Rishi Sunak being appointed as Britain's first Indian-origin Prime Minister was "extraordinary at multiple levels". He also said that India should draw lessons from the UK for making non-majority citizens the PM.

Tharoor said,''It's extraordinary at multiple levels. You can see that Britain has outgrown their racism, shown tremendous willingness to absorb & admit people of other religious faiths & on top of that they've looked at their merit.''

Before suggesting that a country should reward merit, Tharoor said,''We should be prepared to look beyond some of the considerations of the caste, religion and class & language and region.''

The Thiruvananthapuram MP drew comparison with the BJP government in India and said the ruling camp does not have a single Muslim MP in Parliament.

''A party like BJP which doesn't have a single Muslim MP in Parliament today, which is a shocking situation that's never been there in past.Can supporters of BJP imagine a PM of another background or a BJP CM from either Islamic or Christian faiths? I doubt it,'' he was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Known to be a fierce critic of British colonialism, Tharoor had welcomed Sunak's achievement as a politician in the UK in a tweet. "I think all of us will have to acknowledge that the Brits have done something very rare in the world, to place a member of a visible minority in the most powerful office," he wrote.