UK PM Rishi Sunak’s Grandfather Trained Kenyan Fighters Against British Rule
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s paternal grandfather Ramdas Sunak was involved in training the Kenyan fighters against the British rulers. The Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s led to at least 25,000 deaths.The Mail on Sunday in a report said Ramdas Sunak moved from Punjab to Nairobi as a young man and taught fighters against the British government guerilla techniques.Sunak Sr. was on the payroll of the colonial government and worked as a clerk and then a senior administrator in the finance and justice departments in Kenya. He was also a trained accountant.
The report also said that Ramdas Sunak was affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).The development was reported as the Sunak administration paid £20 million compensation to 5,000 elderly Kenyans who were subjected to abuse and war crimes at the hands of the British rulers during the uprising which lasted for more than eight years.
Former US president Barack Obama’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama was also among those Kenyans who were tortured by the Britishers because they suspected him to be a Mau Mau rebel.
Rishi Sunak’s grandfather became involved in the fight for Kenyan freedom through Makhan Singh, a childhood friend from India who became a prominent trade unionist in Kenya and a sympathiser of the Mau Mau rebels, the Mail on Sunday said in its report.
However, Ramdas left Kenya when Indians were subjected to racism following its independence. He reached the UK in 1971 where his sons were already pursuing their higher studies in the university. He helped set up the Vedic Society Hindu Temple in Southampton during his final years. Rishi Sunak was born in 1980, the year Ramdas Sunak passed.
A footage of Sunak in 2019 – then UK’s finance minister – making chapatis in the kitchen of the temple went viral when he campaigned for the UK PM and Conservative Party chief’s position.
