Record number of British-Indian MPs elected
Despite the defeat of Conservative leader Rishi Sunak (who kept his seat), the British House of Commons now has 26 MPs with roots in India. Many new faces can be found among the ranks of the Labour Party which focused heavily on this community. One of the new MPs is Sojan Joseph, a Catholic nurse from Kerala who works with the mentally ill in Ashford.
London (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Despite the crushing defeat of their best-known representative, former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the number of MPs of Indian origin in the British House of Commons is now at an all-time high.
The landslide victory of Keir Starmer's Labour Party last Thursday saw some 26 British-Indian MPs get elected, up from 15 in the previous legislature, out of 650 seats.
Many of the top British-Indian Conservative MPs survived the debacle, including Sunak himself who ran in Yorkshire.
The new thing is that many candidates of Indian origin ran for the Labour Party, which performed poorly among British-Indian voters in the 2019 election.
According to the 2021 census, about a million people in the UK are Hindu, and Hinduism is the third largest religion in the country after Christianity and Islam.
Suella Braverman and Priti Patel are among British-Indian Conservative MPs who retained their seat. Both are former home secretaries.
Another Conservative, Shivani Raja, won in Leicester East, where he faced off two other British-Indian candidates, Rajesh Agrawal for Labour, and Keith Vaz who ran as an independent.
South Asian immigrants represent a large portion of the local population, and one of the main topics in the local election campaign was preserving the lights for the Diwali festival, which were at risk due to cuts to the city's municipal budget.
Among the many newly elected Labour MPs, Kanishka Narayan became the first from an ethnic minority elected in Wales.
Another interesting story is that of Sojan Joseph who won in Ashford, a former Tory stronghold, where he defeated Damien Green, former deputy prime minister under Theresa May.
Sojan Joseph becomes the first British MP with roots in Kerala’s Catholic community.
Originally from Onamthuruthu, a village in Kottayam district, Sojan Joseph is a nurse who worked in mental health care facilities.
The Indian Catholic news platform Matters India reported that once he graduated from St George's Parish School in Kaipuzha, he had only one concern: finding a job to earn a living and support his parents.
Although in Kerala nursing is seen as essentially a female profession, Sojan completed a three-year programme in psychiatric nursing in Bengaluru (Bangalore) and then left for London in November 2001.
His work led him to politics. “I came to know people who go through difficulties that touch the core of their heart,” he told Matters India. And many of these people were immigrants from Asia.
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