Indian nationalists railed for their double standards on Sunak's UK PM bid

It’s hard for the double-faced Indian nationalists to hide their duplicity when it comes to further their interests on the international fora.

The same group of people are revelling over the chances of Rishi Sunak becoming the UK prime minister whereas at home they had opposed the idea to make a foreign national, Sonia Gandhi, the Indian premier after the assassination of her husband Rajiv Gandhi, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Monday.

Many saner elements in India question this chicanery of the Indian nationalists. They find it hard to fathom that the nationalists are gloating over Sunak’s becoming UK prime minister despite the fact that his wife Akshata Murty did not pay millions of pounds in taxes to the UK government by cleverly using her non-dom status.

The Guardian on April 9, 2022, reported that Rishi Sunak and his family potentially avoided paying tens of millions of pounds in taxes through his wife’s “non-dom” status while the chancellor imposed tax rises on the public, Labour has said.

The former chancellor’s wife later gave in to mounting pressure, announcing she would pay UK taxes as Sunak’s position began to appear increasingly tenuous.

Louise Haigh, then shadow transport secretary, accused Sunak of failing to be transparent about his family’s financial arrangements while raising taxes for millions during a deepening cost of living crisis. Haigh said that while it was “clear” the arrangement was legal, many Britons would be questioning the ethics involved.

The Guardian estimates that Murty has potentially avoided about £20m in tax because of her status, for which she currently pays £30,000 a year.

Under non-dom rules, Murty did not legally have to pay tax in the UK on the estimated £11.5m in annual dividends she collects from her stake in Infosys, her billionaire father’s IT business. UK tax residents would be expected to pay about £4.5m in tax on the dividend payment.

While back at home, the saner elements in the Indian society have exposed the juxtaposition of the nationalists who believe that no foreign national could rule their soil while on the other hand, they support their own national to rule a foreign country.

Using his Twitter handle, Professor Ashok Swain who teaches Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University wrote: “Nationalist Indians are gloating over Rishi Sunak becoming UK’s PM, whose wife didn’t even pay taxes in UK. The same nationalists were calling for a kind of civil war against Sonia Gandhi becoming India’s PM though her husband had sacrificed his life for India.”

Nationalist Indians are gloating over Rishi Sunak becoming UK’s PM, whose wife didn’t even pay taxes in UK. The same nationalists were calling for a kind of civil war against Sonia Gandhi becoming India’s PM though her husband had sacrificed his life for India.

— Ashok Swain (@ashoswai) October 24, 2022