I threw a party to celebrate the appointment of Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Okay, I didn’t, because I couldn’t care less about him, but I could have because it’s what so many Indians think of doing whenever someone with dubious connections to the motherland happens to get some sort of promotion. It’s possible that Sunak has no ties with India at all because that’s what a few people obsessed with these things have been pointing out to anyone who will listen. It’s possible that Pakistan has a larger claim on him than we do, but that won’t stop some of us from engulfing him in our cloying blanket of jingoism.

This stems from our deep inferiority complex, of course, disguised by our faux bravado and assumption of cultural and moral superiority. It’s why some of us applaud whenever someone who happens to be Indian becomes the CEO or Managing Director of a technology company or multinational behemoth. ‘They’re one of us,’ we say, congratulating each other on WhatsApp and Facebook, blithely ignoring the fact that the people being promoted have wilfully chosen not to associate with India. They leave for a reason, and choose to stay away, almost always surrendering their citizenship, but that doesn’t get in the way of our jumping up to take credit for their success in some oblique, twisted manner.