LONDON, England (AP) — Harmeet Singh Gill was excited to hear that Rishi Sunak would become Britain’s first prime minister of colour — news that came as he celebrated the Diwali festival in a London neighbourhood sometimes called Little India.

“It’s almost a watershed moment,” the 31-year-old said as he volunteered at the cavernous dome-topped house of worship that serves the Sikh community in west London’s Southall neighbourhood. “It’s just a sign of 21st century Britain, where it doesn’t matter what background you’re from now, that you can rise up the ranks to the positions of power.”

But for many people of colour in the UK, it’s not so simple. Sunak, 42, will be the first Hindu and the first person of South Asian descent to lead the country which has a long history of colonialism and has often struggled to welcome immigrants from its former colonies — and which continues to grapple with racism and wealth inequality.

King Charles III asked Sunak, whose parents moved to Britain from Africa in the 1960s, to form a new government Tuesday, a day after he was chosen leader of the governing Conservative Party.

The milestone is doubly significant for many people with Asian roots because it comes during Diwali, the five-day festival of light celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains.

Earlier this year, Sunak, a practising Hindu, spoke about the significance of lighting Diwali candles outside the official Downing Street residence of the chancellor of the exchequer, the post he held for two years until he resigned in July.

“It was one of my proudest moments that I was able to do that on the steps of Downing Street,” he told the Times of London. “And it meant a lot to a lot of people, and it’s an amazing thing about our country.”

It wasn’t always that way in Britain.

In 1968 Conservative lawmaker Enoch Powell delivered his infamous “rivers of blood” speech, decrying mass migration and advocating assistance for immigrants to “return home”.

As recently as 1987 there were no people from ethnic minority backgrounds in the House of Commons. One Asian and three black members were elected to Parliament that year.

Numbers have increased steadily since, with 65 people from ethnic minority groups, or 10 per cent of the House of Commons, elected during the last general election in 2019. That still isn’t fully representative of the UK as a whole, where 13 per cent of the population identify as ethnic minorities.

Sunak’s win is evidence of this progress, a step toward something better said Tariq Modood, director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol.

“I would say the most important thing about today is that the majority, the overwhelming majority of Conservative members of Parliament, chose as their first choice a youngish man of Indian descent, making him the first British prime minister of colour,” he said Monday. “And I think that other parties will note that, the Labour Party most certainly, and will want to catch up with that, if not try and do better.”

But Sunak isn’t typical of the millions of people from Asian, African and Caribbean backgrounds who still face barriers in employment and education.

The son of a doctor and a pharmacist, Sunak earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Oxford and a master’s in business administration from Stanford University before going to work for Goldman Sachs, and then moving into the hedge fund industry where he made a fortune in finance. He is married to Akshata Murty, daughter of Indian billionaire NR Narayana Murthy, founder of the global information technology company Infosys.

Sunak was criticided earlier this year when British news media reported that his wife took advantage of rules allowing her to avoid UK taxes on her foreign income. She has since promised to give up her “non-domiciled” status and pay all her taxes in Britain.

On a broader level, Indians have fared better economically than other minority groups in Britain.

Indians earned an average of 14.43 pounds (US$16.29) an hour, or 15.5 per cent more than w