Congratulations, Rishi Sunak, on becoming the first British-Asian Prime Minister.

Listen out, and you’ll hear plenty of British Asians, particularly young ones, tell us that a billionaire public school boy doesn’t represent them. Those voices need to be heard. But there are also hundreds of thousands of British Asians celebrating loud and clear this week. Those who want to downplay Mr Sunak’s achievement are, without wishing it, downplaying the racism he will have faced within the Conservative Party over the course of his career.

JC readers know what an achievement it is to overcome the prejudices that still lurk within the British Establishment. Unlike Nicola Sturgeon, the Washington Post and too many others, we also know that Mr Sunak is not “the first ethnic minority prime minister”.

The Guardian even carried a quote from Tariq Modood, Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy at Bristol University, asserting that few would have expected Mr Sunak’s achievement until recently, “nor would anyone have predicted that the first ethnic minority prime minister would be a Tory.” Except, of course, that the first ethnic prime minister already was a Tory, long ago. His name was Benjamin Disraeli.

Disraeli was born into a Jewish family in 1804, named and presented for his bris at Bevis Marks synagogue. He was then required by his father Isaac to convert to Anglicanism after Isaac’s notorious falling out with the synagogue, just before young Benjamin would otherwise have celebrated his barmitzvah. (Is there anything more Jewish than falling out with one’s synagogue?)

There are two defining experiences for Jews in public life, and Disraeli ticks both boxes. If you proudly honour your Jewish heritage, you’re probably a Jew. And if you’re attacked by antisemites, you’re probably a Jew, too.

Disraeli was proud of his Jewish heritage throughout his life, a pride visible both in his parliamentary speeches and the literary writings in which he developed his political vision. The Gentile heroes of his novels have a funny habit of turning out to be Jewish nobility in disguise. Often credited as the effective founder of the modern Tory party, he formulated a vision of philosophical conservatism that was predicated on values he understood as Jewish.

In his novel Coningsby, the Jewish character Sidonia stands in for Disraeli himself and tells the eponymous hero: “The Jews … independently of the capital qualities for citizenship which they possess in their industry, temperance, and energy and vivacity of mind, are a race essentially monarchical, deeply religious, and shrinking themselves from converts as from a calamity, are ever anxious to see the religious systems of the countries in which they live flourish.” (Disraeli was well aware of the ignominy that his family’s conversion had brought.) He continues: “The Jews, Coningsby, are essentially Tories. Toryism, indeed, is but copied from the mighty prototype which has fashioned Europe.”

Disraeli was also viscerally attacked by antisemites. The Tory hostess Lady Salisbury, whose son succeeded Disraeli as Conservative leader, wrote: “He bears the mark of the Jew strongly about him. He is evidently clever but superlatively vulgar.”

What seems to puzzle those who can’t accept Disraeli’s Jewishness was that he professed the Christian faith. He would have been unable to take his seat in 1837 without doing so. He is not the first Jew whose access to the Establishment came at the cost of religious assimilation.  Disraeli’s profession of Christian faith mattered, because it meant he could fulfil one of the traditional offices of the Prime Minister: advising the Crown on the appointment of Anglican bishops. His enemies, nonetheless, tried to make a fuss about it, on the basis of his ancestry.

The nastier elements of the Tory party have already started to whisper that Mr Sunak’s Hindu faith makes it impossible for him to choose bishops. That should remind us that Disraeli and Sunak have faced many of the same barriers.

Much of Mr Sunak’s ascent reminds one of Disraeli. Mr Sunak has spoken proudly of the overlap between his parents’ cultural values and his own Toryism; he espouses One Nation values; he is both of the Establishment and yet not.

It does no good to deny Mr Sunak’s very significant achievements. Nor should anyone be erasing Disraeli, or his Jewishness. Both Hindu and Jewish communities deserve their own heroes.