Wayanad(Kerala), Oct 28 (PTI) Seeking to connect with the Christian community in the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, Congress candidate Priyanka Gandhi on Monday recounted receiving a rosary as a gift from an elderly woman in the hill district, alongside another rosary gifted to her by Mother Teresa during her teenage years.
During her visit to the constituency to file her nomination papers for the Wayanad by-election, Gandhi referred to her meeting with the elderly woman, Thresia, and relayed that a former Army man had informed her that his mother wished to meet her but was unable to walk due to a leg issue.
“So I walked with him to his house. When she saw me, she had never seen me before, she hugged me and held me as her child,” she said in her campaign speech at Meenangadi here on Monday.
“And I can truly tell you I did not feel any difference in the way she held me in the way my mother holds me. She put a rosary in my hand. Her name is Thresia and she told me to give this rosary to my mother (Sonia Gandhi),” Priyanka said.
“I felt I have not even stepped to Wayanad. I already have a mother here. That’s how you made me feel for the first time I stepped to your soil,” she said.
In her speech, she mentioned that this meeting reminded her of her encounter with Mother Teresa when she was 19 years old, following the death of her father, Rajiv Gandhi.
When Mother Teresa visited Sonia Gandhi, she expressed a desire to meet Priyanka, but at that time, she was unwell with a fever.
“She (Mother Teresa) wanted to meet me and put her hand on my head and just like Thresia gave a rosary in my hand, she also did the same,” she said.
Keeping in mind that she had been going through tough times, Mother Teresa asked me to work with her.
“So five-six years after I got married I went to work with Mother Teresa sisters in Delhi. I started my first job teaching little children some English and some Hindi,” she said adding that then she began understanding their sufferings, feelings, pain, and what service is.
“When I came here with my brother after the terrible landslide, I immediately recognised the way the community got together to work closely. Each one of you, no matter which religion you come from, no matter what profession, you work your maximum,” she added, lauding the courage of the people of Wayanad.
Her statement comes amidst growing resentment among a significant portion of the Christian population regarding the Congress’s stance on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, introduced by the BJP-led Centre.
In support of the bill, the Church has alleged that numerous properties belonging to Christian families for generations in the villages of Cherai and Munambam in the Ernakulam district have been unlawfully claimed by the Waqf Board using provisions of the existing Act.
On Monday, the Syro-Malabar Church-backed Deepika daily, in its editorial, attacked the Congress-led UDF and the CPI(M)-led LDF, accusing them of passing a unanimous resolution in the state Assembly “to protect the Waqf law without seeing the tears of the affected people.” The Church was discontented with the actions of the LDF and the UDF, as the Assembly passed the resolution despite the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church in Kerala and the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council having sent letters to the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) regarding the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, requesting amendments to the Waqf Act of 1995. PTI ARM TGB TGB ROH
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