PELOSI HAILS MODI’S CLIMATE CHANGE PITCH

WASHINGTON: US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has upheld the values of Gandhi by taking on the challenge that poses an existential threat to the planet. Referring to the “commitment” shown by the Indian PM in ensuring that the agreement on climate change was finalised, Pelosi said: “It was not easy. But it was done”.

WASHINGTON: US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that her country was in debt to India for the strength and inspiration its civil rights movement against racial discrimination and especially its iconic leader, Martin Luther King, drew from Mahatma Gandhi.

“Mahatma Gandhi made all the difference in the world in our country,” Pelosi said at a Gandhi anniversary event on Wednesday. She said King was inspired by Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha and non-violent struggle that he brought back from a visit to India in 1959. “That is a debt we owe to India,” Pelosi added.

Pelosi called the anniversary event, co-hosted by the Indian Embassy, “very personal to me” recounting her own introduction to Mahatma Gandhi’s beliefs and ideals when she was a “little girl” in school in the 1950s. “‘Who do you think you are, Mahatma Gandhi?” Pelosi said a teacher had asked her then. Pelosi did not know who Gandhi was at the time and went to a library and read up every book that was there then.

The speaker, who is second in line to the US presidency after the vice-president, spoke at length about Gandhi’s influence on King and the relevance of his ideals to the present world and one of the gravest of all challenges facing it now, climate change.

“Just as the torch passed from Gandhi to Dr King... the torch now belongs to all of us.”

External affairs minister S Jaishankar, who spoke before her, said, “Today if there is one challenge that Gandhiji would like us to focus on [that would] be climate change.”