Wayanad (Keralam), Sep 24 Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Thursday said she had been home-schooled from the age of 12, along with her brother Rahul Gandhi, following the assassination of their grandmother, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Vadra disclosed while responding to a query from a 14-year-old student of the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Model Residential School in Sulthan Bathery here.
The student asked her about her childhood and what it was like growing up in a politically prominent family.
“You’ve heard about Indira Gandhi? She was my grandmother. We lived in the same house. So when I was 12 years old, she was killed in the house where I lived, and after that, I did not go to school. I studied at home alone until I passed out of school,” she said.
“So, just me and your ex-MP Rahul Gandhiji, the two of us studied alone at home. We couldn’t go out much. We didn’t have too many friends. We were quite locked up in the house,” she added.
Vadra told the student that she was lucky to be able to go out, move around and enjoy herself.
When another student asked about her role model, the Congress MP said it was a woman who had worked at her home since her children were three months old.
“She is my role model because she is strong. Through a lot of difficulty, she has worked day and night in my house. She has been caring and loving towards my children like a mother, and she has always stood up for herself through great struggles and losses. When she lost one of her children, she came to work the next morning. When I told her she needed to rest and stay at home, she said no. She said she wanted to work,” Vadra said.
She said she had been a good student until Class 7, after which her academic performance declined before improving later.
In response to questions from the students, she said her favourite subjects were physics, mathematics and biology.
“I was good at biology, but not math,” she said.
During the interaction, Vadra said there were many things the Congress would like to do to preserve and protect tribal culture, describing it as “a national treasure”.
“Your ancestors taught each other and learned from the jungles around them, from the rivers, from the mountains, from the seas, from nature in every way. They learned how to live with nature and how to treat nature with respect, something that all of us who think we are very smart have forgotten,” the Congress MP said.
“There is a knowledge which resides in your culture and tradition that is very, very precious to the whole world. It is more precious than many things that you can learn in books, more precious than many things that you can learn at the biggest institutions,” she added.
Vadra said one of the initiatives of the Congress-led UDF government in Keralam was the establishment of a tribal university in Wayanad to provide opportunities to tribal children while preserving their culture and heritage.
“We dream that the university provides you with the best opportunities that are available in the world and that you study in the most sophisticated and modern atmosphere. At the same time, a lot of the studies will also be about your traditions, culture and heritage. You have an old heritage, a culture, your own traditions which you all must be very, very proud of,” she said.
Vadra said she hoped the university would become an excellent centre and a global example of preserving tribal traditions.
She said it would be a unique university where the faculty would also come from tribal communities, enabling students to understand, respect and learn their traditions, languages and cultures while studying other subjects offered at leading universities.
“So that is our dream, and we hope that it will become a centre for academic excellence and for preserving and protecting tribal cultures from all across India,” she said.
Vadra acknowledged that the school required funds.
“I will do whatever I can to be able to provide them (funds) and to improve the facilities here. But on one condition, when I come back to inaugurate the new facilities, you teach me properly how you dance,” she said with a smile.
(PTI News)
