[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8154-8155]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 WELCOMING THE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I join the Republican leader in welcoming 
the Prime Minister from India to America.
  Mr. President, in my office I have a wonderful memento of my first 
meetings with Indians. I went to school at Utah State University in 
Logan, UT. It was so cold. My wife and I lived off

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campus, and we would drive a couple miles up a hill to the Utah State 
campus. Along the way, I would see Indian students walking to school. 
They were engineering students and agricultural students at the 
college. I would give them rides. I did that for a couple of years.
  When it came time for me to graduate, one of the Indians I had gotten 
to know asked if Landra and I would be willing to stay over an extra 
day and they would make us a traditional Indian feast. We did that. It 
was a feast. They were dressed in their Indian garb. They had worked a 
lot on that food. It was the first Indian food we had eaten. We have 
eaten a lot of it since. It was a wonderful, warm occasion that we will 
always remember.
  They gave us some presents, and with five children and moving quite a 
bit, most of those presents are history. I don't know what they were. 
But one that I have always protected is a little bone-carved statue of 
Gandhi that they gave me. He is in his regular clothes that we see him 
in. He has a staff in his hand like he had most of the time. It is 
finely carved. You can pull that staff out even today. It is a miracle 
that it made it through my five children, but I have done everything I 
could to protect it. Now I have it in my office in a little glass 
enclosure, and I show my Indian guests that meaningful memento of mine.
  The other reason I am going to have the opportunity in an hour or so 
to meet with the Prime Minister with Senator McConnell, the Speaker, 
and Leader Pelosi--I hope I have the opportunity to tell him of my 
fondness for Indians but especially those named Modi because the 
spokesperson's name from the group of Indians that I met was Modi. I 
have come to the realization in recent years that that was his last 
name. Everybody called him Modi. He was an engineer. He moved to New 
Jersey, and we kept in touch.
  I am happy that the Prime Minister is going to be able to address our 
Nation in the House of Representatives, and I am sure his people look 
forward to that.
  Again, I tell everyone here about my warmness for India, this great 
democracy. The second largest Muslim population in the world is in 
India. So it is a friend that we have, and we must maintain that 
friendship.

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