Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday America 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.

She called the anniversary event, co-hosted by the Indian Embassy at the Library of Congress on US congress campus, “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.

“Mahatma Gandhi made all the difference in the world in our country,” Speaker Pelosi said at a Gandhi anniversary event, adding, referring to King being inspired by Gandhi’s concept of of satyagraha and non-violent struggle that he brought back from a visit to India in 1959.

“‘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 the library and read up every book on him stored there. And there were several already, she added with a sense of wonder as it had only been a few years since his death.

The speaker spoke at length about Gandhi’s influence on Dr King and the relevance of his ideals to the present world and one of the gravest of all challenges facing it now, climate change.

Pelosi may have picked up the relevance of Gandhi for the climate change battle from External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who speaking before her, had said, “Today, if there is one challenge that Gandhiji would like us to focus on, (that would) be climate change.”