The noted Indian author and poet Meena Kandasamy praised the Congress leader and MP (Member of Parliament) Rahul Gandhi on his way of treating women, on Wednesday.

‘How comfortable he made women feel around him, and how easy, safe and happy women felt in his presence’, said Ms Kandaswamy in X (formerly Twitter).

‘The beautiful, charming, most wonderful thing I noticed about Rahul Gandhi’, she began her note detailing her impression of Mr Gandhi earned during personal meetings and the Bharat Jodo Yatra.

It was shortly after “the flying kiss row”, in which Mr Gandhi was accused by the Union Minister Smriti Irani for blowing a flying kiss, on Wednesday, Ms Kandaswamy shared her experience in X.

Ms Irani is an MP from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and currently serves as the Union Minister for Women and Child Development and Minority Affairs. She is also a former actress, fashion model, and television producer.

During her speech in Lok Sabha at the time of no-confidence motion debate, Ms Irani and some women MPs from BJP lodged a complaint to Om Birla, the Parliament speaker. According to The Indian Express, more than twenty women signed the complaint and asked for a ‘stringent action’ and termed Mr Gandhi’s gesture as ‘inappropriate’.

The beautiful, charming, most wonderful thing that I noticed about Rahul Gandhi in personal meetings and on the Bharat Jodo Yatra was how comfortable he made women feel around him, and how easy, safe and happy women felt in his presence. There was none of the Uber-masculine…

— Dr Meena Kandasamy (@meenakandasamy) August 9, 2023

‘What I witnessed was someone with an open heart, open arms, open eyes. He shook hands. He posed for pics. He held hands with those who walked by his side. He hugged children, old people, young men and women’, said Ms Kandasamy. According to her, the Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Mr Gandhi impacted the idea of desexualising touch and making it natural in public.

Ms Kandasamy also called for the support of writers’ to Mr Gandhi while he was disqualified from the position of Member of Parliament, in July. She was speaking at a book release event then, reported The Hindu. ‘No writer was speaking about the disqualification of Mr Gandhi and the defamation case against him’, she said and alleged that everyone looked at it only as the problem of the Congress party.