http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article3430795.ece
Catholic nun made member of Rajasthan minorities panel In a first perhaps in the whole of North India, Rajasthan Government has nominated a Catholic nun as a member of the State's Minority Commission. Sister Mariola Sequeira, of the order of the Mission Sisters of Ajmer (MSA), teaches English in Ajmer's prestigious Sophia College, but she is known in the human rights circles as an “activist nun”. An active member of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Rajasthan, the Mangalore-born Sister Mariola has been the State coordinator of the Prison Ministry India (PMI) since 2004 and an NGO member of the Grievance Committee on Sexual Harassment at the Workplace at Central Jail, Ajmer. Trained in journalism as well, she regularly writes for church publications and the Hong Kong-based news service, UCAN. In March 2010, television news channel CNN-IBN chose Sister Mariola for the “Real Heroes Award” for her work in rehabilitating women prisoners. Her advocacy and campaign for six years had resulted in the release of a mentally-ill prisoner from Central Jail on January 25 last year, after 18 years of imprisonment. “The activist friends are very happy about the appointment so are my superiors in the Church and the convent. The first to ring me up and congratulate were social activists Aruna Roy and Kavita Srivastava,” said Sister Mariola talking to The Hindu from Ajmer. Former MLA Mohammed Mahir Azad is the chairman of the Rajasthan Minorities Commission. Along with Sister Mariola, the State Government has also nominated Zuban Khan, Sardar Maninder Singh Bagga and a Buddhist representative, Gurvant Rahul Chawda, to the Commission. --------------------------- end of report -------------- The report above in The Hindu newspaper wrongly reports Sister Mariola as being 'Mangalore-born'. I know Sister Mariola only in passing but do know some of her siblings well. To the best of my knowledge the family was in Mumbai for a while but shifted back to their ancestral home in Corjuem, Aldona, in the late Nineteen Sixties. Sister Mariola's father Joaquim Xavier Sequeira was an ex-Western Railways officer and not only was involved in the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Aldona but also did two stints as the Sarpanch of the Village Panchayat. Her mother Agnes, also from Corjuem - a Castellino, was active in the Legion of Mary, Bible Courses and local Church activities. Sister Mariola was born in Mumbai but later studied at St. Thomas Girls School in Aldona and in fact worked for a while in Goa before joining the Mission Sisters of Ajmerin 1979. All these facts I collected my just making a few phone calls to reliable sources. My point being that a reporter for a national paper like The Hindu could surely have got his facts right about Sister Mariola's origins. She is very much a Goan (and Aldonkar) by ancestry and domicile. And definitely was not born in Mangalore. I hope they will now set the record straight. Cheers! Cecil ----------------
