By Matters India

Manila: The Miss Universe Philippines 2020 is the daughter of an Indian man.

The newly-crowned beauty queen, 23-year old Rabiya Occeña Mateo, hails from Iloilo City, about 655 km south of Manila.

She will represent the country at the international Miss Universe 2020, which may take place early next year.

As many as 40 candidates took part in the final round of the beauty pageant, held on October 25 in Baguio City, a mountainous town, north of Manila.

Rabiya’s father, Mohammed Abdullah Syed Moqueet Hashmi is a conservative Muslim Indian-American who studied Medicine in Manila in the 90s. He fell in love with the mother, a Filipina, who was a schoolmate at Fatima College.

The parents had two children—Rabiya, the eldest and younger brother Mokmok.

She was five-years-old when her father left the family and returned to the US for his medical board exams in 2001.

Rabiya never saw her father again. Asked if she would want to meet her father someday, she said, “Yes.”

She wishes to see him and thank him for the genes and for giving her the name, ‘Rabiya,’ which means ‘queen’ in Arabic.

After the father left them, Rabiya’s mother struggled to raise and educate the two children single-handedly.

“We were not together how you look like. Good thing, my aunt had saved some of our photos together and I will be honest that I got teary eyes the moment I saw them,” she wrote recently in her Instagram post.

She also mentioned that her brother looks like their father. “Mokmok is like a Xerox copy of yours. You guys have the same color, the features, and the hairline.”

She became a strong independent woman today because of the situation that happened in the past, but she never blamed her father for it.

“I will continue to be a breadwinner to our family, a good daughter to Mama, and a good role model to Mokmok. I will push myself to a new and greater limit every single day so that when the time comes and we meet again, you will tell everyone how proud you are that I’m your daughter and who knows, when the day comes I might be a doctor like you,” Rabiya said.

She prayed for him. “I hope you still think about me because I always think about you.”

In preliminary rounds of the Miss Universe Philippines competition and her YouTube video, Rabiya revealed that she grew up poor.

She appreciates her mother’s determination to support and educate the two children.

Her mother never spoke ill of her father, Rabiya recalled.

In 2018, she finished a Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy at the Iloilo Doctor’s College in Molo, Iloilo City.

At present, she works as a physical therapy lecturer at review centers in different provinces in the country.

Her passionate advocacy includes education. Rabiya is a member of an NGO that educates children residing near a dumpsite in Iloilo City.

Rabiya is not the first Indian origin woman to win a beauty pageant crown in the Philippines.

Before her, it was Maria Venus Raj who had won Binibining Pilipinas Universe 2010 and Miss Universe 2010 (4th Runner-up).

Raj, who is now a Filipino-Indian actress, beauty queen, and television personality, was born in Doha, Qatar, to an Indian father and a Filipino mother.