Salaam Sonia

• Prime Minister Vajpayee, during the UP campaign, revived the charge that Sonia was a foreigner. He later retracted the statement.
  
  
• During the recent censure motion, sports minister Uma Bharati pointedly snubbed Sonia: "I'm surprised the leader of the Opposition is chewing gum inside the House. This is not a university campus."

• When defence minister George Fernandes was being heckled, he told the Congress front benches: "You can sit down now. Madam is very impressed."
  
  
• During the debate on Gujarat, words like videshi gudiya (foreign doll) were bandied about freely.
  
  
• Reacting to Sonia's reference to "Godse's Gujarat", Uma Bharati, two days after the debate, responded thus: "Sonia is Indian only because she holds an Indian passport.... If Sonia were an Indian by heart, she would not have made such a remark."

Ranjit Bhusan With Priya Sahgal, Abheek Siddiqui and B.R. Srikanth