India's watershed election has finally laid to rest a long-running debate about whether Sonia Gandhi's foreign birth disqualified her from ruling the world's largest democracy as head of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

Voters ignored a sometimes insulting and personal campaign by her opponents against her Italian birth and gave Gandhi a clear mandate on Thursday, throwing out the Hindu nationalist-led coalition that had argued strongly she was was unfit to rule.

«Persistent questions about Sonia's foreign antecedents should be silenced once and for all by the huge groundswell of support for her party,» the Times of India said, adding that Gandhi was the people's choice for prime minister.

«The clearest message from the voters is that Mrs Gandhi's foreign origin is not ? and has not been ? an issue,» said the Hindustan Times editorial. «There are no doubts that the prime ministership of the country is Mrs Gandhi's for the taking.»

Gandhi who replaced her husband, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, as Congress chief seven years after his assassination in 1991, has from time to time been attacked for her foreign origin. Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist chief minister of Gujarat state, once called her an «Italian female dog».

Throughout this election, leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance targeted Gandhi's background, saying it was an insult to a country of more than one billion people, and with a history of colonial rule, to be led by someone born overseas.

In its manifesto, the BJP's coalition promised to outlaw anyone of foreign origin running for public office ? a move clearly aimed at Gandhi.

Modi and Tamil Nadu state Chief Minister Jayalalitha, who both built their election campaign almost solely on an anti-Gandhi platform, were among the biggest election losers. Jayalalitha failed to win a single seat and Congress doubled its representation in Gujarat to 12.

«Sonia emerged as the wronged widow offering herself and her children as the champions of the marginalised and oppressed,» said the Times of India, referring to her son, Rahul, and her daughter Priyanka, who both campaigned heavily.

Gandhi's Congress, its formal allies and the communists who have pledged their support have together won more than the 272 seats required in India's 545-member parliament to rule.

Congress' new lawmakers are due to meet on Saturday to choose their parliamentary leader, almost certainly Gandhi, which will position her to take up the prime ministership. By choosing Gandhi, Indians had shown themselves to be liberal and accepting, one commentator said. «This symbolises what is somewhat rare in the democratic world, a liberal tradition and tolerance that makes the Indian psyche,» wrote H.K. Dua in a commentary in the Tribune newspaper.

Indeed, a common response from villagers across India when Gandhi's foreign origin is raised is typically: «She has married into our family, she is our daughter.»

India?s victorious Congress Party said yesterday there was consensus among its coalition partners for its Italian-born leader Sonia Gandhi to become the next prime minister.

«There is a consensus on it. The allies have been saying it. They have been saying, ?you elect your leader and we will support it?,» Oscar Fernandes, Congress general secretary, told reporters.

Gandhi held talks yesterday to secure allies for a new government to replace the Hindu nationalists routed by a rural backlash.

Among those being wooed are left-wing groups that Gandhi?s Congress party needs to form a government. But Congress also tried to allay fears that the leftists would slow or stall the country?s economic reforms, concerns which sent the main stock index tumbling more than six percent and weakened the rupee.

The world?s largest democracy has been stunned by the size of the upset poll win by Gandhi?s Congress over Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who was rejected by disaffected rural poor, angry at missing out on the benefits of India?s economic boom.

COMMUNISTS KEY

But Gandhi is still considered a political novice. She only formally replaced her husband, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, as Congress chief seven years after his 1991 assassination.

Written off by opinion polls just three weeks ago, Congress fared far better than expected and will be the largest party in the new 545-seat parliament. But Gandhi?s coalition, with fewer than 220 seats, needs new partners.

She now faces the delicate task of stitching up an alliance with leftist parties, which hold a critical bloc of 60-plus seats but which oppose the style of economic reforms introduced by Vajpayee?s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to open the economy.

The leading left-wing party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), won 33 seats, more than half the leftist total, and its support will be critical to Gandhi?s survival.

Communist leaders say they are not opposed outright to all reforms. The CPM, which has ruled West Bengal state for more than a quarter of a century, has proved adept at attracting foreign investment as a way of tackling poverty.

But they are against selling profitable state firms and want state workers consulted more, raising worries about the pace of privatisation. Reforms of labour laws to allow easier hiring and firing may also be a casualty. «Clearly, the privatisation story is over for now,» said C. Jayaram, a director of Kotak Mahindra Asset Management. «And the big India story which was popular among foreign investors will lose some of its appeal.» In Bombay, the nation?s financial capital, bank shares fell up to 24 percent on fears that the new government would be less amenable to state banks trimming their bloated workforces. The main index was down as much as 6.11 per cent in intraday trade. «We are not opposed to reforms. But we cannot continue the same reckless policies which have not helped overcome the problems of unemployment and poverty. Agriculture will be a priority area,» said left-wing leader D. Raja.

Congress said it would continue selective privatisation, but agreed that selling profitable state firms was unnecessary.

It was Congress that broke India out of socialist-style economics more than a decade ago and the party has pledged to press ahead with the reforms needed to make Asia?s third-largest economy an economic superpower to rival China.

Congress MPs meet on Saturday to formally choose their parliamentary leader. Although the BJP campaigned heavily on Gandhi?s foreign origin, voters overwhelmingly rejected this as a concern.

Local media said moves were already under way on Friday to shift Gandhi?s belongings from the family home to the prime minister?s official residence, 7 Race Course Road.

Gandhi?s victory marks the revival not just of Congress, out of power since 1996, but of the country?s first family, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that led India to independence in 1947 and ruled unchallenged for decades after.

by Sanjeev Miglani and Terry FRIEL

People who matter in an Indian election, not online India

The result came as a complete surprise to everyone but the people who matter in an Indian election. Not online India, the India of software developers, the India that produces two million graduates a year, the India with a runaway economy widely predicted to become a global power in the 21st century. But its rural poor, its illiterates, the villagers who live without electricity in mud and thatch houses, those who have to walk two miles to fetch water, some 300 million people in all, or twice the population of Russia. It is as if Marie Antoinette had risen from the dead and told them to eat cake.

There is nothing revolutionary about yesterday?s vote to oust the Hindu nationalist government. It was a massive vote of confidence in India?s democratic system, a vote which swept aside declarations of a surging economy, a bountiful monsoon, a foreign policy success in the start of a rapprochement with Pakistan, and a slick campaign by the outgoing government which played on the feelgood factor: «India Shining.» If the online, urban rich were feeling radiant about themselves, offline India wanted to feel a bit of the reflected warmth of this success itself.

For Sonia Gandhi, who emerged as the leader of the largest party, but whose claim to be India?s next prime minister still depends on the agreement of her coalition partners, the vote is a stunning achievement. Not least because the daughter of a Italian builder, who hails from a village outside Turin, climbed to the top of a political system infamous for its xenophobia.

The outgoing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party included an attack on Mrs Gandhi? s foreign origins in its manifesto and had suggested changes to the election law barring foreigners from holding high office. Mrs Gandhi is in fact the eighth foreigner to be president of Congress party and appears to have been Indian enough to have caught the imagination of its masses. Not a natural campaigner (she became a recluse for six years after the murder of her husband Rajiv), she grew into the role of being the latest incarnation of the Nehru dynasty. She was undoubtedly helped by her daughter Priyanka, who has the look and star quality of her grandmother Indira, and her son Rahul. As well as helping the 52-year-old appeal to a younger generation, they managed to nullify the single most contentious issue in Indian politics.

But if Mrs Gandhi is right to have claimed that the people remembered what her family had done for them, the new administration must heed the national mood. This is not the first time that Congress has lobbied for India?s poor and dispossessed. In the 1970?s their slogans were «Remove Poverty» and « Food, Clothes and Roofs over their heads». No one held them to account for failing to do either. For a party with a poor history of coalition building, Congress may struggle to share power with the left, which has been unequivocal in its condemnation of globalisation, privatisation, nuclear bombs and big hydro projects.

If this was a protest vote against Coca Cola consuming the aquifers of Kerala, or Monsanto being awarded the patents for wheat used for making chapatis, then Congress will be hard put to respond. It sees nothing wrong and much right in neoliberalism. But the genuinely good news of this result is what this vote was against. The Hindu nationalist BJP were not just voted out of power, they were drummed out of it. In the western state of Gujarat, where more than a 1,000 Muslims were killed by Hindu mob violence, the BJP lost half its seats, despite attempts by the BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee to reach out to India?s 140 million Muslims. This too was a vote against nationalism and sectarianism. If Mrs Gandhi uses this mandate, it may herald a new era in Indian politics.