THAT burning afternoon when the Raisina Hill was girdled by political hot winds, suddenly gave way to cool breeze and an almost snowfall as Sonia Gandhi, accompanied by Manmohan Singh, emerged from the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The political pundits had been doing their kite-flying furiously after the May 13 verdict of the people of India against the National Democratic Alliance led by BJP’s Atal Behari Vajpayee. The faithfuls of the outgoing regime had spread the atmosphere of confusion, making prophesies of doom. They called the mandate of the people of India in the 2004 Lok Sabha poll a fractured mandate and sang in chorus: It’s a hung parliament.

That evening a very sober looking Manmohan Singh, accompanied by a smiling Sonia Gandhi, announced to the expectant crowd of media persons waiting outside the Rahstrapati Bhavan that the President had appointed Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister of India and asked him to form his government. That was a moment of history. As an ardent Congress worker described it: The verbal terrorists of the communal coalition were suddenly broken hearted. The voices of secular India were beginning to rise in triumph.

Suddenly, the stage was set for super political drama with events staggering one after another in high tension. There were jubilant Congress supporters outside 10, Janpath, who had demanded that in respect to the mandate of the Indian electorate, Sonia Gandhi alone be the 14th Prime Minister of India.

The formal and informal meetings of the Congress leaders, and the Congress Party in Parliament, had heard traumatic and highly emotional speeches, when newly elected MPS appealed, exhorted and pleaded with Sonia to change her decision to refuse the mandated prime ministership. In an emotional response, Sonia had expressed her gratitude to the Congress MPs and workers for their faith, love and solidarity, but appealed to them again and again to understand that she could not ignore her inner voice, the voice of her conscience, which dictated her not to accept the prime ministership but to devote her life to the service of the Congress and the country. It demonstrated the Gandhi tradition and heritage..

It was the greatest event of political sacrifice and statesmanship which suddenly made Sonia rise as the tallest of Indian women and the most stunning practitioner of real politic in an atmosphere which had appeared bleak and destabilising only a few days earlier with the din of Sonia-baiters who had threatened to throw the country into bedlam of street-politics and observe the day she would sworn-in as the prime minister as "The Black Day". They were infuriated on her being "A Lady of Foreign Origin".

There were BJP hotheads and loudmouths like Sushma Swaraj, Uma Bharati and Govindacharya, who threatened to launch a nationwide agitation. Sushma and her husband, members of the Rajya Sabha, with one year and two months of their term still left to run respectively, had threatened not to step up the stairs of the Parliament House as long as Sonia Gandhi was the Prime Minister. Sushma, a happily married Hindu woman, in a fit of wrath, had also threatened to get her head shaved off in protest - something unheard of before. Uma Bharati, the much publicised BJP Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, announced that she would resign her chief ministership to join the nationwide anti-Sonia street-marches. Govindacharcya, the great scion of Hindu politics who had been for quite sometime cold-shouldered by his own ruling colleagues in the BJP, bounced back into political headlines by fanning the personal attacks against Sonia Gandhi.

But with the cool breeze blowing from the Raisina Hill and, 10 Janpath, there was silence of the hawks. Sonia’s sacrifice and the emergence of Manmohan Singh as the new and clean secular face of India had knocked the bottom off from the campaign of Sonia-baiters of the Hindutva brigade. Was the liberal and poetic leader of the BJP and the NDA, Atal Behari Vajpayee, unhappy with the gun-jumpers and big-mouths of the younger Hindu leaders? How much and on what calculations, only Vajpayee would know the best. However, the fact remained that Sonia had launched a new era and new style of politics in India, giving the political space to secular forces which had ever remained in disarray.

Was Sonia like the Jhansi ki Rani, who had suddenly emerged to protect her "Jhansi" symboliised by the Congress Party, the legacy of Rajiv Gandhi and Indian secularism? No, said those who claimed to know her. Sonia was not a happening but a process. She was more an Indian than any other Indian. She became the symbol of hope for the people of India and the resurrection factor for Congress and secularism.

A senior Congress leader said that the triumph of Sonia was also the rejection and defeat of the communal, caste and divisive politics sans ideology for the sheer pursuit of power by hook or by crook, through media, musclemen and even mafia into electoral poltics.

With the formation of the 68-member Union Cabinet after days of drama, the political scene has become clear. The spotlight is now on Manmohan Singh, the 14th Prime Minister of India, incidentally second Pubjabi to become the Prime Minister and seventh Congress Prime Minister since Nehru. There one no dearth of experience and talent in the Manmohan Cabinet.

There were also some interesting elements of popular speculation and interpretations about the politics of India, away from Real politik but very much in the sphere of political romanticism. One of them was the "R" factor. Political mystics pointed out that since India became Independent and the first prime minister of the country was sworn in, there had to be an ‘R’ in the name of the Prime Mininster. Beginning with Jawaharlal Nehru, through Gulzari Lal Nanda, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Moraraaji Desai, Charan Singh, Chandra Shekhar, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Narasimha Rao, Hardanhalli Deve Gowda, Inder Kumar Gujral, Rajiv Gandhi to Atal Bihari Vajpayee. What about aManmohan Singh then? The mystics were quick to point out that he was actually ‘Sardar’ Manmohan Singfh, like Gyani Zail Singh, the Punjabi who adorned the presidential position in India. He was also ‘Sardar’ Zail Singh.

Manmohan Singh, former professor of the Delhi School of Economics, was also the first ‘civil servant’ to occupy the prime ministerial office. He knows governance and functioning of the government set-up better than most of the experienced politicians.

His elevation to the prime ministerial post has given strength to the "Hindu, Muslim and Sikh" image and concept of a secular India with President A.P.J.Kalam.

The Manmohan factor has also spread hope and great expectations among Sikhs, Punjabis, Delhiwallahs and the people of Assam. It has also raised hopes in Pakistan for better relations with India. The wounds of 1984 anti-Sikh violence were now expected to get a balm.

Reaction of the village folk of Gah in Pakistan, the ancestral village of Manmohan Singh, reflected the views of an average Punjabi from Pakistani. They were happy that their "mohna", son of Gurmukh Singh, was now the Prime Minister of India. They had great hopes that relations between India and Pakistan were headed for improvement under his leadership.

Sonia’s Congress has brought into Lok Sabha a very strong section of young, fresh and committed Members of Parliament like Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Schindia, Sachin Pilot, Kunwar Jiten Prasad, Navin Jindal, Kuldip Bishnoi, Sandeep Dikshit, Milind Deora, Ajay Maken and Mehbooba Mufti who had won the mandate of the masses and were bound to make their mark in parliamentary affairs too, not as the chosen ones and the ministers by dynasty but as political workers and committed Congressmen in their own right.

Under the Real politik, sonia seemed to have brought back to the Congress fold many old Congress leaders who had deserted the party or had been ostarcised for one reason or another. She has also succeeded in providing a common umbrella to the secular parties, more often at loggerheads with one another. With Left leaders like Harkishen Singh Surjeet and Jyoti Basu, A.K.Bardhan and Sita Ram Yechury, playing their important role, Sonia has also created the atmoshphere for the Left parties to unite themselves besides joining hands with the secular forces.

As one looked back, the Real politik had managed to give a constructive turn to the people’s mandate in Lok Sabha 2004, which came at the end of one of the longest and the most wasteful election in the country. In the process the two riders on the cycle, Mulayam Singh in Uttar Pradesh and Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh, had fallen off the cycle and were dismayed to see it puntcured. Narendra Modi ate the humble pie in Gujarat, Jayalalitha saw her supremacy liquidated, Mamta, Maya and even Maharashtra’s favourite son, Sharad Pawar, saw the fortunes of friends and supporters taking a dip.