Italian-born Sonia Gandhi roared back into public life yesterday, claiming to be a true daughter of India and daring those who doubt her patriotism to quit the Congress party.
"Every drop of my blood says this is my country," she told more than 1,000 Congress party workers in a Delhi sports stadium.
She said her fortunes were bound to India's long before she renounced her Italian citizenship in 1983.
"India adopted me when I entered Indira Gandhi's home as her daughter-in-law 31 years ago," she said. "I became a bride here, I became a mother here, and I became a widow here" - her husband Rajiv was assassinated by a suicide bomber eight years ago. "This is my homeland."
Ms Gandhi resigned as party president nine days ago after three senior leaders said a foreigner was unfit to rule India.
The faithful were delighted at her return. Ammar Rizvi, a leader from Uttar Pradesh, declared: "Soniaji, you are back. When you were away, it was like the earth was without its sun or its moon."
Ms Gandhi warned potential challengers in Congress that they could follow the three leaders expelled last week into political oblivion.
As for her main opponent, the Bharatiya Janata party, which is certain to keep on about her foreign origins, Ms Gandhi said: "I will not answer this charge, but the country will give a befitting response to those who doubt my patriotism."
Asked whether she would be prime minister should the party win the elections, she said: "That is a question that - as always - the newly elected MPs will decide."
Three months after India's prime minister boarded a bus on a peace mission to Pakistan, the world's newest nuclear powers have opened a new war front in the frozen wastelands of the Himalayas.
In New Delhi's first detailed account of the fighting that broke out on May 6, a spokesman said yesterday that armed militants had captured strategic peaks four miles inside Indian-claimed territory near the town of Kargil and along the ceasefire line through the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Major General JJ Singh, India's additional director general of military operations, said 17 Indian soldiers had been killed and 90 wounded in the fighting, and their opponents had suffered 100 casualties.