On the streets, Congress workers cry freedom, invoke Nehru, Indira Gandhi

NEW DELHI: The city was still chilly at 9.30 am on Saturday, with the temperature hovering around 12 degrees Celsius, but Manoharlal Tiwari, who said he was a Congress worker from Pilibhit in UP, had already taken off his muffler and slung the meat-brown jacket on his shoulder. "No, I'm not cold," he said. "Neither hungry, nor thirsty. This is a struggle for freedom."

A day before Sonia Gandhi and son Rahul's appearance at the Patiala House Court in the National Herald case, the Congress president had appealed to party workers and leaders not to make a spectacle of her date with the law. But her supporters either didn't get the message or there had been a communication gap.

Many like Tiwari had trooped in at 24 Akbar Road, the AICC headquarters, early morning, waving placards that said 'Sonia ji, Rahul ji, hum tumhare saath hain'. Others had posters of the Gandhi family, from Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira to Priyanka and Robert Vadra, with Sonia and Rahul in between, that screamed 'Nehru, Gandhi ka apmaan nahi sahega Hindustan (India will not tolerate the insult to Nehru, Gandhi).'

As the crowd of protesters swelled, the winter air crackled with tension and anxiety. Huge contingents had begun marching to the Congress office by 11.30 am and security personnel, also in their hundreds, started getting fidgety. Sonia's appeal not to make a great deal of her first visit as an accused to an Indian court had clearly gone unheard.

There was talk earlier that all regional heads had been told to gather cadre from north India and herd them into Delhi. Later, though, some senior leaders apparently felt that this could be seen as putting pressure on the court and it could be counterproductive. It's possible that it was too late to stop all of them from pouring into the wide roads of the capital. In any case, there was just enough people to create a din throughout the day to keep the TV cameras busy and to let a host of second-rung party bosses point to the shouting and sloganeering and say, "Look, people are with us. This is the politics of vendetta." There may have been confusion regarding the presence of cadre in Delhi. There was none, however, as far as the attendance of leaders was concerned. Everyone had rallied around the top two, with Ambika Soni, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ghulam Nabi, AK Antony, Shiela Dixit, Meira Kumar, et al, walking along with Priyanka in solidarity. When Sonia and Rahul reached court at about 2.46 pm, the Congress chief smiled and waved at the crowd. Many years ago, on the same day, December 19, 1978, her mother-in-law Indira had acknowledged the hordes as she headed to Tihar jail. On her return, she had made a comeback that was the stuff of political legend. Many now in the Congress, who by evening on Saturday seemed to carry with them an unmistakable but awkward sense of victory, would be hoping this is a similar turning point.