It's a split verdict. On one side of the debate, being conducted on sundry Internet discussion forums, are the videsh-residing swadeshi nationalist ``can't-allows''. Their argument: Sonia Gandhi should not be allowed to become Prime Minister of India when most countries, including Italy and the United States, do not allow foreign-born nationals to run for high office.On the other side of the fence are the videsh-residing swadeshi ``shouldn't-stops''. Their pitch: India is too inclusive and plural a society to bar anyone who is a citizen from running for office.

Their debate, like the campaign text in Bellary, is far removed from the civic and municipal problems of the dirt-poor district. It is rooted in highpolitical ideals, humanist discourse and philosophical underpinnings.

The two sides have been buttressing their verbal sparring with references from history, politics and social sciences, not to speak of a little personal pique.

On SAJA, a vibrant New York-based forum for South Asian journalists, one videsh-living swadeshi nationalist argued that Sonia Gandhi had no right to run for office in India because he did not feel accepted in Italy on a recent visit to that country. ``While I was in Florence it got me thinking that were I to live in Italy, it would take me a couple of years to even feel comfortable with the people, language, culture etc; several years to even have some semblance of a social life; but never will I be able to achieve even an iota of power. It is this fact that makes me feel so angry watching Sonia Gandhi, a WHITE foreigner in my country, wanting to achieve the highest office of the land, whereas, my very presence would at best be grudgingly accepted in Sonia's country of birth,''wrote Chellury Sastry, software writer for Siemens USA.

Critics of the no-videshi argument hit back. ``First, the way he was treated by Italian immigration and on the streets is not a reflection of the entire Italian people. Second, his reverse prejudice against white people is born out of insecurity. Third, do not compare India to Italy or America...India is her own country, a very proud heritage...2000 years ago, or 5000 years ago, almost all the Indians then were immigrants,'' retorted Mike Ghouse, a radio jockey from Texas.

Ghouse maintained that Indians should be proud that Sonia chose to become an Indian. ``So have the early Hindus who migrated from elsewhere to India, so were the Muslims, the Christians, the Zoroastrians...None of us were original,'' he argued.

But the naysayers fought back by pointing out that an Indian woman married to the Italian filmmaker Rossellini was not allowed to run in a local body election in Italy, while Sonia herself waited till 1983 to become an Indiancitizen. One participant claimed that Sonia took refuge in the Italian embassy when Indira Gandhi lost power in 1977 and said such actions created ``doubts whether a person of foreign origin can be trusted to lead the nation and act in its best interests.''

While the anti-videshi brigade frequently invoked the US constitution, which does not allow foreign born nationals to run for President (a statute that denies a Presidential bid by Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, among others), one proponent brought a new angle to the origins of the law drafted by Thomas Jefferson.

According to this version, Jefferson wrote the law barring foreign-born nationals from running for President to stymie his political rival Alexander Hamilton, who was an illegitimate child and was born in West Indies where his mother was visiting at the time of delivery.

``The question we have to ask ourselves as a nation is this: Is this the kind of behaviour from the American politics we want to emulate? There are plentyof reasons why Sonia Gandhi should not be the Prime Minister. But her foreign origin is not one of them,'' argued a participant.

Proponents of this line maintain that modern India's founding fathers had bequeathed ``what is perhaps the most liberal constitution in the world'', a constitution that granted universal suffrage to its citizens from the very outset even in the face of a high level of illiteracy and the tendency of the various classes to guard their privileges. In contrast, the American constitution granted women the right to vote only in the 1920s, over 125 years after it was promulgated.

``Sonia, 52, has lived in India since she was 22 and became a citizen when she was 38. Continuing to see her as a foreigner, or an outsider, shows racism. To say that Italy wouldn't allow Rossellini's wife, or the US wouldn't let her run for office, suggests that India must alter its constitution to be in line with the discriminatory, non-inclusionary constitutions of the US and Italy,'' argued Salil Tripathi,a former journalist who now works with Amnesty International in London.

While it is generally acknowledged that Indian migrants, particularly in the US, are largely pro-BJP, the foreigner issue has not struck a chord even among many Hindutva supporters.

``My own personal opinion is that it is poor politics. We are too great a civilisation for such pettiness. Even Chanakya had no problem with Cornelia marrying Chandragupta's son and becoming Empress of India,'' said Shekhar Tiwari, a prominent BJP activist in the Washington area.

Even foreign-born Indians appear to have no problems with Sonia Gandhi running for office. ``If the Indian Constitution does not say anything one way or another, then it is best left to the voters,'' said Kumar Barve, a Maryland law-maker and a US-born American Indian politician, joking about his own Presidential bid in 2020.