Meenakshi Lekhi, BJP candidate from New Delhi Meenakshi Lekhi, BJP candidate from New Delhi

The gloves came off long ago but on Thursday proved to be the dirtiest round yet in the Lok Sabha campaign. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi made the allimportant revelation that Congress president Sonia Gandhi's father was an important officer in Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's army and that he was "hand- inglove with fascist leaders".

Speaking to Mail Today soon after going public with her Mussolini bomb, Lekhi, the BJP candidate from the New Delhi constituency, said: " Sonia and Rahul Gandhi have fascism in their blood. Stefano Maino (Sonia Gandhi's father) fought against the Soviet military alongside Hitler's Wehrmacht on the eastern front in World War II. He also called himself a loyal supporter of Benito Mussolini and Italy's National Fascist Party. I don't understand on what grounds they call Modiji a fascist leader."

Lekhi's Mussolini bomb didn't come out of the blue; it was in obvious retaliation to Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi's tasteless grouping of BJP leader Narendra Modi with dictators Hitler, Idi Amin, and Zia- ul- Haq. Singhvi's mother of all fascist barbs came during the release of a three- year- old video of BJP vice- president and Jhansi candidate Uma Bharti that purportedly depicts her as describing Modi as an agent of " destruction". Thursday's events were only the latest in the long road to debasement of the political narrative this election season where candidates and their parties have got real dirty and personal.

Land of fear

By evening, Lekhi had hit the Congress where it hurts the most, Bharti had complained to the Election Commission, and the level of political discourse had plumbed the depths of the last century.

Singhvi set the ball rolling at an AICC briefing earlier in the day, speaking of Modi as being similar to dictators like Idi Amin and Hitler. "All these dictators were popularly elected but their election did not mean their exoneration from charges of genocide and human rights violations," Singhvi said. The briefing was in apparent reaction to the BJP's prime ministerial candidate on Wednesday ruling out an apology for the 2002 Gujarat riots. "Popularly elected dictators, Modi in Gujarat, Idi Amin in Uganda, one thing is common: they are judge, jury and prosecutor, all rolled into one. They have no compassion, no 'karuna'.

They never apologise as they are convinced of their infallibility. They look at the letter and never the spirit," he said. Singhvi brought the curtain down on his performance by playing the Uma Bharti CD at the AICC briefing. The CD purportedly shows Bharti calling Modi a "vinash purush (man of destruction)" whose rule has turned Gujarat into a "land of fear". The CD depicts events that took place about three years ago when Bharti was not in the BJP and had floated her own outfit called the Bhartiya Janshakti Party. Singhvi said the fact was relevant today as Bharti has not denied it till this day.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and other senior leaders of the party have been calling Modi a fascist leader and comparing him to Adolf Hitler for a while now. Lekhi said she doesn't attach much importance to the past, but the repeated attacks on Modi compelled her to reveal these facts.

Sonia Gandhi, UPA chief Sonia Gandhi, UPA chief

According to Lekhi, if anyone is to be accused of fascism, it should be the Gandhi family and the leaders of the Congress. "Indira Gandhi is the only one who has displayed strong fascist behavior which depicted through the actions she took in 1984 - Operation Bluestar. Rajiv Gandhi too portrayed strong qualities of fascism after Indira Gandhi's assassination. Even how he handled the Bhopal disaster and Shah Bano case are actions of a fascist leader," Lekhi added.



Shah commission

She also added that the Shah Commission report never saw the light of day; it wasn't even tabled and the senior Congress leaders of that time saw to it that the report was destroyed. "As per the Congress party, the definition of secularism in India is to encash the Muslim vote-bank. Frankly speaking, I don't think that people in the Congress understand the meaning of fascism," she said. "There have been over 5,500 riots under the Congress rule so far, just to refresh the memory of the Congress leaders. Truth is, the Congress partymen are the real fascists. The retaliation methods that Rajiv Gandhi and his team displayed after his mother was assassinated were just shameful. How does killing innocent Sikhs help in getting justice?" Lekhi asked. Comparing India's Hindus with the Jews massacred by Hitler, Lekhi insisted that Hindus "have never instigated a riot but over centuries have fallen prey to foreign regimes and for the last 64 years to the Congress party."