The day after NDA convener George Fernandes thought of a bullet to settle the unending nuclear debate, the Prime Minister revealed how the BJP had tried to invoke divine forces not just to unseat him, but to kill him.

“They (BJP) didn’t even believe I would last as the PM and some leaders even did havans that I should die on a certain day,” said Manmohan Singh in an interview to India Today three months ago but published today.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi underlined the gravity of this remark: “Our PM is not given to exaggeration and hyperbole; indeed he prefers understatement. We are not surprised.”

Fernandes had on Thursday said that if it were in China, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would be shot dead for signing the nuclear agreement with the US. After both Houses of Parliament were disrupted following loud protests from Treasury benches over the statement, the NDA convener reiterated his statement yet again, this time calling Singh a “traitor”.

“They could hang me for that but I have said it and stand by it,” he said. BJP leader Sushma Swaraj refused to condemn Fernandes’s statement saying it was “an expression of anguish.”

But the party accused of black magic had some biting humour by the end of the day. Responding to the PM’s statement, BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley said: “We wish him a very long life. May he live long and see after his tenure comes to an end how India is governed much better by others after him.” But then, for a party that campaigns to protect a bridge allegedly built by Hanuman, a havan wasn’t much of an aberration.

Singh is not unduly worried over the bullet or the occult. “But I have faith in higher force. I believe it was my destiny to be PM. I have the courage of conviction,” PM said. The BJP took these words and turned them around. “The Prime Minister must acknowledge that the BJP also had a role in shaping his destiny. Had we not vehemently opposed the first choice of the Congress, Dr Manmohan Singh as the second preference would have never made to office,” said Jaitley.

However, humour cannot redeem political discourse from the new low it has been pulled down to. “Black magic and occult practices have always been part of political intrigue. But nobody ever spoke about it on record as the Prime Minister did. Fernandes’s statement is unprecedented. I cannot recollect anything similar,” says political commentator Inder Malhotra.

Malhotra says the closest situation he can recall is Charan Singh writing to prime minister Morarji Desai in the late ‘70s that H K L Bahuguna was a KGB agent. Bahuguna replied that Charan Singh was a “madman.” There were “uncharitable” remarks about Raj Narain and Jagjivan Ram but only in private, never on record.

The bitter tussle for power between the Congress and BJP and Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origins have added new opportunities for innovative abuse. The late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan’s alleged comparison between Monica Lewinsky and Sonia Gandhi created a controversy. Although the BJP was furious when Sonia Gandhi called Vajpayee government nikamma, the party returned the compliment by calling Manmohan Singh a nikamma PM when the Volcker controversy flared up.