If Indian politics had begun to sound too abstruse with talk of fuel reprocessing, Henry Hyde and strategic reserves, it got a dose of mud today — low and dirty like never before.

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.

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