Although there was nothing abusive in what Advani had said about Dr Singh, the latter deliberately misrepresented his criticism as “abuse” in order to gain public sympathy and attacked Advani with a fusillade of highly personalised barbs. That he was not acting on his own became clear when he was seen to have synchronised his show of aggressiveness with the equally intense personalised attack on Advani by Sonia Gandhi and her son. It was as if the Congress leadership was stung by the fact that the people of India were seeing the ongoing parliamentary poll partly as a battle between a “majboot neta” and a “weak and proxy PM”.

“What is Mr Advani’s contribution to national welfare?” asked Dr Singh, in a mocking style that smacked of arrogance. The answer can be found in a presentation titled ‘Educating Dr Manmohan Singh’ prepared by an online volunteer working with me in Advani’s campaign office (see www.lkadvani.in). It brings alive a traumatic period in independent India’s political history—the dictatorship imposed during the Emergency Rule (1975-77) by the then Congress government—and describes Advani’s significant role in the struggle for the restoration of democracy. Under the saintly leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, Advani and other opposition leaders participated in what came to be described as India’s “Second Freedom Struggle”. Along with tens of thousands of pro-democracy activists, he spent 19 long months in jail during the Emergency. Dr Manmohan Singhji, is this not a “contribution to national welfare”? And will you please tell the countrymen what you said or did during the Emergency—and whether you ever showed the courage of criticising it after you entered public life?

... contd.