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The Congress on Saturday panned Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Praveen Togadia for referring to its president Sonia Gandhi as "a bitch from Italy".
Referring to Godhra incident and the riots that followed, the VHP leader allegedly said at a rally in Bhuj on Friday: "First, the local pups started barking. Then dogs from other parts of the country joined them. And last came Italy ki kutri [the bitch from Italy]."
"No words are strong enough to condemn the outrageous remarks of Togadia. The whole statement made by him is below contempt," party leaders Arjun Singh, Natwar Singh and Ahmed Patel said in a joint statement in New Delhi.
They said the Sangh Parivar was "continuously lowering and debasing the level of our national political dialogue by injecting vulgarity into it".
Later, party leaders Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, Natwar Singh, R K Dhawan, Ambika Soni, Kamal Nath, and Anand Sharma addressed a press conference in the capital and said: "We expected the senior leaders in the government, particularly the prime minister [Atal Bihari Vajpayee], the deputy prime minister [Lal Kishenchand Advani] and the senior BJP leadership to condemn the VHP leader's reference. But it is surprising that no one has so far uttered a single word."
"There could be difference of opinions. There could be political criticism. That is all accepted as a part of the democratic system. But the type of language Mr Togadia is using day in and day out is not done," said Singh.
Dhawan appealed "to all saner elements in the political arena to condemn the issue in the strongest possible terms".
Asked why the Congress was attaching so much significance to a comment made by a person whose sole intention was to hog the limelight, Singh explained, "Elections [in Gujarat] are on the horizon and we think it has been intended to vitiate the environment..."
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