NEW DELHI, 20 October — The main opposition Congress party yesterday reacted strongly against a vicious attack on its president Sonia Gandhi by a leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), who obliquely referred to her as an "Italian dog".

A day after VHP leader Pravin Togadia spoke at a rally in Gujarat about ‘’dogs barking after Godhra including an Italian dog", in obvious reference to Italy-born Sonia, the Congress said the remarks indicated mental sickness and increasing desperation.

The torching of 58 train passengers at Godhra in February-end triggered fierce sectarian bloodshed in Gujarat, claiming over 1,000 lives and displacing tens of thousands.

The VHP, which is affiliated to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been accused of fanning the violence.

Senior Congress leaders and former union ministers Arjun Singh and K. Natwar Singh said Togadia’s remarks were debasing and lowered the level of political debate, and termed them "beneath contempt".

"It is not possible for a civilized political party to enter into a debate with the VHP and sink to such despicable depths as that organization and its sister groups have sunk to," Congress spokesman Anand Sharma said.

"The intemperate utterances are a pointer to the mental sickness afflicting the VHP leaders," Sharma added.

With campaigning picking up steam in Gujarat ahead of state elections expected in December, the diatribe against Sonia has been particularly virulent. At a rally in Gujarat in August, state Chief Minister Narendra Modi had remarked that Chief Election Commission J.M. Lyngdoh, who rejected the BJP’s demand for early polls, must have come from Italy or was related to Sonia.

The BJP’s demand for early polls was seen as an attempt to exploit the Hindu-Muslim polarization after the February-May communal violence and to consolidate the Hindu voters in its favor.

Togadia on Friday also urged Hindus to vote on religious lines, otherwise the "offspring of (Pakistan President Pervez) Musharraf will come to power." He called Sonia an import but asserted that Indian Muslims were not foreigners like her.

Speaking about Godhra, he said: "First, the local pups started barking (against the Hindus). They were then joined by dogs from other parts of the country. And finally came a dog from Italy."