Karnataka Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao triggered a fresh row after he claimed that Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar used to eat meat and was not against cow slaughter. “Savarkar, a 'Chitpavan Brahmin', used to eat meat. He was a non-veg eater and he was not against cow slaughter. He was modern in a way,” he said at an event here on Wednesday.
“Some say that he used to eat beef as well. As a Brahmin, he used to eat meat and was openly propagating eating meat. So he had that thinking,” the Minister claimed.
He went on to say that Mahatma Gandhi was a vegetarian and had a firm faith in Hinduism “but his actions were different. He was a democratic person.”
However, Dinesh Gundu Rao's statement landed in controversy as it did not go well with the BJP. BJP leader CT Ravi said, "He wants to support and promote cow slaughter and cow meat. Did Congress people forget what Gandhiji said? He said that if he got power for one day, he would completely ban cow slaughter...there is a lot of difference between fundamentalism and nationalism, India was divided because of fundamentalism...today, Congress supports fundamentalism, do they want to make a Pakistan inside India? India needs nationalism..."
On Thursday, explaining the context in which he made the comments, Gundu Rao said there was a discussion on Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in a book release event where he had a ‘very healthy discussion’.
“It was basically an observation on the contrast between Mahatma Gandhi and Savarkar.
How Mahatma Gandhi was a religious man and how Savarkar was an atheist, how Mahatma Gandhi was a person who was vegetarian and had a lot of beliefs in religion.
Savarkar was a non-vegetarian and he was a modernist,” the Minister told PTI Videos.
Rao said he drew a contrast between Gandhi and Savarkar to show “how to counter fundamentalism in this country, how fundamentalism leads to violence and how that can be tackled using Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy”.
