Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], October 4 (ANI): After Karnataka Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao made a controversial statement on Veer Savarkar on Thursday, there was a flood of political reactions criticising his remarks.
BJP leader CT Ravi on Thursday reacted to the statement and 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 Pakistan inside India? India needs nationalism.”The Controversy arose when, at the release of Kannada version of “Gandhi’s Assassin: The Making of Nathuram Godse and His Idea of India” on October 2, Karnataka Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao says, “Savarkar was not against cow slaughter. He was a Chitpavan Brahmin but he was a non-veg eater. That way he was a modernist. It was fundamental thinking too but on the other hand, he was a modernist also. Few say he used to eat beef as well but definitely, as a Brahmin, he was eating meat and he was openly propagating eating meat.”He further said, “But Gandhi ji was a vegetarian and he had a huge belief in Hinduism. But his actions were different; he was a democratic person…Jinnah was a hardcore Islamist believer. He used to have wine and people say that he perhaps had pork. But he became a Muslim icon. He was not a fundamentalist but Savarkar is a fundamentalist. Jinnah compromised on his philosophy because he wanted to become president, PM. His was a secular philosophy.”Targeting the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, he criticised their narrative and philosophy.
“If you have to fight against RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, which are growing this kind of philosophy/fundamentalism, we have to answer this by understanding the key aspects. On one side, there is awareness in the public, but how we act becomes very important. There are many people who are traditional but it doesn’t mean that fundamentalism is their principle.” He said. (ANI)
