Karnataka Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao has 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 in Bengaluru 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.
Rao added that Mahatma Gandhi was a vegetarian and had a firm faith in Hinduism but his actions were different. "He was a democratic person. (Founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali) Jinnah was another extreme. He was a hardcore Islamist believer. He used to drink wine and it is said that he used to eat pork as well but he became a Muslim icon after the two-nation theory and politics. But Jinnah was not a fundamentalist but Savarkar was a fundamentalist," he said. PTI