Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Thursday hit out at Karnataka's Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao for calling Vinayak Savarkar a 'beef eater' and said that his wild claims show his ignorance of the country’s rich history.
Talking to IANS, Naqvi said, "Some people, in a bid to show themselves as more knowledgeable than others, try to defame and sully national heroes.
"Their wild claims show their ignorance of the country’s rich history and also reflect on their mental state.
"Those who talk like this are full of ignorance and are trying to create confusion about the history, values, culture and great personalities of the country. But, whatever, he is saying will not be accepted by the country."
Health Minister Rao made the remarks on Wednesday, during a book launch event. Unveiling the Kannada version of 'Gandhi's Assassin: The Making of Nathuram Godse and His Idea of India' the health minister said, "If we claim that Savarkar's ideas prevail in discussions, that is misleading. He was a non-vegetarian and he wasn't against cow slaughter, he was a Chitpavan Brahmin. Savarkar was a modernist in that way but his fundamental thinking was different. Some people said he used to eat beef and he was openly propagating eating beef, so that thinking is different. But Gandhi ji had a lot of belief in Hinduism and was conservative in that but his actions were different because he was democratic in that way."
Naqvi further said that there was an urgent need to check the mental health of leaders who speak in such a manner.
"The people of the country need to treat the mental imbalance of these leaders who are pretending to be wise and they also need to get themselves examined at a good mental hospital," Naqvi concluded.
He also came down on Muhammad Ali Jinnah and claimed that despite being a "hardcore believer in Islam," he used to eat pork. He also said that Jinnah was not a fundamentalist and just wanted to hold a high position in the government while making calls for a separate nation.