VD Savarkar criticised cow worship, saw them only as animals, grandnephew tells court

Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar regarded cows only as animals and criticised the idea of worshipping them, his grandnephew Satyaki Savarkar acknowledged in a Pune court on Tuesday, Live Law reported.

VD Savarkar believed that to regard an animal as a deity “is an insult not merely to humanity but to the very concept of divinity”, his grandnephew Satyaki Savarkar said during his cross-examination before a special MP/MLA court in a criminal defamation trial against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

During the examination, Gandhi’s counsel brought a book titled Vigyan-Nishtha Nibandha or Essays based on Scientific Reasoning, Live Law reported. Satyaki Savarkar admitted that the book was written by his granduncle.

Satyaki Savarkar also acknowledged that the Hindutva leader had written that a cow was as useful to humankind as a dog, horse or donkey and, like those animals, should be protected rather than worshipped.

“The animal becomes a god, while a godlike human being is treated as an animal,” VD Savarkar had written. “What better example can there be of how, under the stamp of religion, sheer inconsistency, irrationality, and folly come to appear as wisdom, virtue, and sanctity, and how human reason itself is destroyed?”

Gandhi’s counsel further referred to a passage from the book in which VD Savarkar wrote that when a cow ceases to...

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