New Delhi, Oct 3 (IANS): BJP National General Secretary Tarun Chugh on Thursday hit out at Karnataka's Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao for calling Vinayak Savarkar a 'beef eater' and said he was always against the cow slaughter.

Talking to IANS, Chugh said, "It is unfortunate, harshly condemnable, and insulting for us. Congress has always insulted the freedom fighters, the brave soldiers and the security forces of our country. And whatever they are saying now is a great insult to people like Savarkar who sacrificed everything for the country. He is being defamed several times."

"This is condemnable and I think making a statement against such a great revolutionary is like spitting on the moon and those people speaking who have never spent even a single day in the prison of Kala Pani are going against that person who was sentenced to Kala Pani," he added.

On Wednesday, Karnataka Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao, during a book launch event, 'Gandhi's Assassin: The Making of Nathuram Godse and His Idea of India', 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 but his actions were different because he was democratic."

Rao also commented on Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who he claimed represented another extreme.

Rao said that Jinnah was never a hard-core Islamist, with some claiming that he even ate pork. Gundu Rao said, “Jinnah became an icon for Muslims. He was never a fundamentalist, but Savarkar was.”