india

Updated: Nov 05, 2019 14:47 IST

West Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh stirred a controversy on Monday by saying that intellectuals who “eat beef should eat dog meat too”.

“Few intellectuals eat beef on roads. I tell them to eat dog meat too. Their health will be fine whichever animal they eat, but why on roads? Eat at your home,” Ghosh was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Ghosh said “cow is our mother” and eating beef is a crime in India. He was addressing a crowd in Burdwan, around 100 km from Kolkata.

“We stay alive by consuming cow milk. So, if anyone misbehaves with my mother, I will treat them the way they should be treated,” he said.

Ghosh went on to make a bizarre claim that “gold is mixed in the milk” of Indian cows. “That’s why the colour of milk is slightly yellow,” he said.

The state BJP president then followed it up with another claim. Indian cows have a blood vessel, he said, that “helps in producing gold with help of sunshine.”

“The breeds of cows that we bring from abroad are not cows. They are beasts. They are not our gaumata, but our aunties. It is not good for the country if we worship such aunties,” he said.

Ghosh has often been in the news for making controversial remarks. In August, he had allegedly urged BJP workers in Bengal to beat up Trinamool Congress workers and policemen if they are targeted. He asked them not to be scared and said the party would pitch in if there is a problem. A case was registered against Ghosh.

He had earlier said that a woman who was beaten up allegedly by BJP supporters had been “let off with a light dose”.

A woman, in her late twenties, had said she wanted to meet Ghosh but wasn’t allowed to meet him. She said that she tried to give Ghosh a letter when he was getting inside his car but was dragged away by BJP workers who attacked her.