Taste of own medicine

Congress flays CT Ravi for ‘eating fish and entering temple’

NT Correspondent

Uttara Kannada: Chickens came home to roost for the BJP as party general secretary CT Ravi was accused of eating fish and then entering a famous temple in Uttara Kannada’s Bhatkal town.

The controversy erupted when a picture of CT Ravi having a fish meal with BJP MLA from Karkala Sunil Naik, was posted on social media. Later on, it transpired that the Chikkamagaluru MLA had visited the well-known Nagabana and Karibanta Hanuman temple in Bhatkal on Wednesday.

Devotees are expected to abstain from non-vegetarian food before visiting temples according to some Hindu traditions. Cornered over the timeline of events and images on the internet, Ravi didn’t deny eating fish beforehand, but insisted that he hadn’t actually stepped inside the temple and had paid his respects to the deity from outside the gate since it was locked.

Congress, however, didn’t seem mollified as the party’s Uttara Kannada district leaders pointed out that the BJP had accused the then Chief Minister Siddaramaiah of eating fish and entering the famous Manjunatha temple in Dharmasthala back in October, 2017.

In August last year, saffron party leaders had once again accused the Leader of the Opposition (LOP) in the Assembly of entering the Basaveshwara temple in Kodlipet village of Kodagu district’s Somvarpet taluk after eating ‘naati koli saar’ (a kind of curry made from non-farmed chicken).

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Siddaramaiah, who holds that the allegations were false, slammed Ravi for “lying.” “While the video of him eating meat and going to the temple is before the whole world, CT Ravi said ‘I did eat (fish) but did not enter the temple and prayed on the road’.

This shows that he’s innately a liar. BJP leaders had spread the fake news that I had eaten fish and visited a temple and even branded me anti-Hindu. Now, all those who had spread this propaganda are swallowing their own vomit as it were,” Siddaramaiah said, adding that under normal circumstances, dietary choices and religious faith should be a personal matter and not a political circus, but given BJP’s past strategy regarding such issues, they were deserving of criticism.

Meanwhile, local devotees, including Jains, who revere the deity, expressed anger at what they saw as a disrespectful gesture. BJP’s other detractors also had a field day. Ravi, on the other hand, insisted that he was a devout Hindu and would never do what he is being accused of.

“I was born into a community which eats non-vegetarian food. I don’t hesitate to admit that. I did not enter the temple but simply prayed from outside. There are nonvegetarian gods as well,” Ravi said.