Veteran scientist PM Bhargava while returning his Padma Bhushan to the government wrote a letter to President Pranab Mukherjee in which he pointed out that Acharya Charaka had endorsed the consumption of the red meat.

“The flesh of the cow is beneficial for those suffering from the loss of flesh due to disorders caused by an excess of vayu, rhinitis, irregular fever, dry cough, fatigue, and also in cases of excessive appetite resulting from hard manual labour,” Bharghava q uoted the Charaka Samhita as saying in a Times of India report.

P M Bhargava | Source: PC-Tablet

Bhargava, who is the founder of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, returned his national award yesterday and had joined a group of scientists to sign an online petition last month.

The petition was against the “rejection of reason’ that led to the assassinations of scholar MM Kalburgi, rationalist Narendra Dabhoklar and communist Govind Pansare.

Bhargava said that in his letter he had also alleged that the BJP was functioning under the leadership of RSS which was fully committed to the ideology of Hindutva. Bhargava said he found the ideology “divisive, unreasonable and unscientific”.