Netaji kin in Twitter war with Tripura guv

Neither Gandhiji nor your grandfather (Sarat Chandra Bose ) ever said goats were Mata... Please don’t peddle such rot. TATHAGATA ROY, Tripura governor

A grandnephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, on Friday, got into an argument with Tripura governor Tathagata Roy on Twitter over the former’s sarcastic remark that Mahatma Gandhi had treated the goat as a mother and asked Hindus to stop consuming goat meat.

Chandra Kumar Bose, a vicepresident of the West Bengal unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), made the comments while criticising the number of lynchings by cow vigilantes in BJPruled states across the country.

“Gandhiji used to stay at my grandfather Sarat Chandra Bose’s house at 1, Woodburn Park, in Kolkata. He demanded goat’s milk! Two goats brought to the house for this purpose. Gandhi, protector of Hindus, treated goats as Mata by consuming goats milk. Hindus stop eating goat’s meat,” Bose tweeted on Thursday.

Within hours, Roy hit back, saying “Neither Gandhiji nor your grandfather ever said goats were Mata — that’s your conclusion. Nor did Gandhiji (or anyone else) ever proclaim that he was the protector of Hindus. We Hindus regard the cow as our mother, not the goat. Please don’t peddle such rot,” quipped Roy.

Admitting the sarcasm in his tweet, Bose said on Friday, “The views are personal. The cow-centric politics and repeated lynching in BJP-ruled states are disgusting.”

However, the spat between the two continued.

“Gandhiji insisted on having goat’s milk while staying in our ancestral house — it was implied that he treated the goat as #Mata. That was it. There need not be any argument/controversy on this issue,” Bose wrote.

“What has that got to do with goat being a mother? Gandhiji’s dearest disciple Jawaharlal Nehru (and his community, Kashmiri pandits) are all meat eaters!” argued Roy.

Bose’s cousins, Sugata Bose, and Roy’s younger brother Saugata are Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MPs. While Sugata Bose was a professor of history, Saugata Roy used to teach physics in a Kolkata college.