On the position of the cow Savarkar deviated sharply not just from Gandhi but from the majority of his co-religionists. During his forced stay in Ratnagiri, he came across an article in the Marathi daily
Bhaala in which the editor had posed the question “Who is a Hindu?” and answered it himself by declaring that a Hindu was “one who regards the cow as his mother”. Savarkar felt compelled to react. “If the cow’s a mother to anyone at all, it’s the bullock,” he wrote in a piece for the Marathi journal
Kirloskar. ‘Not the Hindus. If Hindutva is to sustain itself on a cow’s legs, it’ll come crashing down at the slightest hint of a crisis.’
The cow was a highly useful animal but its worship made no sense, he said, arguing that humans could possibly consider as a divine being someone with superhuman qualities but certainly not an “out-and-out animal” inferior to humankind. It was time to abandon the “naive practice” of “gau-poojan” also because it was nothing short of “buddhi hatya” or “murder of the intellect”.
https://scroll.in/article/933995/if...tll-crash-at-the-hint-of-a-crisis-vd-savarkar