Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has become the latest leader from the BJP who claims to believe cows can both inhale and exhale oxygen.
PTI reported that a video went viral on Thursday that shows Rawat praising the medicinal properties of cow milk and urine at a function in Dehradun. In the video, Rawat claims cows not only inhale oxygen but also exhale it. Rawat even claimed massaging a cow can cure breathing problems, while living in close proximity with the animal can cure tuberculosis.
An official at the chief minister's office defended Rawat's remarks, saying that he was only stating something that is a common belief in the hills of Uttarakhand. "While the medicinal values of cow milk and urine are well known, people in the hills also believe that the cow gives them oxygen," he said on condition of anonymity.
Rawat is hardly the first leader from the BJP to espouse such beliefs. In 2018, the Uttarakhand Assembly passed a resolution seeking the status of rashtra mata (mother of the nation) for the cow. Speaking during the debate, Rekha Arya, the minister for animal husbandry, claimed the cow is the only animal that inhales and also exhales oxygen.
Interestingly, Arya defended her statement when India Today reached out to her. Arya claimed the cow was the source for the “purest form” of products such as milk and ghee and was guaranteed not to have “negative energy inside her”. She attributed her statement on cows exhaling oxygen to this belief of it having no negative energy.
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In January 2017, Vasudev Devnani, then education minister in the BJP government in Rajasthan, made the same claim of cows exhaling oxygen. Devnani was speaking at a cow rehabilitation centre in Jaipur . Devnani even claimed cow dung had “anti-radioactive” properties.
Rawat is also not the first BJP leader to talk of the medicinal benefits of massaging a cow. During campaigning for the recent Lok Sabha polls, controversial BJP MP Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, who won from Bhopal, had claimed in a television interview that massaging a cow's back in a particular manner could help control blood pressure problems in people. She even claimed the use of cow urine had cured her of breast cancer.