“We have reasons to believe that there is a larger conspiracy against Ayurved. As part of that conspiracy, Patanjali is being accused of making over-stated and even false claims about the good effects of Ayurved on victims of different and difficult ailments. We hold the judiciary in highest respect and are willing to submit ourselves to any scrutiny of our claims. We have conducted scientific research in our certified laboratories and various international journals have published our research papers claiming success in real-life as well as clinical trials. We have never violated any rule, any law, and any provision of the Constitution. If we are found guilty of anything like that, you may give us any punishment -- which may even be a death sentence. ...” - The gist of the statement of Yog Guru Swami Ramdev at a press conference.

 

THIS assertion from Swami Ramdev is the latest in the past few years. Making a strong case for Ayurved and Yog as an integrated method of achieving higher levels of human wellness, he has been engaged in a hard-fought battle against various forces that seem determined to undermine the reality of the two Indic sciences. He has often asserted, as he did this time as well, that modern medicine has its own limitations but Ayurved has definitive cure for various ailments even of very serious kind. And he assures that his claims have the basis of science and modern research, besides the ancient textual and practical evidence of cure with the help of Ayurved and Yog. He suspects that a conspiracy is being operated against Ayurved by maligning it. The purpose here is not to take sides in the legal debate that may ensue soon as regards the accusation of false claims by Patanjali led by Swami Ramdev. May that issue be decided by the honourable courts at any level. But it is important that Ayurved as a science be understood in the complete perspective beyond any politicised narrative. In Indian knowledge system, Ayurved is described as an UpVed -- that is an extension of the Vedic thought-process, sort of a sub-text of the Ved. Countless thousands of years ago, as recorded history shows, the world’s biggest research project sought to unravel the mysteries of human body and human wellness.

 

That research was carried out for countless hundreds of years -- in the process giving rise to what came to known as Ayurved. It is common knowledge that the emergence of Ayurved as a successful therapy for cures of various ailments, in the past few decades, has threatened the powerful pharmaceutical lobby not just in India but also elsewhere in the world. It is believed -- and rightly so -- that this powerful lobby, plush with money and supported by different political and commercial interests, has been trying its level best to malign Ayurved as a no-therapy, in the sense an unscientific quackery that has no scientific support and evidence-based inference. It is important to note that Ayurved has been helping countless lakhs of people in having their ailments cured with the help of ayurvedic medicine and therapy. Some of the cures that Ayurved has achieved are simply amazing. The larger Indian society has absolutely amazing numbers of people cured completely with the help of ayurvedic treatment. It must be stated here that practitioners of modern medicine have often opposed Ayurved as an unscientific method. They claim that there is no cure at all for certain ailments even in modern medicine. And therefore, as their claim goes, Ayurved, too, does not have any cure for those.

 

This is the point of contention, so to say. The practitioners and believers of Ayurved ask a simple question: How can anybody equate Ayurved with modern medicine -- when modern medicine has a big chunk of synthetic drugs while Ayurved depends only on natural inputs such as herbs and non-chemical inputs? Let alone how Swami Ramdev deals with the challenge posed to his Patanjali organisations by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and its members, but the substance in the question the supporters of Ayurved ask cannot be denied. For, Ayurved has an altogether different approach to healthcare, based on an altogether different understanding of how the human body operates. This approach demarcates Ayurved as a science completely different from modern medicine in general and Allopathy in particular. Those who follow Ayurved and its treatment have found that this Indic science of wellness has its own credibility proved over countless centuries of actual, clinical experience. Lakhs and lakhs of people have reported cure from different ailments with the help of ayurvedic treatment. Can that evidence be denied? -- is the basic question that the larger society must answer -- beyond the scope of the battle of wits being witnessed currently by the country. The scope of this question is way beyond the scope of any legal battle. (To be continued)