G L Krishna

The second WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine was held in New Delhi a few days back. It is timely to remind stakeholders of how Pandit Nehru – India’s first Prime Minister, known for his spirited advocacy of scientific temper – approached policymaking vis-a-vis Ayurveda. The Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, now available online, have some interesting material on this topic.

In 1962, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the then Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, conceived an Ayurvedic research institute as a memorial to her late husband. Pandit Nehru, who was invited to inaugurate it, gladly accepted and opened the Bandaranaike Memorial Ayurvedic Research Institute at Maharagama, Sri Lanka, on 14 October 1962. The letters exchanged between the two Prime Ministers in 1961–62 reveal Nehru’s considered approach to Ayurveda.

On 17 May 1961, Nehru wrote to Bandaranaike: “Our broad approach has been that the Ayurvedic and like systems of medicine made great progress in the past, more especially in the treatment of some diseases, but, for some reason which is difficult to explain, this progress came to a standstill many hundred years ago.

“And so, while they have very valuable material with them which we should study and profit by, their broad approach is out of date. We can only profit by  what Ayurveda can teach us if we examine it in the light of modern scientific developments. This is an age of science and we can hardly go back to the pre-scientific age in considering any matter. But, I repeat, we believe that there is much in Ayurveda which is of importance to us and, therefore, should be studied.”

This is, in fact, a reiteration of the view he had stated in a note dated 22 July 1950: “There is no doubt that there are very effective remedies in Ayurvedic and the Unani systems, and, scientifically utilised, they can be of the greatest use. But it is important that the method of science be applied to them. In surgery, which is so important, there is no alternative to modern methods.”

These excerpts clearly reflect Nehru’s philosophy of critical conservatism toward India’s traditional medical systems. Traditional medicine is valuable, but only when refined by evidence-based scrutiny.

Nehru consistently warned against blind conservatism. When traditional astrologers predicted widespread natural calamities due to the rare planetary alignment known as Ashtagraha in early February 1962, he openly ridiculed the forecast. In a speech he declared: “When I speak of dangerous events, I do not want you to be under any illusion that I am talking about the Ashtagraha. I have no belief in all that.” Incidentally, the speech was delivered in Varanasi on 12 January 1962 – the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, another great figure who had cautioned Indians against superstition and astrology.

Despite Nehru’s balanced and reasonable approach to Ayurveda, the fact remains that this traditional medical system has stayed stagnant. Its theoretical framework – a significant portion of which is clearly outdated – has undergone no serious revision. Ayurvedic colleges even today teach students ancient physiological and pathological conjectures that became obsolete centuries ago, while confusingly treating modern scientific facts and these antiquated ideas as possessing equal veracity.

What accounts for this persistent intellectual ineptitude on the part of the Ayurvedic academia? Nehru himself noted in another context, writing to Bertrand Russell: “Logic and common sense do not take one very far when people’s fears and passions are aroused.” The Ayurvedic academia, by and large, passionately clings to the belief that its knowledge base is a perfected product divined in deep yogic states by ancient sages. It fears that revising ancient texts would lead to the loss of wisdom derived from higher epistemic realms! When an ancient reason-based discipline (yukti-vyāpāśraya) is thus misconstrued as an esoteric and authority-based one, it is only natural that logic and common sense can play little or no role.

The Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025-2034, adopted by the 78th World Health Assembly, sets guiding principles and four objectives: strengthen evidence, ensure safety and regulation, integrate traditional medicine into health systems, and optimize its cross-sectoral value. At least in the Ayurvedic context, it must be clearly realised that the foremost objective of strengthening evidence cannot be accomplished until its ancient classics – especially their portions containing biological information – first undergo evidence-informed revisions. Valuable insights must be retained, but the overall biology explicated in ancient treatises must be plainly acknowledged to be obsolete. The mansion of evidence-based Ayurveda cannot be built on the dilapidated foundations of its primitive, unevidenced biology.

G L Krishna is an Ayurvedic physician and researcher. He is currently associated with the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru, India.

Views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Confluence, its editorial board or the Academy.