INDIANS DON'T THINK

‘ INDIANS DON’T THINK , WE KNOW’

It is time some of us made up our minds or else we as a nation will lose very heavily.

‘ INDIANS DON’T THINK , WE KNOW’

Let me explain.

The government of India wrote to the AYUSH sector[ Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani,Siddha,Homeopathy] to submit their drugs and forms of treatment to scientific scrutiny. This is something about which I have been writing for sometime now. The response of AYUSH and of my friends in the alternate remedies sector is near unanimous :

• Our drugs and treatment are beyond science

• The random double blind tests are deliberately devised to suit allopathy and not our modes of healing

• Allopathy does not know that the mind and body are closely linked but our very basis is the mind body link

• Our treatment has stood the test of time –ayurveda is several thousands of years old

• We need no research-our experience tells us that we are on the right track. Why should we test that which we know ?

Now something interesting has taken place .I have been receiving a barrage of emails from my critics and followers of alternate remedies that say as follows

1. A scientist in IISC has shown that even in extraordinarily diluted form the original drug is seen in traces—nano form .Thus is what homeopathy has been saying all along and has been pooh-poohed by scientists.Now this has been proven by science after all.

2. Scientists have demonstrated that meditation does have beneficial impact on health.

3. Indian scientists in the US have now proved that cumin seeds, saffron, methi seeds, turmeric have beneficial effects on health—these are age old remedies practised in Indian households for eons.

Now let me add that all these ‘ scientific

findings’ are preliminary and the one about about nano particles has already drawn flak from scientists .But that apart my question is this :Why is it that those who stated emphatically that ‘our treatment is beyond science’ are now wildly embracing and touting ‘ scientific research’? Has their treatment suddenly become amenable to science?

I suspect a certain ambivalence and lack of understanding of the scientific way if thinking among many of us.The statement that double blind tests suit allopathy smacks of this misunderstanding. The US pharma companies will be the first to celebrate the abandonment of clinical trials. Imagine the trillions of dollars they can make if they are allowed to unleash into the world market drugs without tests as the Ayush guys do. The ambivalence is also seen in the way whenever a scientific breakthrough occurs in the west we quickly announce that we in India had ‘always’ known about it –be it space science, mathematics, medicine, atomic physics, quantum physics etc. But when someone challenges us to scientifically prove any of our claims we quickly disassociate ourselves by saying that we are ‘beyond science’.

We are content to making a lofty claim couched in generalities and thereafter doing nothing to substantiate our claim or even flesh it out.Thus let us look at our claim about the mind body link and our contention that the west has been ignorant about this. I ask this question -- what else do we know about this link?Have we studied how this link works?What channels exist that set this link, what can we do to strengthen this link, how can this link be affected etc? While we remain smug in our ancient wisdom scientists in the west are deeply into research There is in Harvard Medical school a department for Psycho-neuro-immunology that is extensively studying the mind -body link .In the UK there is research into Psycho-neuro-endocrinology that studies the link between the mind and endocrine organs that include the pancreas that is concerned with diabetes that has claimed India as the world capital.

I can foresee that day when these western studies achieve breakthrough drugs to control major diseases using their researched understanding of the mind body link.

. We in India will then tell the world that we ‘always’ knew it for thousands of years. As for now we shall be content with generalities and in fact have done worse than that.

Scientists in a New Delhi laboratory achieved a major breakthrough-they have come up with a form of insulin injection that needs to be injected once in 4 months instead of the twice a day irritating routine that diabetics like me have to face . Is this a triumph of Indian science? It could have been but tragically these scientists have handed over their study to an American research institution for further research since India does not have the wherewithal to persist in the study.

I cannot but recollect that classic scene in the 1960’s Hollywood film THE PARTY about a bumbling Indian played to perfection by Peter Sellers.Sellers accosts an American who asks him ‘ what do you think?’Sellers replies ‘We Indians do not think. We know!”If that were to be remade today one can almost imagine Rajnikant saying ‘We Indians do not need science .We know.Mind it !’

It is a pity that Nehru’s vision of a society with its people endowed with a scientific temper lies in tatters.

K.R.RAVI

WWW.KRRAVI.COM