Ayurveda and the Burden of Misunderstanding
In recent years, a curious consistency has emerged across editorials, opinion columns, and news reports from some of India’s most influential publications. Ayurveda—an indigenous system of medicine with centuries of civilizational continuity—is increasingly portrayed not just as outdated, but as dangerous, pseudoscientific, and ideologically suspect. While scrutiny of any knowledge system is welcome in a modern democracy, what is unfolding today goes beyond critique. It is an intellectual pattern—an erosion of nuance in favor of narrative, of questioning replaced by condescension. This article is not an emotional defence of Ayurveda. It is a plea for fair epistemological treatment—a reminder that India’s pluralistic legacy of knowledge deserves a pluralistic framework of engagement. A System Not Made for the Benchmarks You Set Modern biomedicine and Ayurveda do not operate on the same foundational assumptions. To demand that Ayurveda validate its every concept through rando...
