“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any reason, but because they are not already common.”

John Locke.



Culture is difficult to define. There would be some that would disagree with any watertight definition, in any case. However, a working definition would suffice for the purposes of this study. The oft quoted definition is “that culture is something one does when one has forgotten all that one has studied in school or college”. I would prefer a personal definition. Culture is all that one does when no one is looking! India has had a hoary culture even when most of the west was still roaming the forests. Voltaire himself had admitted this in the following statement.



“I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity.”

-Voltaire



Culture of any land is depicted in the epics of the land. Let us analyze two of our epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharatha with one of theirs Homer’s Iliad. While there are many similarities, there are two distinct cultural differences worth noting. While all the three epics are spun around a major war - Lankan, Kurukshetra and the Trojan War – all the wars were basically fought because of women – Sita, Droupadi and Helen.



Whereas both Sita and Droupadi went back to their husbands after the war for a happy reunion, Helen decamped with the enemy. Watch out for the leading western epidemics of suicide and divorce, in contrast to their absence (almost) in our culture although, we are trying to catch up with the West lately even in those two areas. Likewise, in the area of authenticity and ethical standards, our culture was totally different. Karna, the great hero of Mahabharata, was the dearest friend of Duryodhana, the evil king. Even after realizing his real identity and biological kinship with the Pandavas, Karna stood steadfast like a rock with Duryodhana until death did them apart. Compare that with Agamemnon, who was the closest allay of the hero of the Trojan War, Achilles. At one stage in the war Agamemnon attempted to desert his friend for the sake of a beautiful damsel, Baysies and, even, planned to annihilate Achilles! Authenticity is the root of Indian culture. The word “aarya” is derived from the etymological root meaning, “cultured”; ”arya” being agriculture. “Anaarya” is someone who is uncultured.



Sri Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavadgita, when the latter keeps his weapon “Gaandiva” down and refuses to fight and kill his own kith and kin: “Oh, Partha, you would be an ”anaarya”, (uncultured man), akeerthipara (infamous) and aswargeeya (not going to heaven after death) by this act. You are only an excuse for them to die, anyway. (Nimitha maathram). Fight you must, as it is your duty. The result is not in your hands. What a great culture we have inherited?



“Karmanye Vaadhikaarasth,

Ma Phaleshu khadaachana”



Let me now define science – a thoroughly misunderstood word. The original Greek root sciere = knowledge, does not define science completely. “Science is measurement and measurement is science” of Mary Curie, no longer holds water, as elegantly shown by Werner Heisenberg in his Uncertainty Principle” in 1925 (pq ≠ qp). All experiments are done using only the five senses of the scientist, thereby reducing all measurements subject to the “eye of the beholder” as demonstrated by Erwin Schrodinger in his “Cat Hypothesis” in 1932. The Sanskrit etymology root of the word science is “Ski” which means to ‘cut into”. I think this definition conveys it all. Western Science of quantum particle physics comes very close to the Indian science of holism (Poornam). Aakaasha or space is the container of all things in this universe. Prajnanam, the ultimate reality – Brahman, universal consciousness, is the content. This concept of the container with its content is the present effort (Unified Field Theory) by western scientists to try and marry their conventional physics of Newton and Einstein to that of quantum cooks, like Paul Dirac, Neils Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Max Bohm and their gang.



While all these changes are going on almost from the early part of the last century in physics (1925 AD), medical science, which got the label of science in the European universities only in the twelfth century, remains still mired in the conventional physics of deterministic predictability and the Cartesian reductionist model. While the whole world of quantum physics has undergone one full circle to go back to pre-Descartes era of Blaise Pascal’s “doctrine of probabilities”, medicine still hangs on to the skirt strings of reductionism. Indian medicine is securely grounded in the law of probabilities, as always.



In fact, five thousand years ago the origin of modern medicine was based mostly on the Indian textbooks taken to Greece by Alexander’s army (India in Greece by E.Pococke, 1832). Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, literally echoed the sentiments of Charaka. (Ancient Indian Wisdom by Kutumbiah, 1936 – Orient Longman, Madras). The dictum used to be “cure rarely, comfort mostly, but console always”. In the last fifty odd years medical science, riding piggyback on modern technology, has gone deep into reductionist science of predictability.



The reasons are not far to seek. The concept that “there is a pill for every ill” – even an imagined ill, is a very profitable business for the drug and technology industries. Established illnesses treatment is good but, creating newer illnesses (Selling Sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease mongering: British Medical Journal 2003; 324: 886-891 April 13th 2003.), in otherwise healthy individuals, is very attractive! The whole new industry of “routine screening” of the healthy in society would have the enormous catch of nearly six billion people. It would also net billions of dollars in cash and publicity for the players. Use of technology, (interventional medicine) to reset imaginary alterations inside the human system (healthy people) with the claim that the altered state of man would hold good as time evolves, following the linear deterministic predictability models, to postpone death and prevent illness, is a big success story for the drug and technology lobbies! This is the real medical claptrap for the gullible. This concept (doctor-thinks-you-have-a-disease syndrome), many a time, produces epidemics of “patient-thinks-he-has-a-disease” syndromes in hypochondriacs.



The lay man will not understand the scientific fallacy in this medical claptrap. Time evolution in man (dynamic system) is not linear. One can not predict the future of any man, well or ill, by studying a few known parameters or changing those parameters by interventions. The future is unpredictable. Most such efforts by the medical world have come to grief. Lowering borderline “raised” blood pressures, lowering “elevated” sugar levels in apparently healthy people, using expensive drugs and surgery in the fond hope of preventing future onset of heart failure and/or stroke in those without any symptoms, as also going against nature to replace female sex hormones after menopause (HRT), have all been shown to be dangerous in the long run although, on short term basis, those dangers might not come to light through the conventional randomized controlled studies, touted to be the last word in medical science!





“The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.”

Barry Commoner.



Time and again modern medical science has demonstrated that man’s attempt to defeat Nature does not succeed. But when man tries to assist Nature’s efforts to keep human beings healthy as long as they live and in treating symptomatic illnesses, has been met with success in alleviating pain (comfort mostly) and even in preventing premature death. Such efforts have also made death bearable and dignified (console always). Go with Nature to succeed in human affairs. This is the essence of the Indian culture where we treat Nature as our mother. The present western medical science tries to control nature by force and abuse nature to win over illnesses. I am reminded of what Chakravarthi Rajgopalachari wrote to the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, on his plans to have Bakra dam, following the example of Abdul Gamel Nasser’s Aswan Dam. Nehru and his followers had quickly forgotten Mahatma Gandhi’s advice for micro-economy through village development. They preferred the western model, led by Scheumacher, of macro-economies of major projects. The west had its vested interests in these areas, anyway. Rajgopalachari wrote, “My dear Jawahar, if you treat nature as your mother she will feed you and nurture you, while, on the contrary, if you abuse nature as your mistress, she would kick you in the teeth!” This prophecy has come true! It is sad that the father of macroeconomics, Scheumacher himself, has now realized his folly and has penned a beautiful book “Small is Beautiful.” He lives in a small home in his own world on the outskirts of London.



Indian medical wisdom, Ayurveda, the mother of most medical wisdoms including modern medicine, follows the dictum of “go with Nature to keep the well healthy” as long as possible to try and postpone illness and pain.



Swasthasya Swastha Rakshitham

(keep the healthy well)



The thrust in Ayurvedic holism is to boost the inbuilt immune system to keep man healthy as long as possible and not to use drugs in healthy people to postpone diseases, as is done in modern medical reductionism. The key to do this is to keep ‘praana’, the breath, in good shape – ‘praanaayaama’. Modern quantum physics now agrees with this concept. The concept of ‘mode-locking’ is exactly the same as the breath – the most dominant rhythm – capable of ‘mode – locking’ and controlling all the major rhythms of the normal human body (circadian – once in 24 hours and ultradian – many times in 24 hours) under its belt. There is one rhythm, however, which occurs once in a month – the menstrual cycle – the infradien rhythm that does not come under the control of praana, the breath. This was known to Ayurveda thousands of years ago but was unknown to modern medical science up until 2002 AD.



“Kujendu Hetu Prathimaasaarthavan”

(Moon’s effect causes the woman to blood once in 28 days)



avers Ayurveda. The recent findings in non-linear physiology of fractals and chaos, has shown that the stimulus for the endocrine orchestra that maintains the infradien rhythm, gets its original stimulus to the cortical brain cells through the gravitational pull of the moon! Once again modern physiology is unraveling the time – honoured secrets of Ayurveda. Immune boosters are methods elaborated in Ayurveda to help us fight diseases. They are becoming popular these days. The leading methods are meditation, satvik diet (vegetarian natural foods), yoga, praanayama, regular exercise and panchakarma. Even radiation damage to the body could be undone by these methods. One powerful immune booster that the Indian Council of Scientific Research has patented recently comes from the original Ayurvedic ‘panchagavya’.



“What we really mean by originality is the modification of ideas.”

Carlos Fuentes.



Modern medicine, on the contrary, believes in killing germs and attacking illnesses with powerful germ-killers called anti-biotics. Most of the latter, however, have led to the birth of deadly resistant germs that are threatening mankind now. The concept of immunity did not blossom well up until 1981 when AIDS virus killed lots of white homosexuals. Until then the fallacious Koch’s postulates kept the drug industry till moving. Now we are thinking of using immune modulators in disease control.



“The first wealth is health.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson



In short, modern medical culture of conquering Nature has failed. It is slowly looking to Eastern wisdom of keeping the healthy well. The game of inventing new diseases has reached its zenith in an American company trying to invent “Female Impotence” with the help of six US Urologists (thought leaders) has been now exposed. The company wanted to increase their profit 100 per cent by selling Viagra to all women for an imaginary female impotence. Similarly the hoax of healthy screening and intervention based on linear science was shown to be faulty after a recent audit in Israel. Doctors there went on strike for three months, but looked after acute emergencies. They did not intervene in any one otherwise. Doctors came back to work as usual on the 4th month. Audits now show that the death and disability rates plummeted remarkably during those three months of doctors’ strike. Similarly, long term audits of drug treatment of apparently healthy people with raised blood pressure and sugar also did more harm than good. These drugs would help people who are suffering-the symptomatic illnesses. Go with nature is the essence Indian culture, which seems to be healthier for the ailing western medical science as well.



“Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.”

William Wordsworth.