If Ayurveda gives up its claim to "ancient medicine" to embrace the modern medicine, it loses its very reason to exist:
- Medical nationalism : Don't bother shutting the barn door - the horse is long gone!! The recent gazette notification on ayurvedic "surgeons " being allowed to operate has sounded a code blue in the medical community. There is a sudden concern regarding quackery (which we have made refined an art form) and the impropriety of it all. Ayurveda, the ancient Indian form of medicine evokes visions of miraculous cures in the eyes of believers and derision in the medical community. The former is due to the aforesaid miracles promised and the latter because the practitioners of modern medicine are left to pick up the pieces. While we can never be sure what ancient ayurveda was like because the mysticism surrounding it and also because the current wave of supercharged nationalism leaves no space for sensible debate. But one thing is for certain - it did not incude liberal prescription of steroids, third generation cephalosporins and frequent and expensive MRI scans! The moder