Indian cytogeneticist, academic, Distinguished Professor of Zoology, and the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB) Distinguished Fellow at the Banaras Hindu University
Ayurveda, the ancient holistic way of maintaining healthy and happy life, has come out of last millennium’s lean phase. However, despite the improved popularity, it continues to be viewed to be based more on “faith” than on rational scientific underpinnings. This unfortunate situation stems largely from the lack of interactions between scientific and Ayurvedic communities. Ayurvedic practitioners have largely refrained from attempting to understand the bases of classical Ayurvedic texts in the light of modern biological, chemical and physical sciences. On the other hand, most of the “scientific” studies on Ayurvedic formulations have applied the reductionist approach of identifying the “active principle”, which is counter to the holistic approach in Ayurveda.
Modern medicine has roots in the diverse traditional health-care systems. Yet, practitioners of modern and traditional medical systems often view each other with suspicion and contempt because of the perceived differences in their underlying approaches and philosophies. There is a strong need to find commonalities in their languages and philosophies. While the practitioners of Ayurveda need to come out of their "shell" and begin to understand human biology as understood today, the scientists and modern medicine practitioners need to appreciate the holistic approach of Ayurvedic health-care system to re-interpret those principles in our current understanding of sciences,
