Note on Code Swaraj
In my reading on traditional knowledge, I came across one more anecdote that resonated with me. I was reading Doctoring Traditions, a fascinating book about the modernization of Ayurvedic practice in Bengal at the turn of the 19th century. In the early part of the last century, as western medical education became more widespread, many of the new class of daktaris were also Ayurvedic practitioners. They adopted modern tools, such as thermometers, microscopes, and stopwatches. New hospitals were being constructed. Pharmacies became bigger and more centralized.
In the middle of all this, new universities and colleges devoted to the teaching of medicine were being opened. When the new Astanga Ayurveda College was being dedicated with great fanfare, they invited Gandhi to lay the cornerstone.
Gandhi, for reasons of his own, accepted the invitation. He was welcomed as the chief guest with great fanfare and asked to make a few remarks. He then proceeded to trash the whole enterprise! You can read his speech of May 6, 1925 in Volume 27 of the Collected Works on page 42. Gandhi went on at length about how he felt big hospitals and fancy dispensaries were simply making things worse not better. He said that Ayurvedic physicians lacked sanity. They lacked humility. And that was just the beginning. He totally tore into the roots of the issue as only Gandhi-ji could.
After Gandhi left there was turmoil. The invitation committee wrote to him and asked him to retract his words. He refused. I sent the speech to Sam Pitroda, and he wrote me back saying he agreed with Gandhi on many points. Sam pointed out that what Gandhi-ji was really saying was that society should focus on prevention, and not on the growth of doctors, medicines, and hospitals as a business enterprise. Gandhi-ji also made the point that thinking you have all the answers is always a mistake and he felt that many of the modern practitioners felt they had all the answers in Ayurveda and lacked humility and faith in the local knowledge of ordinary people.
These two anecdotes illustrate to me why India is the place to start democratizing information and decolonizing. The idea that information must be made available is deeply engrained in Indian history and in the modern democratic framework of the Republic. High drug prices from the west, patents on traditional knowledge, and restricted access to the full scientific corpus are all symbols people recognize and understand.
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