India’s death toll due to Covid-19 has crossed three lakh now. As on Sunday, the death count had reached 303,720. Nearly half of them, close to 1.5 lakh deaths, have happened during the second wave, starting from the second week of February. An overwhelming number of these, more than 1.4 lakh deaths, have been reported in the seven weeks after March.
Amid this, an extremely controversial video of Swami Ramdev is taking tours of the internet in which, the Yoga guru alleged that, “Allopathy is a stupid and diwaliya science”. Further, in the same video, Ramdev also claimed that “lakhs and lakhs of people died because of administering allopathic medicines rather than a shortage of oxygen” during the Covid-19 crisis.
After Ramdev’s hasty comment on calling allopathy ‘stupid science’ the video, triggered a very strong response from the Indian Medical Association. He retracted his statements once Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan stepped in but continued to challenge the belief in allopathy. However, things escalated to such a point that IMA General Secretary Dr Jayesh M Lele asked the yoga guru to “shut up” during a television discussion.
Dr Lele also criticised Ramdev for keeping Coronil — Patanjali Ayurved’s immunity booster kit in the video frame during the interview with Aaj Tak. “Why are you advertising Coronil, remove it from the view, firstly,” said Dr Lele. As Dr Lele continued to critique Ramdev, the latter interrupted in protestation. “Aap chup baithiye, you keep quiet,” he said.
When the yoga guru interrupted for the second time, an irate Dr Lele said, “You keep quiet. You don’t speak when I am speaking.” “Who asked you to comment on allopathy? Did we ask you?” said Dr Lele. Infuriated at this situation, he called Ramdev’s comments on people dying after taking allopathic medicines “nonsense” and said that he is being laughed at globally. “How much have you studied about allopathy and how much do you know?” he asked.
On Monday evening, the yoga guru withdrew his statement but posed 25 questions to IMA and the pharmaceutical industry. He asked if allopathy has delivered treatments for hypertension, and Type-1 and Type-2 diabetes. Ramdev asked if the pharma industry has a solution for arthritis, colitis, thyroid. He asked if allopathy had medicines for fatty liver and liver cirrhosis. “After All, allopathy is now 200 years old,” he added. Ramdev asked if the pharma industry has a solution to reverse heart blockage, and for management of cholesterol. “Does the pharma industry have treatment for migraine or treatment for constipation,” he asked. The yoga guru asked if allopathy has any painless cure for infertility and to reverse ageing process.
“Doctors should not fall ill at all if allopathy is all powerful and ‘sarvagun sampanna’ (with all good qualities),” he said. In a letter to Vardhan, Ramdev said that he was not against modern medicine and stated that what was seen in the video was him reading out a WhatsApp message. He said if someone points out flaws in a branch of treatment then it should not be seen as an attack and definitely not as opposition to science. “One should always introspect. Similarly, allopathic doctors should also refrain from referring to Ayurveda and yoga as ‘pseudo-science’, as even that hurts the sentiments of many,” he said.
It all began when the video went viral on social media over the weekend. The yoga guru said that medicines like Remdesivir and Favipiravir that were approved by the Drugs Controller General of India for COVID-19 treatment has failed. “Lakhs of patients have died because of allopathic medicines rather than a shortage of oxygen,”
The IMA stated that Ramdev should be prosecuted for his statements. “The Union health minister who himself is a practicing modern medicine allopathic postgraduate and head of this ministry, should either accept the challenge and accusation of this gentleman and dissolve the modern medical facility or boldly face and prosecute the person for his words of arson on the sovereignty of the country and book him under the Epidemic Act to save millions of people from such unscientific utterances,” the IMA said.
The conflict between Allopathy and Ayurveda is very old. It is believed that the use of modern medicine in India i.e. Allopathy started in the 16th century. At that time there were no doctors. Rather Acharya, Vaidya, Rishi and Hakim used to treat people and the methods of treatment were also quite different.
It is said that during that time millions of people died due to numerous diseases spread. It was only due to these diseases that Allopathy found its way into our country and gained people’s trust. Since then the conflict between Ayurveda and Allopathy started, which continues till today.
