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blueNow Playing: Why is Gandhi's philosophy unpalatable?
Topic: Sex, wine and women
Every time I read a report from a multi-lateral agency like the IMF or the ADB about India's poverty status and our high infant-mortality rate, I feel like tell them ''India is like that only!'' It is our culture to have high infant mortality rate. Don't be aghast. Let me explain. The international agencies or even the UN are the modern world institutions which have completely changed the goal posts for us.
That kind of change has happened in every aspect of life as we all live a modern way of life today, but we are not given to admit it. The first parameter on which poverty and progress of a country is measured is the infant mortality rate. The most advanced countries have the lowest infant mortality rate as they have wonderful medicines, technology and systems in place to check any death of new born babies. They also have incredibly good post-natal care.
But according to Hindu culture, which is closest to nature, there has to be high infant mortality rate. That is why our society always had large number of new born babies dying, mostly out of disease and no better system of care-giving to pregnant mothers. Any baby whose health was less than normal would invariably die. There were very few medicines available to save infants who were so susceptible and vulnerable. And this situation did not improve even for children who were no longers infants.
I once bought books on Vivekanand and Ayurveda from the Delhi railway station. I read both the books during the journey to Mumbai. The Ayurveda book gave fascinating details of the origin of Ayurveda. It said that the system of medicine which is part of Hinduism is more than 5,000 years old. For all one knows it might be 10,000 years old. But how many life saving medicines have been discovered in Ayurveda? Is there any kind of R&D in Ayurveda? Have you ever heard of any new molecule or medicine discovered by the Hindu system of medicine. If a train accident takes place can we send Ayurveda doctors to save the lives? What will be the fate of the accident victims if the modern system of healthcare and trauma care are kept out of the loop?
Sometime when I see our indifference and callousness to accident victims in our daily lives I often think it is because of the Hindu culture which has no respect for life. The kind of terrorism that is bred amongst ourselves. We don't have any kind of paramedical teams in Ayurveda or our system to deal with emergency in Ayurveda. If you had a heart attack, or liver cirrhosis, or even a kidney failure would you go to a Ayurvedic doctor? In case of any medical emergency can you land up at a Ayuvedic clinic?! That is because Ayurveda never had discovered medicines for life threatening diseases. It is not that diabetes or heart problem or liver cirrhosis is a new-age disease. People have been dying of these ailments for eons but people simply died without any recourse to a medicine.
The best example is that of plague. Plague has been reported even in literature which are thousands of years old. Yet there is no cure in Ayurveda for someone stricken by the disease. Wars have been fought since man came into being on this planet. Hindu literature is mostly filled with the valour of mighty kings and their war heroics. Thousands died in the wars, yet there was not new technology to avoid the deaths or medicines to help the injured. The battlefield in those days were just like today's train accident sites, and the greviously injured simply died.
To understand the reason for such a health system which had no life-saving drug we have to understand Hinduism. Because Ayurveda is at the core of Hinduism, just as caste system is, as Gandhiji explained. In Hinduism, only the most healthy people are supposed to live. The rest are supposed to make space for healthy people. The average life span was just about 55 years, especially amongst the lower castes.
The number of people dying was equal to the number of children born.
Even though people had huge families of over ten children! How is that possible? In a recent Kaun Banega Crorepati I learnt that the population of India was just 25-crore in 1911! And hence we had bountiful resources available for the people, be it water, food, clothing, shelter, et al.
From the time known to mankind till 1911 the population was just 25-crore. Then the population grew uncontrollably. From 1911 till 2000, in about 90 years the population gre to 1-billion (100-crore)! Why? Because modern system of western medicine came to this country in 1900s.
So people produced large number of babaies and modern helathcare systems ensured no one died. Be it even life-threatening diseases. The western medicine although does not cure diseases it tried successfully to keep people alive in spite of debilitating diseases, be it diabetes, heart ailment or any organ failure.
Also, it is same reason why Ayurveda did not invent a condom. One does not need great technical knowledge to design a condom and restrict fluid exchange during sex, yet Ayurveda made no attempt to bring out a condom. First, it allowed everyone to enjoy sex to the fullest. It did not lower the pleasure by inventing a condom. After marriage the usual sex life of any couple was about ten years, and on an average the couple had that many children. But out of the ten children most died during the birth or afterwards. Diseases, war and famine ensured the death rate equalled the birth rate in those days of glorious Hinduism.
You might say, even the West discovered all these new medicines in the last 150 years and not earlier. But Hinduism was probably the most developed civilisation in the world. Look at the advancement we had made in music, dance, education, etc.even thousandsof years ago. Why did Ayurveda not keep to the same trend?
One last point, recently Outlook magazine had carried an article revealing that the gene pool in India is found to be the best in the world. That could have been only possible because of the high death mortality rate amongst the new-borns as well as people. After all, when the most healthy people produce even better children for generations together the gene pool has to become the best in the world!
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