Second World Ayurveda Congress (Theme: Ayurveda for the Future)—Inaugural Address: Part I

In November 2006, the Second World Ayurveda Congress was held at the University of Pune, often known as the ‘Oxford of the East’. For the Congress to be held alongside the University’s hallowed halls speaks much for the progress, Ayurveda has made in recent decades, particularly as it was housed just behind the main University administration building, once the summer residence of British Viceroys, including Ayurveda’s most ruthless persecutor, Lord Macaulay. The choice of Pune was particularly due to the University’s Professor of Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Professor Bhushan Patwardhan, also an editorial board member of eCAM who did much to organize the event. The last 5 years, in particular, have seen a sea change in Ayurveda’s national profile. India’s ancient medical system has slowly grown through a long period of rehabilitation from the depressed state in which it was left at independence by British antipathy. Although over half British materia medica at the time were of South Asian origin, Ayureda’s value as a source of national wealth and wisdom, and more importantly of genuine medical insight and expertise, have only recently come to be officially acknowledged by India’s academic community. Today, leaders from the nation’s medical and scientific communities are working to promote research and scientific understanding of Ayurveda in the most up to date terms. No one has done more to promote the new surge of scientific interest in Ayurveda than the Director-General of India’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Dr R. A. Mashelkar. Beginning in 2003-2004, he started over 25 research programs at CSIR research institutes around India, under the aegis of his ‘Golden Triangle’ initiative. Not unnaturally, Professor Mashelkar was asked to deliver the Congress’s inaugural address, and set the tone for the new collaboration between modern science and ancient wisdom. His speech has been divided into three parts, which will be printed in successive issues of eCAM, Volume 5. The following is an almost verbatim account of the first part—Editors.