Indian Culture I

The course means to introduce the students to the peculiar Indian healthcare system, explaining how and why it reflects India's great cultural, political, social and economic diversity. Indian plural system of health knowledge and practice, besides Western biomedicine or allopathy and folk or popular medicine, includes seven officially recognized schools of medicine that make Indian healthcare system unique. AYUSH is the current official acronym representing six of the seven official, traditional systems, that is to say Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy, each of them having its empirical base of codified, textual knowledge. While outside India they are labelled as alternative medicine, in contemporary India they are considered to be establishment medicine, like Western biomedicine or allopathy. Since medical systems emit both medical messages and meta medical messages, treating ailments as well as expressing identities, through the introduction to Indian traditional schools of medicine, the history as well as the culture and society of India will be approached. Indian medical traditions far from being static, have in fact been constantly evolving and changing according to important transformers such as the state, the market, modern science and society. After a brief introduction to the history and the features of contemporary India's healthcare system, the course will deal with two of the AYUSH medical schools: Ayurveda and Yoga. To start with, a close examination of Ayurveda's and Yoga's basic principles, their development through the centuries, their religious frame and spiritual implications will be conducted. Later, it will be explained how and when Ayurveda acquired, especially in Western perception, the status of Indian classical medicine and came to be considered a sort of synonym, an equivalent of Indian traditional medicine. With regard to Yoga, the course will focus on its medicalization: Yoga has in fact migrated from being a religious and spiritual practice and school of thought, deeply rooted in Hindu religious tradition, to becoming part of a globally accepted, transnational healthcare regime. Detached from its traditional cultural and religious roots and transplanted into a secular landscape, its practice no longer requires that its participants engage in a religious or cultural life. A discussion on these topics will be encouraged during the course classes. Besides outlining the basic principles, the past and the present of Yoga and Ayurveda, the course will also put under close scrutiny the concepts of body, health and illnes as elaborated and perceived by Indian culture and society. Particular attention will be paid to the following topics addressed according to a legal point of view: freedom of medical choice, health promotion and disease prevention, gender recognition and gender rights protection as implemented and governed by Indian Law and Indian current law system.