LET AYURVEDA DIE

Let Ayurveda Die the Second Death: A Case for Ending the Charade

“If you don’t remember somebody out loud, they die twice.”

A Note to the Reader

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are deeply personal and controversial reflections based on over 25 years of experience within the Ayurveda education, practice, and research ecosystem. They are not written to hurt, blame, or demean any individual, institution, or organization, but to express a painful realization that has emerged from decades of witnessing systemic failure.

If these words shock you, good. Sometimes shock is necessary. If they anger you, channel that anger into proving me wrong with action, not rhetoric. If they resonate with despair you’ve been afraid to voice, know that you’re not alone in that darkness.

This article proposes something radical: perhaps the kindest thing we can do for Ayurveda is to let it die completely rather than perpetuate this undead existence. It is written not from hate but from exhausted love—the kind of love that must sometimes advocate for mercy over prolonged suffering.

Note on Authorship: This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence, using AI as a collaborative tool to articulate a position that many think but few dare to express. The despair, frustration, and controversial conclusions are authentically mine; the articulation has been enhanced through AI collaboration.

The Uncomfortable Thesis: Some Things Should Die

I’ve spent 25 years fighting for Ayurveda. Teaching, practicing, researching, advocating, building institutions, challenging compromises, demanding standards. I’ve been the voice crying in the wilderness, insisting that authentic Ayurveda matters, that we can restore quality, that the next generation will be better.

I was wrong.

It’s time to stop fighting. Time to stop pretending. Time to acknowledge that Ayurveda as a meaningful healthcare system, educational tradition, and research science is already dead—and it’s time to let it die the second death rather than perpetuate this zombie existence.

The quote says if you don’t remember someone out loud, they die twice. But there’s a question no one asks: What if the second death is actually mercy? What if some things should be allowed to die completely rather than existing as hollow shells bearing familiar names but containing nothing of their original essence?

Ayurveda has died its first death. And I’ve come to believe we should stop remembering it out loud, should stop the artificial respiration, should let the second death come and finally end this prolonged suffering.

Why I’ve Changed My Mind: The Evidence Is Overwhelming

The Career Death Sentence: No Future in Clinical Practice

Let me be brutally honest about what I tell young people who ask about Ayurveda as a career: Don’t.

The economic reality is devastating:

After spending 5.5 years earning a BAMS degree, the average starting salary for an Ayurvedic physician in clinical practice is ₹15,000-25,000 per month—if you can find a position at all. Compare this to:

  • Software engineers: ₹40,000-80,000 starting
  • Modern medicine physicians: ₹50,000-100,000+ starting
  • Even diploma nurses often earn more than BAMS graduates

The employment landscape is barren:

  • Government positions are few and politically allocated
  • Private hospitals rarely hire Ayurvedic physicians
  • Starting your own practice requires capital most graduates don’t have
  • Even if you open a clinic, patient volume is typically insufficient for survival
  • Corporate Ayurveda positions pay poorly and demand compromise

The brutal mathematics:

A BAMS education costs ₹20-30 lakhs (depending on institution). The return on investment is catastrophic. Students would be financially better off learning a trade, getting a basic degree and working in any other field, or even skipping higher education entirely.

Why am I perpetuating a system that leads bright young people into economic dead ends? How is this ethical?

The Student Quality Crisis: 110 Marks Out of 720

Here’s a fact that should mortify every Ayurvedic educator: Students can score as low as 110-150 marks out of a possible 720 in NEET and still secure admission in BAMS programs.

Let that sink in. 15-21% correct answers. Random guessing would yield approximately 25%. These students are literally performing worse than chance.

What this means in practice:

  • Students who couldn’t clear even basic science literacy entering medical education
  • Classrooms filled with people who don’t want to be there—they’re MBBS rejects using BAMS as a backup
  • Zero passion, zero commitment, zero intellectual curiosity
  • Faculty teaching students who fundamentally don’t care about the subject

I’ve taught these students. I’ve watched their eyes glaze over when discussing Tridosha theory. I’ve seen them copy assignments from seniors without reading them. I’ve witnessed them memorizing just enough to pass exams, then immediately forgetting everything.

The uncomfortable question: What’s the point of preserving Ayurveda if the people we’re training to carry it forward don’t want it, don’t understand it, and will abandon it the moment they have alternatives?

We’re not educating future Ayurvedic physicians—we’re providing consolation prizes to people who failed to get into real medicine.

The Education Catastrophe: Teaching as Lost Art

I remember when teaching Ayurveda was a calling. Faculty members were scholars who had dedicated their lives to understanding classical texts, refining clinical skills, and inspiring students.

That world is dead.

Today’s faculty reality:

  • Many cannot read Sanskrit with fluency
  • Most haven’t studied original texts beyond exam requirements
  • Clinical experience is minimal or non-existent
  • Research output is embarrassing
  • Teaching is purely for salary, not passion
  • Attendance is irregular, preparation is minimal
  • The same outdated notes recycled for decades

Why this happened:

  • Qualified scholars can earn more elsewhere
  • Teaching positions pay poorly
  • Institutional respect for faculty is non-existent
  • Students don’t respect teachers because teachers aren’t respectable
  • The system rewards political connections over competence
  • There’s no peer accountability or quality control

I watch colleagues go through the motions—showing up, reading from notes, leaving. No engagement, no innovation, no inspiration. Teaching has become what people do when they can’t do anything else.

And I’ve become one of them. The passion has leaked out slowly, replaced by exhaustion and resignation. Why prepare excellent lectures for students who won’t listen? Why develop innovative teaching methods for institutions that don’t care?

The art of teaching Ayurveda is dying, and honestly, I’m not sure it deserves to survive.

The Research Joke: Publishing Without Progress

Ayurvedic research is a theater of the absurd—we publish papers that no one reads, validating herbs everyone already knows work, using methodologies that would embarrass undergraduate statistics students.

The numbers tell the story:

  • Thousands of PhDs awarded annually in Ayurveda
  • Less than 1% of dissertation research ever impacts clinical practice
  • Sample sizes routinely under 50 patients for clinical trials
  • Statistical significance cherry-picked through methodological gymnastics
  • “Novel findings” that repeat what classical texts documented millennia ago
  • No replication studies, no meta-analyses worth the name, no systematic knowledge building

The quality crisis:

I’ve reviewed PhD theses that:

  • Misapply basic statistical tests
  • Draw conclusions unsupported by their own data
  • Plagiarize extensively (including from English translations of texts they claim to have studied in Sanskrit)
  • Use research methodology they don’t understand
  • Make clinical claims based on laughably small samples

The institutional complicity:

Universities award PhDs to maintain graduation statistics. Guides accept students for additional income. Scholars become guides before they’re scholars themselves. The entire system exists to credential people, not to advance knowledge.

And the worst part? I’ve been part of it. I’ve supervised research I knew was mediocre. I’ve sat on committees that approved theses that shouldn’t have passed. I’ve written recommendations for papers I knew were flawed.

Why? Because refusing to participate doesn’t improve the system—it just makes you unemployable within it.

If this is what Ayurvedic research has become, perhaps we should stop pretending it’s research at all.

The Allopathy Preference: Students Vote With Their Feet

Here’s what BAMS students actually want:

  • Not Ayurveda. They want MBBS seats they couldn’t get.
  • Modern medicine training so they can practice “real medicine”
  • Prescription rights for allopathic drugs
  • Respect that comes with being a “doctor” (which Ayurvedic physicians don’t receive)
  • Income potential that Ayurveda cannot provide

The behaviors reveal the truth:

  • Students are more interested in pharmacology than Dravyaguna
  • They memorize modern medicine disease classifications better than Ayurvedic Nidana
  • They flock to additional certifications in modern diagnostics and treatment
  • After graduation, most prescribe primarily allopathic medicines with token Ayurvedic additions
  • Given a choice, they’d abandon Ayurveda entirely

The institutional response?

Rather than demanding commitment to Ayurveda, institutions are increasingly incorporating more modern medicine into curricula—trying to make BAMS degrees more “marketable” by making them less Ayurvedic.

We’re training allopathic practitioners who happen to have BAMS degrees. And everyone—students, faculty, institutions, even patients—seems fine with this.

If students don’t want to learn Ayurveda, practitioners don’t want to practice it, and patients prefer modern medicine, why are we forcing this system to continue?

The PG Irrelevance: Advanced Degrees in Mediocrity

Postgraduate Ayurvedic education should represent the pinnacle of scholarship—deep specialization, sophisticated research, clinical mastery.

Instead, it’s become:

  • A way to delay unemployment for three more years
  • A requirement for teaching positions no one wants
  • An exercise in producing dissertations no one will read
  • A credential that doesn’t improve clinical competence or career prospects

The PG reality I witness:

Students enter MD/MS programs with:

  • No genuine interest in specialization
  • No research aptitude or training
  • No clinical passion
  • No intention of practicing after graduation

They spend three years:

  • Attending classes irregularly
  • Copying literature reviews from previous theses
  • Conducting “research” with minimal rigor
  • Completing clinical requirements as formalities
  • Preparing for teaching positions they’ll perform mediocrely

The output?

Dissertations that:

  • Contribute nothing to knowledge
  • Will never be cited or referenced
  • Contain predictable findings
  • Use inappropriate or misapplied methodologies
  • Sit in library shelves gathering dust

We’re producing “specialists” who aren’t specialized, “researchers” who can’t research, and “experts” who don’t have expertise. The entire PG system exists to credential people for positions within an educational system that itself produces no value.

This isn’t education—it’s an elaborate employment scheme for the marginally qualified.

The Commercialization Betrayal: Monetizing What Remains

The Herbal Market Oligopoly

Here’s who actually profits from “Ayurveda’s growth”:

A handful of large pharmaceutical companies that:

  • Manufacture products with minimal resemblance to classical formulations
  • Use substandard raw materials to maximize profit
  • Invest heavily in marketing, minimally in quality
  • Exploit “Ayurvedic” branding while abandoning Ayurvedic principles
  • Lobby to prevent quality regulations that would impact profits

Meanwhile:

  • Traditional Vaidyas who maintain authentic practice remain economically marginal
  • Small-scale quality manufacturers cannot compete with corporate giants
  • Practitioners committed to classical protocols can’t afford authentic formulations
  • Patients receive products that deliver neither Ayurvedic authenticity nor modern quality

The commercialization hasn’t elevated Ayurveda—it’s created a parallel herbal industry that exploits Ayurveda’s cultural cachet while delivering corporate products.

The Influencer Catastrophe

Social media has created a new class of Ayurveda “experts”—influencers who:

Control the narrative:

  • Oversimplify complex principles into Instagram posts
  • Provide dangerous medical advice without adequate assessment
  • Promote products (often for commission) without ethical constraints
  • Build massive followings based on charisma, not competence

Undermine actual practitioners:

  • Patients arrive with misinformation from influencers
  • Student expectations are shaped by social media simplifications
  • Complex clinical realities can’t compete with compelling content
  • Authentic practice seems boring compared to influencer wellness theater

Make the real money:

  • Influencers monetize through ads, sponsorships, product lines, courses
  • Actual clinical practitioners struggle to survive
  • The most financially successful “Ayurvedic professionals” are marketers, not clinicians

We’ve created a system where people who understand Ayurveda least profit most from its name, while those who understand it deeply cannot sustain practice.

If this is what Ayurveda’s “success” looks like, success is worse than failure.

The Slow Death: Why It’s Worse Than Final Death

Ayurveda isn’t thriving—it’s decomposing slowly. And slow decomposition is worse than clean death because:

It Wastes Lives

Every year, thousands of young people:

  • Invest 5.5+ years in BAMS education
  • Spend lakhs on tuition and expenses
  • Sacrifice opportunities in other fields
  • Graduate with credentials that lead nowhere
  • Face unemployment, underemployment, or forced compromise

These aren’t abstract statistics—these are real lives, real hopes, real potential wasted on a system that cannot deliver on its promises.

If I knew BAMS would lead to nothing, I’d never have chosen this path. But I chose 25 years ago when things were different. Today’s students don’t have even the opportunities I had, yet we continue recruiting them into this dead end.

How is this not a massive institutional betrayal?

It Prevents Honest Closure

The zombie existence of Ayurveda prevents us from:

  • Having honest conversations about what failed and why
  • Making space for something new to emerge
  • Releasing resources (human and financial) trapped in non-functional systems
  • Grieving properly and moving forward
  • Learning from failure rather than pretending it’s success

We’re stuck in a perpetual state of denial—insisting everything is fine while evidence of systemic failure accumulates.

It Corrupts Memory

The worst consequence of prolonged decomposition is that it corrupts the memory of what Ayurveda was.

Future generations won’t remember Ayurveda as a sophisticated medical system—they’ll remember it as:

  • Whatever passes for Ayurveda in corporate wellness centers
  • Products marketed as Ayurvedic that contain nothing authentic
  • Instagram advice from influencers with weekend certifications
  • The backup option for medical school failures

Is this the memory we want to preserve? This degraded, corrupted, hollowed-out version?

Perhaps a clean second death—complete forgetting—would be kinder than this distorted remembrance.

Why the Second Death Might Be Mercy

I’ve fought for 25 years to prevent Ayurveda’s second death. I’ve written, taught, advocated, built, challenged, insisted. I’ve been the voice calling for remembrance, for preservation, for restoration.

But I’ve come to believe I was wrong. Some things should be allowed to die.

Death Allows Honesty

If we acknowledge Ayurveda’s second death, we can finally be honest about:

  • The systemic failures that killed it
  • The compromises that corrupted it
  • The economic realities that made authentic practice unsustainable
  • The educational collapse that prevented transmission
  • The commercial exploitation that turned medicine into merchandise

Right now, we can’t have these honest conversations because we’re invested in maintaining the fiction that Ayurveda lives. Death allows truth.

Death Releases Resources

The human talent, intellectual energy, and financial resources currently trapped in Ayurveda’s zombie existence could be redirected to:

  • Healthcare systems that actually function
  • Educational programs that actually educate
  • Research that actually advances knowledge
  • Clinical practice that actually helps patients

Is perpetuating a non-functional system really better than acknowledging failure and moving forward?

Death Prevents Further Harm

Every year we continue this charade, we:

  • Mislead students about career prospects
  • Waste their educational years on training that leads nowhere
  • Take their money (or their families’ money) for credentials with no value
  • Prevent them from pursuing fields where they could actually thrive
  • Create an army of unemployed, underemployed, and disillusioned graduates

How many more lives should we ruin before admitting this isn’t working?

Death Preserves Dignity

There’s a dignity in clean death that prolonged decomposition lacks. Better to remember Ayurveda as it was—a sophisticated medical system that thrived for millennia—than to watch it decay into corporate wellness branding and influencer content.

Let the classical texts remain in libraries as historical documents. Let scholars study them as they study other extinct systems. Let the memory be preserved in accurate historical context rather than distorted through continued degradation.

The second death—complete, honest forgetting of Ayurveda as a living system—might preserve its dignity better than this undead existence.

The Alternative I Once Believed In

I used to believe restoration was possible. I used to think if we just:

  • Improved educational standards
  • Demanded faculty competence
  • Insisted on research rigor
  • Enforced manufacturing quality
  • Created viable career paths
  • Educated the public accurately

…that Ayurveda could be saved.

I was naive.

The system is too far gone. The institutional rot is too deep. The economic incentives are too misaligned. The cultural context has changed too fundamentally. The knowledge transmission has been interrupted too completely.

You can’t restore what no longer exists in living memory. And Ayurveda as an authentic system no longer exists in living memory—it exists only in texts that few can read, fewer understand, and almost no one practices.

What I’m Proposing: Honest Euthanasia

I’m not proposing we burn the texts or demolish the colleges. I’m proposing we:

Stop Recruiting Students

Close BAMS admissions for new students. Stop luring young people into a field with no future. Let current students complete their degrees, but don’t start new batches.

This alone would be an act of mercy—preventing thousands of young people from wasting years of their lives and lakhs of rupees on credentials that lead nowhere.

Convert Institutions

Repurpose Ayurvedic colleges into:

  • General healthcare education centers
  • Nursing colleges (which have actual employment demand)
  • Allied health profession training centers
  • Medical history and traditional medicine research institutes (studying Ayurveda as history, not as living practice)

The infrastructure exists. The faculty need employment. But stop pretending we’re training Ayurvedic physicians when we’re actually creating unemployable graduates.

Acknowledge the Failure

Publicly, honestly, completely acknowledge that:

  • The educational system failed
  • The career pathway collapsed
  • The research enterprise produced nothing of significance
  • The clinical practice became economically unsustainable
  • The commercialization corrupted the system beyond recognition

This acknowledgment would allow current practitioners to stop pretending, current students to make informed decisions, and future generations to learn from the failure rather than repeat it.

Preserve What Matters

Archive the texts properly. Support genuine scholarly study as historical research. Maintain libraries and collections. Allow the academic study of Ayurveda as traditional medicine history.

But stop pretending it’s a living healthcare system when it manifestly isn’t.

Release the Captives

Every faculty member stuck teaching subjects they don’t care about to students who don’t want to learn—release them to pursue careers where they might actually thrive.

Every student trapped in BAMS programs because they had no better options—help them transition to fields with actual futures.

Every practitioner barely surviving through compromised practice—acknowledge that the fault is systemic, not individual, and support their transition to sustainable livelihoods.

The kindest thing we can do is stop forcing people to participate in this failed system.

The Grief of This Conclusion

Don’t mistake this essay’s conclusion for lack of love. I love Ayurveda. I’ve dedicated my life to it. Walking away from that dedication is devastating.

But love sometimes means acknowledging when fighting for survival prolongs suffering rather than restoring health. Love sometimes means advocating for mercy over prolonged agony.

I’m tired. Tired of fighting battles that cannot be won. Tired of pretending systemic failure is just a temporary setback. Tired of watching students waste their potential. Tired of participating in a collective delusion.

And beneath the exhaustion is profound grief. Grief for what Ayurveda was. Grief for what I hoped it could become. Grief for the loss that no amount of denial can prevent.

The Question I Can No Longer Answer

People used to ask me: “Should my daughter pursue BAMS?” “Should I start an Ayurveda practice?” “Should I invest in Ayurvedic education?”

I used to say yes. I used to believe the system could be reformed, quality could be restored, careers could be built.

Now I say: No.

I cannot, in good conscience, encourage anyone to enter this field. I cannot promise futures I know don’t exist. I cannot pretend opportunities are available when they’re not. I cannot recruit young people into a system I’ve concluded is beyond saving.

And if I can’t encourage even one person to pursue Ayurveda, what am I fighting for?

Remembering Out Loud, One Final Time

That quote: “If you don’t remember somebody out loud, they die twice.”

This essay is my final remembrance. I remember Ayurveda as it was—sophisticated, profound, clinically effective, philosophically coherent.

I remember what it could have been—a thriving traditional medical system adapted for modern contexts while maintaining classical authenticity.

I remember what it became—a hollow brand, a marketing category, an employment scheme for the marginally qualified, a commercial opportunity for corporate exploitation.

And I advocate for the second death—the complete forgetting of Ayurveda as a living system—because the prolonged decomposition is worse than clean ending.

Let it die. Let it die completely. Let the memory be preserved in accurate historical context rather than distorted through continued degradation. Let the texts remain as historical documents. Let scholars study what was lost. Let the lessons of this failure inform future efforts.

But stop the charade. Stop pretending. Stop recruiting students into dead ends. Stop forcing faculty to teach what they don’t believe. Stop pressuring practitioners to practice what doesn’t work economically.

Let Ayurveda die the second death, and let those of us who loved it move forward with our lives.

To Those Who Will Hate This Essay

I know this essay will provoke outrage. I know I’ll be called:

  • Traitor
  • Defeatist
  • Destroyer of tradition
  • Enemy of Ayurveda
  • Corrupted by Western thinking
  • Failure who blames the system for personal inadequacy

I accept all these labels.

But before you condemn me, answer these questions honestly:

  • Can you show me viable career paths for BAMS graduates?
  • Can you point to research that has meaningfully advanced clinical practice?
  • Can you demonstrate educational quality worthy of 5.5 years of study?
  • Can you prove commercial Ayurveda serves patients rather than profits?
  • Can you identify even 10% of current students who genuinely want to practice classical Ayurveda?

If you can’t answer yes to most of these, then we’re discussing degree of failure, not whether failure exists.

And if failure is this comprehensive, this deep, this irreversible—isn’t honesty kinder than delusion?

Conclusion: The Mercy of Memory’s End

“If you don’t remember somebody out loud, they die twice.”

I choose to stop remembering out loud. Not from hate, not from betrayal, not from lack of love—but from exhausted compassion for a system that has suffered too long.

The first death has occurred. Ayurveda as a functional medical system, educational tradition, and research science is dead. What remains is spectral—the appearance of life without its substance.

The second death—complete forgetting—is coming regardless. The question is whether we hasten it mercifully or prolong the suffering for another generation of wasted lives.

I advocate for mercy.

Let it die. Let it die completely. Remember accurately what was, but stop pretending anything remains worth preserving in its current form.

To the students: Choose other paths. You deserve futures.

To the faculty: You’ve done what you could. It’s okay to stop.

To the practitioners: The system failed you. That’s not your fault.

To the institutions: Acknowledge reality and repurpose with honesty.

To Ayurveda itself: I loved you. I fought for you. But fighting for your survival now means perpetuating suffering, and love sometimes means knowing when to let go.

Rest now. Die the second death. And may those who come after learn from our failure to build something better.

The author is an Ayurvedic physician, educator, and institutional leader who has spent over 25 years in a system he’s concluded cannot be saved. This essay represents the most painful conclusion of a career—that sometimes love means advocating for ending rather than endlessly fighting for revival. It is written in grief, not anger; in exhaustion, not betrayal; in mercy, not hate.

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