THE 20 MARK BETRAYAL

The 20-Mark Betrayal: How Ayurvedic Education Abandoned Its Own History

Dr Aakash Kembhavi

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, developed through AI-assisted collaborative writing. They represent an independent critical perspective intended to provoke constructive dialogue about Ayurvedic medical education reform.

Republic Day and the Irony of Historical Amnesia

As India celebrates Republic Day—honoring the constitutional vision that transformed a colonized territory into a sovereign republic—we’re reminded of a fundamental truth: nations that forget their history lose their soul. The architects of India’s Constitution understood that political independence without cultural and intellectual sovereignty remains incomplete.

Yet in a bitter irony, contemporary Ayurvedic medical education systematically erases its own history. The National Commission for Indian Systems of Medicine (NCISM) has reduced Itihasa (History of Ayurveda)—a subject encompassing 3000 years of medical evolution, intellectual traditions, manuscript heritage, and institutional struggle—to a 20-mark multiple-choice component buried within Paper II Part B of Sanskrit.

Twenty marks. MCQ format. Subsection of a language paper.

This isn’t curriculum design—it’s institutional amnesia masquerading as educational policy. And its consequences extend far beyond examination halls.

What History Actually Means: Beyond Dates and Names

Before critiquing this reduction, we must understand what “history” truly entails. History is not memorizing when Charaka Samhita was written or listing commentators’ names. History is a rigorous intellectual discipline that examines how knowledge evolves, why particular ideas emerge in specific contexts, and how the past shapes present practice.

E.H. Carr defined history as “a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.” Thomas Kuhn demonstrated in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that scientific progress requires understanding previous paradigms—we cannot recognize innovation without historical consciousness.

For medical sciences specifically, Henry Sigerist noted: “The history of medicine is medicine itself. We cannot understand the present state of medicine, its achievements and its problems, unless we know how it developed.”

Without historical understanding, Ayurvedic students cannot:

  • Distinguish authentic classical principles from later interpretations
  • Evaluate whether contemporary claims represent genuine tradition or modern fabrication
  • Understand why particular diagnostic and therapeutic approaches developed
  • Critically assess integration with modern medicine from position of intellectual strength
  • Appreciate the methodological sophistication underlying traditional practices

History provides the intellectual infrastructure upon which professional identity is built. Eliminating it produces technically trained practitioners who lack roots, context, and authentic understanding of the tradition they ostensibly represent.

The Commentarial Tradition: Layers We Ignore

Consider Chakrapanidatta’s 11th-century commentary Ayurveda Dipika on Charaka Samhita. Most students cannot read Charaka without simultaneously reading Chakrapani’s interpretations—yet they don’t realize:

  • Chakrapani wrote 1400 years after Charaka
  • He interpreted through Nyaya-Vaisheshika philosophical lens
  • He sometimes “corrected” perceived textual corruptions
  • Alternative interpretations existed and still exist

Students unconsciously conflate medieval interpretation with classical text, unable to distinguish original Samhita concepts from later systematizations. They read composite texts spanning over a millennium without awareness of this complexity.

Similarly, Dalhana’s 12th-century Nibandha Samgraha on Sushruta Samhita became the definitive surgical interpretation. What students call “Sushruta’s surgical method” often represents Dalhana’s medieval interpretation. Without historical awareness, students cannot critically evaluate which aspects represent ancient practice versus later elaboration.

The commentarial tradition demonstrates Ayurveda’s intellectual vitality—scholars continuously engaged, interpreted, and refined understanding across centuries. This living tradition of critical engagement is precisely what contemporary education should cultivate but instead systematically destroys through MCQ reductionism.

Manuscripts: The Material Heritage We Abandon

India possesses over 100,000 unpublished Ayurvedic manuscripts on palm leaf, birch bark, and paper—scattered across libraries, temples, and private collections. These aren’t merely texts; they’re historical documents revealing:

  • Textual evolution across recensions
  • Regional practice variations
  • Pharmaceutical processing techniques
  • Philosophical frameworks shaping medical thought
  • Knowledge transmission mechanisms

How many BAMS graduates receive even basic training in:

  • Paleography (reading ancient scripts)
  • Manuscript cataloguing
  • Critical edition preparation
  • Commentarial analysis
  • Variant reading evaluation

The answer: effectively zero. The 20-mark MCQ format eliminates any possibility of students learning these foundational scholarly competencies. We produce graduates who treat printed, edited texts as absolute authorities, unaware these represent editorial choices from variant manuscript traditions.

This is catastrophic loss—not abstract academic concern but practical abandonment of our textual heritage. Within one generation, we’ll lack scholars capable of reading, interpreting, and preserving manuscripts that survived centuries of political upheaval, only to face extinction through educational neglect.

The Forgotten Founders: 1905 and the Struggle for Survival

Contemporary students have no idea their professional existence required political struggle. By 1905, Ayurveda faced systematic colonial marginalization—excluded from medical education, denied legal recognition, labeled “unscientific superstition” in official discourse.

The First All India Ayurveda Congress (1905), organized by Kaviraj Shankarduaji Shastri Pade, transformed isolated practitioners into unified professional movement. This gathering:

  • Declared Ayurvedic practitioners as legitimate physicians, not faith healers
  • Created frameworks for formal educational institutions
  • Established platforms for political advocacy
  • Initiated knowledge exchange across regional traditions
  • Spawned journals and publications

Without this Congress and subsequent organizing—the Usman Committee (1945-46), Dave Committee (1956-59), institutional builders like Pandit Shiv Sharma and Gananath Sen—there would be no BAMS degrees, no Ayurvedic colleges, no legal recognition.

Students graduate ignorant of these names and struggles. They don’t know that their institutional pathway began with Shankarduaji Shastri’s vision 120 years ago, that committees fought for degree recognition they now take for granted, that regulatory frameworks resulted from decades of advocacy against colonial dismissal.

This isn’t merely historical ignorance—it’s profound professional ingratitude. A profession that forgets those who created its institutions cannot understand current structures, cannot evaluate proposed reforms against historical precedents, and cannot appreciate the fragile, hard-won nature of professional recognition.

The Silent Guardians: Guru-Shishya Lineages We Dishonor

While institutional development occurred publicly, another dimension sustained Ayurveda quietly: Guru-Shishya Parampara—family lineages and apprenticeship traditions across India transmitting knowledge for centuries, driven not by recognition or wealth but by sacred duty.

Kerala’s Ashtavaidya families, Bengal’s Kaviraj lineages, Tamil Nadu’s Siddha-Ayurveda synthesis, Maharashtra’s scholarly traditions, Himalayan herbalist-healers—these diverse regional traditions developed specialized expertise while maintaining theoretical coherence.

Traditional practitioners studied 12-15 years in immersive apprenticeship, learning:

  • Tacit knowledge (pulse subtleties, treatment timing judgment)
  • Embodied skills (herb identification by sensory engagement)
  • Contextual decision-making (when and how to adapt protocols)
  • Moral formation (physician’s dharmic duty)

What motivated them through colonial marginalization, economic hardship, and social challenges?

Not recognition—most remained anonymous. Not wealth—many lived modestly. They practiced from conviction that healing was sacred duty, that knowledge was treasure beyond material wealth, that transmitting what they received from Gurus was unpayable debt partially repaid.

Today, the final generation of traditionally trained Vaidyas from unbroken lineages are elderly (70-90 years old). Within 10-20 years, these living links to centuries of transmission will be gone. With them will disappear:

  • Family formulations developed over generations
  • Specialized techniques poorly documented
  • Tacit knowledge impossible to fully capture in texts
  • Regional variations being homogenized away
  • Manuscript collections in private hands

Current students graduate knowing nothing of these lineages. They don’t understand that every therapeutic approach they use, every diagnostic method they apply, every pharmaceutical preparation they prescribe was preserved and refined by generations of practitioners who worked without modern recognition.

This dishonors those who sustained tradition we now claim to represent.

The Absurd Logic: Why This Arrangement Fails

Having established history’s profound importance, the current arrangement’s inadequacy becomes glaring:

1. Categorical Confusion: History ≠ Language

Subsuming history under Sanskrit conflates linguistic study with historical methodology. Sanskrit is a language; history is a discipline requiring:

  • Historical criticism (evaluating source reliability)
  • Contextual analysis (understanding socio-political frameworks)
  • Comparative methodology (examining parallel developments)
  • Causation analysis (understanding why changes occurred)

A student fluent in Sanskrit might be historically incompetent, and vice versa. This is equivalent to including modern medical history as subsection of English language examination because medical literature is in English. The absurdity becomes immediately apparent—yet this is precisely what NCISM has done.

2. The Insult of 20 Marks

What does allocating 20 marks communicate to students?

  • History doesn’t matter
  • Intellectual heritage is trivial
  • Understanding your discipline’s foundations is less important than any practical skill
  • You can become an Ayurvedic physician without knowing where Ayurveda came from

Would we accept medical curricula allocating only 20 marks to understanding Hippocratic tradition, Galenic medicine, and development of modern scientific medicine? Would this prepare competent physicians? Why is this considered adequate for Ayurveda?

3. MCQ Format: Pedagogical Catastrophe

Multiple-choice questions can test:

  • Dates and names
  • Chronological sequences
  • Basic factual recall

MCQs cannot test:

  • Historical causation understanding
  • Primary source analysis
  • Critical evaluation of historiographical debates
  • Contextual interpretation
  • Synthesis of multiple perspectives

Bloom’s Taxonomy identifies six cognitive levels: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create. MCQs test primarily the lowest level—Remember. History of medicine demands all six levels.

Educational research confirms assessment format shapes learning strategies. MCQ-based history encourages:

  • Memorizing isolated facts
  • Avoiding deep source reading
  • Skipping contextual understanding
  • Seeking shortcut summaries rather than engaging original texts

This is pedagogically destructive, producing graduates who view history as trivia to memorize rather than critical thinking discipline to master.

Consequences: The Erosion of Professional Identity

This marginalization produces profound consequences:

Epistemic Defenselessness

Students who don’t understand their tradition’s historical development cannot defend it intellectually. They cannot explain why particular approaches evolved, how Ayurvedic methodology differs from biomedicine, what distinctive value their tradition offers.

Without historical grounding, Ayurvedic physicians become intellectually vulnerable—unable to articulate their tradition’s sophistication, reduced to either uncritical traditionalism or wholesale biomedical adoption.

Vulnerability to Pseudo-History

The vacuum created by rigorous historical education’s absence fills with pseudo-historical narratives:

  • Exaggerated antiquity claims without manuscript evidence
  • Anachronistic readings projecting modern concepts onto ancient texts
  • Nationalist mythologization disconnected from scholarship
  • Commercial exploitation through spurious “ancient secret” claims

Proper historical training provides critical tools to distinguish authentic tradition from fabrication. Students understanding manuscript evidence and textual criticism can evaluate whether claims about “ancient Ayurveda” are evidence-supported or modern invention.

Cultural Disconnection and Disrespect

Students graduate without respect for their own tradition—viewing Ayurveda as practices to memorize rather than living intellectual heritage to carry forward. They don’t understand they’re heirs to centuries of clinical observation, philosophical refinement, and therapeutic innovation.

As historian Jacques Le Goff wrote: “Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.” Systematic elimination of historical memory from Ayurvedic education threatens the tradition’s future more effectively than any external attack.

Contemporary Crisis: Success Masking Substance Loss

Here’s the bitter irony: Ayurveda enjoys unprecedented institutional success while losing its essential nature.

We have:

  • Hundreds of colleges producing thousands of graduates
  • Thriving pharmaceutical industry
  • Government recognition
  • Global wellness market embracing “Ayurvedic” products
  • Research funding and technological tools

Yet simultaneously:

  • Intellectual depth is diluted (students learn techniques without understanding principles)
  • Commercial distortion accelerates (Ayurveda reduced to wellness products, exotic spa treatments)
  • Educational quality declines (biomedical reductionism, practice without principle, technicians not physicians)
  • Traditional diversity homogenizes (regional variations and lineage specializations standardized away)
  • Authentic transmission modes disappear (mass education replacing depth-focused apprenticeship)

We possess institutional form increasingly divorced from traditional substance. We have colleges but lose depth. We gain degrees but lack masters. We achieve recognition but lose essence.

Technology without intellectual foundation produces sophisticated ignorance—students can search digital databases without understanding commentarial interpretations, access formulations without comprehending pharmaceutical principles, use analytical instruments without grasping traditional drug action theory.

Our Obligation: Protection, Preservation, Development

We inherit intellectual and institutional heritage from:

  • Classical systematizers (Charaka, Sushruta, Vagbhata)
  • Commentators who preserved and clarified texts across centuries
  • Manuscript copyists who hand-copied texts, often anonymously
  • Pre-independence organizers who fought colonial marginalization
  • Traditional Guru-Shishya lineages who sustained practice through adversity

This inheritance creates obligations:

Protect against commercial distortion and intellectual dilution

  • Challenge spurious claims exploiting Ayurveda’s name
  • Defend distinctive epistemology against biomedical reductionism
  • Engage with policy to ensure regulations serve rather than constrain
  • Maintain cultural rootedness while remaining globally engaged

Preserve manuscripts, knowledge, and practice lineages

  • Support manuscript conservation and digitization
  • Document specialized traditional practices before practitioners pass
  • Create critical editions and scholarly translations
  • Maintain traditional pedagogical elements alongside modern methods

Develop authentically through principled innovation

  • Base changes on understanding traditional principles deeply
  • Use research to refine practice while maintaining theoretical coherence
  • Integrate technology to amplify, not substitute for, understanding
  • Engage globally while preserving distinctive identity

Traditional doesn’t mean frozen. Chakrapani interpreted Charaka creatively; contemporary practitioners can too—but only after understanding principles deeply enough to innovate appropriately.

The Path Forward: Non-Negotiable Reforms

Current arrangements are indefensible. Comprehensive reform is urgent necessity:

1. Restore History as Standalone Subject

  • Separate from Sanskrit, establish as independent discipline
  • Allocate substantial marks (minimum 100 in BAMS curriculum)
  • Dedicated faculty positions with historical methodology training
  • Integration of historical perspectives throughout clinical subjects

2. Transform Assessment Methods

  • Replace MCQs with essay examinations testing analytical thinking
  • Include source analysis assignments
  • Require research papers engaging primary and secondary sources
  • Incorporate field work documenting traditional practices

3. Establish Manuscript Studies Training

  • Basic paleography for all students
  • Visits to manuscript repositories
  • Digital manuscript examination using databases
  • Textual criticism workshops

4. Document Remaining Traditional Knowledge

  • Urgent oral history projects with elderly traditional practitioners
  • Multimedia documentation of specialized techniques
  • Respectful engagement recognizing traditional practitioners as knowledge experts
  • Support for living lineages maintaining authentic practice

5. Integrate Traditional Pedagogical Wisdom

  • Extended clinical apprenticeships
  • Memorization of essential verses
  • Hands-on pharmaceutical preparation
  • Meaningful mentorship relationships
  • Case-based clinical discussions

Conclusion: A Republic Day Challenge

As India celebrates constitutional democracy and national sovereignty, we must also advocate for intellectual sovereignty in Ayurvedic education—the right of students to receive education respecting their tradition’s depth, the obligation of institutions to transmit heritage with integrity, and the responsibility of regulators to establish standards worthy of a 3000-year-old medical system.

The 20-mark MCQ approach represents systemic failure to honor those whose work makes contemporary practice possible. It communicates that intellectual foundations don’t matter, that understanding where Ayurveda came from is less important than any technical skill, that professional heritage is trivial decoration rather than essential foundation.

This must change—not gradually, not eventually, but urgently.

Every day we continue this inadequate arrangement, we produce graduates disconnected from their tradition’s intellectual roots, vulnerable to commercial distortion, incapable of defending their discipline intellectually, and dishonoring those who preserved what we claim to represent.

We face a choice: Ayurveda as museum artifact—institutionally present but intellectually extinct—or Ayurveda as living tradition carried forward by professionals who understand their heritage deeply enough to develop it authentically.

History—properly taught—makes the difference.

George Santayana warned: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” For Ayurveda, forgetting history means repeating the colonial-era marginalization—this time self-inflicted through educational neglect rather than external imposition.

May those responsible for Ayurvedic education recognize this crisis and act with the urgency it demands. Our intellectual ancestors preserved this tradition through centuries of challenge. The least we owe them is ensuring the next generation knows their names, understands their struggles, appreciates their achievements, and continues their work with comparable dedication.

History is not the dead past—it is the living foundation of future growth. Twenty marks and MCQ format are not merely inadequate—they are insult to heritage, betrayal of professional obligation, and guarantee of intellectual poverty.

The time for reform is not tomorrow. It is today.

Call to Action: Share this article with Ayurvedic educators, students, policymakers, and institutional leaders. Demand curriculum reform. Challenge the 20-mark MCQ paradigm. Advocate for educational standards honoring Ayurveda’s intellectual depth. The tradition you save may be your own.

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