When chess grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi proudly posted a Doctor’s Day photo calling his Ayurvedic family members “doctors", he unleashed medical establishment fury. Dr Cyriac Abby Philips—the hepatologist known as @theliverdr—disparaged his post, declaring “none of them are really doctors". This vicious attack perfectly exemplifies the toxic hostility India’s medical establishment reserves for traditional medicine. My own X (previously Twitter) battles with Dr Philips revealed the same ugly pattern: an ideological warfare which trumps any real scientific curiosity or enquiry.

Here’s my honest take: if a loved one had a major accident, I’d rush them to a modern hospital without hesitation. But once past the crisis and into recovery? I’d recommend Ayurvedic healing—yoga, pranayama, aligned diet. For chronic conditions, there’s solid research backing Ayurveda’s effectiveness. Positing one modality as “evidence-based medicine" champion and the other as “pseudoscience" smacks of the quackery the medical establishment accuses others of. Rather than serve patients, or science, it only serves to deny.

When I visited China, I was struck by how seamlessly they’ve woven traditional medicine into their modern healthcare fabric. Walk into any major hospital and you’ll find TCM departments running alongside surgical wards. Patients don’t see contradiction—many still consider these “TCM hospitals" even while receiving cutting-edge medical procedures and surgeries. This isn’t accidental—it’s smart policy. Under Xi Jinping, China has passed 26 policies elevating TCM to “national treasure" status. The 2017 Traditional Chinese Medicine Law mandated TCM institutions in public hospitals, while the 2016-2030 Strategic Plan allocated 50 billion yuan for development.

Ironically, even communist China embraced traditional medicine, while our home grown “progressives" remain stuck in old dogma. TCM and Ayurveda are sister sciences which........

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