Medical Pluralism

MEDICAL PLURALISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA
Abstract: India has an opulent and live tradition of healing. Ayurveda was the most prevalent system in India which has existed since about 4000 BC. Since India was prone to the political instability and the external invasions from the medieval times, it was the platform of the integration of various cultures. It was not just the exchange of the material aspects happened between the host and the guest, but the discourse of the knowledge especially the medical knowledge also happened in between. Kuhnian frame of nonexistence of various knowledge were the out of box question at that time. There were no politics of the knowledge systems ensued for the supremacy of the one system, but there emerged an integration

It can be viewed as a feature of the episteme of social sciences. Most of the terms we use in social sciences are either borrowed from other disciplines or may have different dimensions. ‘’In the philosophical sense, pluralism is a system of thought where more than one ultimate principle is used (Frankel, 1986)’’. Thus we can simply define the term Medical pluralism as a system of coexistence of different principles of medical practices. Does a simple existence of the different principles of medical practices can be termed as medical pluralism? Before the setting up of the biomedicine as an official system in India there existed a multiple principles of medical systems. Yet it didn’t term as medical pluralism. The concept of Medical Pluralism is a later development in the academia. Medical pluralism is generally viewed as the product of colonial suppression by the hegemonised biomedicine and post-colonial revivalism of the suppressed alternative medicine. Hence simple existence of different medical principles with the certain extent of ‘official recognition’ can be termed as medical pluralism. What is the role of ‘official recognition’ in defining the concept? It has an important role to filter the quacks of medicines from the concept. Thus coexistence of quackery along with other medical systems cannot be termed as medical

• Growing importance of local knowledge and technology.
• Growing Interest of the anthropologists and social scientists in health beliefs and healing practices.
• Increasing importance of cultural paradigm in the study of medical principles.
• Growth of exoteric and cumulative method of understanding of knowledge.
• Increasing of nationalism or swadeshism and anti-imperialism.
• Revivalism of traditional medical