Holistic Treatment

(Published in Banking Services Chronicle August 2005)

India is a great country. We have had a culturally rich past. There was darkness in the medieval era. But let us not forget the Dark Age was a universal phenomenon. Only the Indian Renaissance came a bit later. So, if we pay attention—sufficient attention—even now, we can catch up with the developed countries in another half a century. Yes, we can catch up even with Uncle Sam.

The trouble is our late reawakening has filled us with an inferiority complex. We are still living in the “modern” world and hold the White Man in awe, except for a geographical shift in that the White Man now lives west of Atlantic. Post-modernism has failed to make us confident enough to borrow from the West without getting steeped into “West-ness”.

And this is not only India’s problem but that of developing countries in general. Says Yoga expert and author Bharat Thakur: “The bane of the developing countries is that they are not very confident about themselves, resulting in blind imitation of the West. We didn’t wake up to the beneficial properties of ayurveda or meditation till the West acknowledged it.”

We have to learn to discover our own greatness on our own. We have come a long way from the days of McCaulay and Kipling. Let us thank those English lords and gentlemen for having exposed us to the modern world. Let us also thank them for having brought us together as a nation. Just as we thank our school teachers for having cultivated us into enlightened adults.

But once we have grown up, we can’t be too dependent on our teachers. We have to learn to discriminate between what is good in them and what is bad in them. We should little hesitate in emulating the former and rejecting the latter. Besides, if we have certain inherent traits which we think to be valuable, let us not wait to demonstrate them until we seek approval from others.

A pragmatic individual takes the right things at the right time without bothering about where they come from. Says Dr Ashok Seth, chairman and chief cardiologist, Max Devki Devi Heart and Vascular Institute, New Delhi: “While an angioplasty or a surgery becomes necessary in acute cases, we recommend several preventive measures to nip the problem in the bud. Apart from medicines, changing lifestyles, practising yoga and meditation, and ways to avoid stress are very important in the therapy. But while all these are good at the preventive stage, there haven’t been good studies to show their efficacy in treating the disease.”

So that’s what we need to do. Borrow angioplasty and surgery from the West. But don’t use them blindly. Don’t forget we have had yoga and meditation in our country for centuries. Our ancients followed a lifestyle that the moderns would envy. So let us first try them, as Seth says, at the “preventive stage”. In case this fails to work, don’t shy away from using the Western modes of treatment either.

I’m sure a Westerner would listen in rapt attention to what Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of the Art of Living says: “I would say wellness is beyond physical fitness. It is all about mental alertness and emotional stability—two core areas where everyone has to work. Today, the biggest problem with our youth is attention deficiency and retention problem. These can be addressed by pranayams and other exercises. Mental alertness and emotional stability give you the comfort level to accept and appreciate criticism. These all are part of wellness. Fitness is limited to the physical level but wellness extends to the mental and spiritual.”

Figuratively and literally both, let us be “fit” as the Westerners are but let us also, and perhaps more importantly, be “well” as the Indians were. Holistic treatment.