New Delhi: The Supreme Court today (October 21) refused to entertain a petition filed by the Ayurvedic Medicine Manufacturers Organisation of India claiming that the Wikipedia entry on ‘Ayurveda’ is defamatory.
The Public Interest Litigation (PIL) submitted that the Wikipedia entry described Ayurveda as “pseudoscientific” and, calling the article unnecessary, alleged that it had been written with the sole intention of tarnishing the image of Ayurveda.
“The matter of concern is that this is utterly absurd, poorly researched and prejudiced article pops up as the first article when Ayurveda is searched on Google,” Live Law quoted the petition as saying.
It also alleged that the contents of the Wikipedia entry do harm to the image of Ayurveda which it claimed has been developed over the years with “dedicated research and practice”.
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The bench of Justices A.S. Bopanna and P.S. Narasimha, however, observed that Wikipedia articles can be edited.
Further, the counsel for the petitioners said that “certain parts” of the entry had been edited after the PIL was filed. The Wikipedia entry, at time of reporting, still mentions that Ayurveda is “pseudoscientific”.
“We see no reason to entertain the petition filed under Article 32…however the parties may avail other remedies available in the law,” the bench said in its order, refusing to take up the matter.
Ayurveda has assumed a newfound importance ever since the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014 and promoted the department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH) under the Union health ministry into a ministry in its own right.
Ayurveda only gained more importance over the years with more funding comings its way, Ayurveda research institutes being set up and other parts of the puzzle, such as large-scale Yoga day celebrations, following in its wake.
As science historian Meera Nanda said during her lecture at the ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’ conference, “Ayurveda and yoga as symbols of Hindu sciences have always been a part of the Hindu nationalist worldview…At the core of this takeover bid is the claim that Ayurveda was not merely a rational, proto-scientific enterprise within its own conceptual categories – but that it was scientific in terms of the methods of modern natural sciences; that Ayurveda was modern from its very inception.”
A potentially hazardous manifestation of Ayurveda’s import came during the COVID-19 pandemic when the AYUSH ministry directed the Ayush society in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, to distribute kits containing four Ayurvedic medicines in order to treat COVID-19 infections. These kits were untested – bar one study with dubious standards – and could have posed a serious health risk anyone who used them.
Further, one of the Ayurvedic medicines contained in this kit – ‘Coronil’, made by Yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali – is currently at the centre of a case in the Delhi high court where a number of doctors’ associations have alleged misrepresentation and public nuisance by Ramdev and his company while marketing Coronil as a cure for COVID-19, which included disparaging remarks about allopathic medicine and doctors.