Institutionalized Alternative Medicine In North India: Plurality, Legitimacy, and Nationalist Discourse

This dissertation examines state-sanctioned medical pluralism in contemporary India by focusing on seven codified non-biomedical traditions: Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa, and Homeopathy, officially known under the acronym AYUSH. Informed by ethnographic work in Uttarakhand, North India, I explore therapeutic practices and narratives of AYUSH practitioners in relation to government policy and public discourses on alternative medicine. This work puts forward four major arguments. First, although the Indian government delineates different AYUSH modalities from one another as well as from biomedicine and uncodified local health traditions, in reality AYUSH practitioners frequently engage in treatments that fall outside their state-sanctioned area of expertise. For example, a doctor of Homeopathy can integrate elements of Ayurveda, biomedicine, numerology, and religious healing.;Second, despite state legitimation and a purportedly equal governmental support, AYUSH traditions occupy unequal positions, among which Ayurveda has emerged as the most socially, ideologically, and financially privileged. Based on the analysis of statistics, doctors' narratives, policy documents, and the rhetoric and activities of an extraordinarily popular guru Ramdev, I argue that medical plurality in India is increasingly "ayurvedicalized.";Third, the hierarchy of medical traditions in India is reinforced through the debates about what and who constitute the nation. Within these discourses, Ayurveda has been promoted as the only homegrown and authentically Indian tradition. Hence, I argue that the paradox between the state legitimation of medical plurality and a hegemonic position of Ayurveda is embedded in the tension between two opposing nationalist ideologies: the ideology of inclusive nationalism anchored in the Nehruvian principle of unity in diversity and the ideology of Hindu nationalism. Finally, by scrutinizing how exactly Ayurveda is promoted by guru Ramdev, I reveal moralizing discourses that invoke citizens' duty (seva) to the nation which encourage them to consume Ayurvedic products in order to improve their personal health, contribute to national economy, and honor the ancient Vedic sages. Building on theorizations of biopower and biomorality, this dissertation evinces that the promotion of Ayurveda has become a bio-moral project which weds consumerist desires with Hindu nationalist sentiment.