03-12-2006, 10:53 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> <b>Left must apologise</b>
*The Pioneer Edit Desk, March 11, 2006*
Readers would easily recall that the New Year began with an unholy diatribe launched by Communist Party of India (Marxist) member of the Rajya Sabha, Ms Brinda Karat, against one of the most revered yoga and ayurveda experts of contemporary India, Acharya Ram Dev, in which she accused his enterprise, Divya Yoga Pharmacy, of adulterating medical prescriptions with human and animal bones. For weeks thereafter, the Left-led chorus degenerated into calumny and worse, all of which was geared towards a single objective: To run the indigenous science of ayurveda and yoga down, and to proclaim its exponents and practitioners as a bunch of ill-informed, unscientific right-wing reactionaries.
There was another subtext as well: If you want to guard your health, steer clear of such "charlatans". Not surprisingly, there were clashes between Left cadres and the followers of Acharya Ram Dev and the entire country erupted in protests since the people felt the Communists had affronted their belief in the time-honoured tradition of ayurveda. It must, therefore, have been to the considerable chagrin and embarrassment of the Leftists that, far from witnessing a swelling of their ranks in their charge against the indigenous system of medicine as they might have expected, even the Central Government that depends on their support for survival, thought it fit to call their bluff by insisting that Acharya Ram Dev's ashram conformed to good laboratory practices. Now, test results at the Delhi-based Sri Ram Institute of Industrial Research as well as Uttaranchal Government recognised institute at Hardwar have established the point beyond all contention: There is no trace of animal or human parts in the ayurvedic medicines manufactured by the Divya Yoga Pharmacy. This leaves no room for doubt that Ms Karat and her party were seeking to gain propaganda points against what they perceive as their true class enemy: The Hindu faith. Their attempt to turn India's millions to the Left's one true secular god, Karl Marx, has thus fallen flat on its face and Ms Karat and her comrades would do well to apologise to Acharya Ram Dev whose reputation they had assiduously sought to tarnish.
It has, since the controversy broke out, transpired that Ms Karat was misled by a handful of disgruntled workers at Divya Yoga Pharmacy, Hardwar, who had been handed "pink slips". How far was it justified on her part to indulge in character assassination of the Acharya based on nothing but cockamamie peddled by axed employees of the pharmacy? Indeed, the Left's infantile jibes at Acharya Ram Dev were symptomatic of deracinated self-proclaimed intellectuals who see nothing right in their own, living tradition and seek, instead, to graft their violent and constitutionally unstable credo - that is itself a product of deep-rooted arrogance laced with cynicism - into a historically stable society. Not surprisingly, the Indian Left has never been able to spread its wings beyond two or three States. To the vast masses across the subcontinent-sized India, it is the Communist ideology that smacks of an adulteration of the disagreeable kind.
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*The Pioneer Edit Desk, March 11, 2006*
Readers would easily recall that the New Year began with an unholy diatribe launched by Communist Party of India (Marxist) member of the Rajya Sabha, Ms Brinda Karat, against one of the most revered yoga and ayurveda experts of contemporary India, Acharya Ram Dev, in which she accused his enterprise, Divya Yoga Pharmacy, of adulterating medical prescriptions with human and animal bones. For weeks thereafter, the Left-led chorus degenerated into calumny and worse, all of which was geared towards a single objective: To run the indigenous science of ayurveda and yoga down, and to proclaim its exponents and practitioners as a bunch of ill-informed, unscientific right-wing reactionaries.
There was another subtext as well: If you want to guard your health, steer clear of such "charlatans". Not surprisingly, there were clashes between Left cadres and the followers of Acharya Ram Dev and the entire country erupted in protests since the people felt the Communists had affronted their belief in the time-honoured tradition of ayurveda. It must, therefore, have been to the considerable chagrin and embarrassment of the Leftists that, far from witnessing a swelling of their ranks in their charge against the indigenous system of medicine as they might have expected, even the Central Government that depends on their support for survival, thought it fit to call their bluff by insisting that Acharya Ram Dev's ashram conformed to good laboratory practices. Now, test results at the Delhi-based Sri Ram Institute of Industrial Research as well as Uttaranchal Government recognised institute at Hardwar have established the point beyond all contention: There is no trace of animal or human parts in the ayurvedic medicines manufactured by the Divya Yoga Pharmacy. This leaves no room for doubt that Ms Karat and her party were seeking to gain propaganda points against what they perceive as their true class enemy: The Hindu faith. Their attempt to turn India's millions to the Left's one true secular god, Karl Marx, has thus fallen flat on its face and Ms Karat and her comrades would do well to apologise to Acharya Ram Dev whose reputation they had assiduously sought to tarnish.
It has, since the controversy broke out, transpired that Ms Karat was misled by a handful of disgruntled workers at Divya Yoga Pharmacy, Hardwar, who had been handed "pink slips". How far was it justified on her part to indulge in character assassination of the Acharya based on nothing but cockamamie peddled by axed employees of the pharmacy? Indeed, the Left's infantile jibes at Acharya Ram Dev were symptomatic of deracinated self-proclaimed intellectuals who see nothing right in their own, living tradition and seek, instead, to graft their violent and constitutionally unstable credo - that is itself a product of deep-rooted arrogance laced with cynicism - into a historically stable society. Not surprisingly, the Indian Left has never been able to spread its wings beyond two or three States. To the vast masses across the subcontinent-sized India, it is the Communist ideology that smacks of an adulteration of the disagreeable kind.
http://dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_...unter_img=2><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->