Seeking health under palm trees: Ayurveda in Kerala

ABSTRACT

Movement for healthcare, mostly termed ‘medical tourism’, has been a sector of enormous potential in South Asia over the past years attracting many international clients. Kerala, a state in southern India, advertises ‘Kerala Ayurveda’ as one of its particular attractions. The objective of this paper is to study and understand the public health view on movements for healthcare and/or wellness across borders with a particular focus on the quality of treatments offered and on issues of ethics that concern patients from across different countries, but also the providers of Ayurveda treatments. To gain insights into local perspectives, interviews were conducted with Ayurveda practitioners at Ayurveda resorts in Kerala, in particular in Kovalam and Varkala, both in Thiruvananthapuram district. The analysis of our interviews shows that – perhaps not surprisingly in a world characterised by global capitalism – marketing plays an important role in attracting clients to resorts. Market considerations led to a transformation of how Ayurveda is presented to potential customers. This in turn has undermined the significance of Ayurveda within the tourism industry of Kerala. Arguably, representatives of the state view this as an opportunity rather than considering the importance of further developing Ayurveda as a medical practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Movements for healthcare
• Ayurveda
• Kerala
• medical tourism

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the student assistant Mr Satheesh, who assisted with interviews and transcriptions. Most of all, our sincere thanks go to the Ayurveda practitioners and clinic administrators who were willing to share their insights and experiences in the field of Ayurveda in Kerala.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Srinivasan Kannan http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2731-9428

Margret Frenz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4852-8969

Notes

1 For a Kerala edition, see Vaidya (1936).

2 Named after Joseph William Bhore (1878–1960), Indian Civil Service officer, and chairman of the Health Survey and Development Committee, 1943.

3 Named after Ram Nath Chopra (1882–1973), Indian Medical Service officer, then Professor of Pharmacology at Calcutta Medical College and the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, and chairman of the Committee on Indigenous Systems of Medicine, 1948.

4 For the development of Ayurveda in northern India in the first half of the twentieth century, as well as a historiographical overview on the topic, cf. Berger (2013).

5 All our interviews were held in Malayalam, recorded, transcribed, and partly translated into English. They were conducted in 2015. Resorts requested to be kept anonymous, which we committed to on the consent form, and interviewees were given pseudonyms to preserve their anonymity and integrity.

6 One of the prominent individuals promoting Kerala as the ‘global capital of Ayurveda’ is Sam Pitroda, chairman of the Institute of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine, Bangalore, who launched the ‘Global Ayurveda Initiative’ in 2012.

7 See http://www.ayurveda-akademie.org/home/ (accessed 10 February 2016); http://www.ayurveda-akademie-hamburg.de/index.html (accessed 13 March 2017); http://www.sai-veda.eu/ (accessed 9 February 2016); http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/holistic-medicine_ayurveda-gets-the-nod-from-the-swiss-government/41423444 (accessed 9 February 2016); http://www.ayurvedaservice.info/Ausbildung-DACH (accessed 13 March 2017); http://www.vsamt.ch/de/bildung/am-im-detail/ (accessed 13 March 2017).

8 He might be referring to the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California (see http://www.chopra.com/welcome-to-the-chopra-center (accessed 9 February 2016)), and the publication of Chopra, Simon, and Backer (2002); as well as the Ayurveda cookbook published by Lad and Lad (2002).

Additional information

Funding

This paper was produced with the assistance of a grant under the Indian-European Research Networking Scheme, and the authors are grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/K005901/1], the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Indian Council for Social Science Research for their support. The authors would like to acknowledge the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology [grant number 6098], Thiruvananthapuram, for funding our scoping study.