Reformulation and Appropriation of Traditional Knowledge in Industrial Ayurveda: The Trajectory of Jeevani

Abstract

In India, the industrial sector that specializes in the invention, production, and marketing of neotraditional therapeutic specialties has been rapidly growing for two decades. In addition to standard pharmaceutical laboratory knowledge, it heavily mobilizes local medical knowledge. This article follows the trajectory of a new formulation called Jeevani, originating in the mining of both the classical Ayurveda texts and the tribal healing practices in the Indian state of Kerala. We investigate the strong coupling established by the reformulation regime between the invention of complex polyherbal therapeutic preparations with local forms of appropriation, namely Indian patents and benefit-sharing agreements.

• Ayurvedic pharmaceuticals
• intellectual property
• reformulation
• traditional knowledge
• medicinal plants

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the valuable input and suggestions of two anonymous reviewers. This research was supported by European Research Council Advanced Grant 340510.

Notes

¹ The Kani tribe is based mainly in the forests of the Agasthyamala hills of the Western Ghats in the Thiruvananthapuram district of Kerala, India. The traditional occupation of the Kanis includes handicrafts, such as basket making, mat making, and cane works, and the seasonal collection of minor forest produce, such as honey and beeswax. The Kanis today live in several tribal hamlets, each consisting of approximately twenty families spread around the forest areas of Thiruvananthapuram; they constitute slightly less than 2 percent of the district population.

² For critical use and discussion of the system’s approach in the case of Ayurveda and its different modes of modernization, see Arnold 1993; Attewell 2007; Berger 2013; Leslie 1977, 1992; Mukharji 2011, 2016; and Zimmermann 1989.

³ Bode 2008; Banerjee 2009; Langford 2004; Madhavan 2009; Pordié 2015; Pordié and Gaudillière 2014a and 2014b; Sujatha 2011; Sujatha and Abraham 2012.

⁴ Alternative modernization is a widespread notion with multiple meanings in anthropology and history. In the context of this paper, borrowing from the collective work of the Indian Subaltern Collective, it refers to processes of transformation claimed to be both echoing and opposing Western modernity. See, for instance, Partha Chatterjee’s (1993) discussion of Indian nationalist thought.

⁵ Labeling the recent emergence of reformulation as the third wave of modernization in Ayurveda builds on the historical and sociological literature that distinguishes a first phase of transformation, circa 1900, that focused on issues of certification and professionalization and a second phase of institutionalization after independence associated with the opening of medical schools, hospitals, and local care facilities, thus creating a parallel but distinct medical system. See Attewell 2007; Berger 2013; Banerjee 2009; Sujatha 2011; and Sujatha and Abraham 2012.

⁶ The question of which texts should count as references to define classical Ayurveda is critical, and the choice of Sushruta as significant corpus might be contested. Our understanding is that it was the only one providing the ethnobotanists with a suitable plant description.

⁷ By placing arogyapacha in the category of Varahi (the family of Dioscoreaceae), this plant becomes a part of Ayurvedic Pharmacopeia of India (part 1, volume IV, item no. 63) and hence legitimately included in the proprietary Ayurvedic medicine preparations (as mentioned in the Drugs and Cosmetic Act of 1941) with necessary evidences. As one reviewer of this paper rightly pointed to, this process of renaming, matching existing textual description, and combining with other (legitimate) plants may be thought of as a process of “ayurvedicalization” of the knowledge produced and shared by the Kani people since it is aimed at the inscription of arogyapacha in the administrative superstructure of state Ayurveda.

⁸ As one of the reviewers rightly points out, the botanical identity of plants mentioned in the corpus of the text is controversial. For a detailed read on the problems of linking ayurveda’s polynominal naming system to modern botanical names, see Payyappallimana 2008.

⁹ AVP’s founder, Arya Vaidyan P.V. Rama Varier, was trained as a physician under Vaidyaratnam P.S. Varier, the founder of Arya Vaidya Sala Kottakkal. He was part of Arya Vaidya Sala Kottakkal for more than a decade; this is where he was trained in making medicines before he established the Arya Vaidya Pharmacy. The role of Arya Vaidya Sala in the history of revitalization of Ayurveda and in initiating an organized mass medicine production is well documented (Panikkar 1992; Cleetus 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Harilal Madhavan

Harilal Madhavan is a faculty member of humanities at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala, India), and holds a PhD in economics from the Centre for Development Studies, also in Thiruvananthapuram. His work specializes in the traditional pharmaceutical industry of South Asia, intellectual property rights, natural resource economics, and global public health. He has participated as a researcher in several national and international projects, including a large Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique study based at l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, a Cluster of Excellence initiative at Heidelberg University, and a European Research Council starting grant on Tibetan medicine at the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Social Anthropology in Vienna.

Jean-Paul Gaudillière

Jean-Paul Gaudillière is historian of science and a senior researcher at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale. His research explores the history of the life sciences and medicine during the twentieth century. His recent work focuses on the history of pharmaceutical innovation and the uses of drugs on the one hand and the dynamics of health globalization after World War II on the other. He is coauthor of “Industrial Ayurveda. Drug Discovery, Reformulation, and the Market” (with Laurent Pordié) and coordinator of the European project “From International to Global: Knowledge, Diseases, and the Postwar Government of Health.”