Ayurveda cannot be understood through a Western mind — decolonising Indian medicine requires decolonising education itself.

This rich panel featuring Vaidyas Devan Nambudiri, Krishnakumar, Shivagaran Nambudiri, and Robert Swoboda (the first Westerner to graduate from an Indian Ayurveda college) opens with a provocation: colonisation proceeds through dispossession, expropriation, exploitation, and justification — and India’s decolonisation of Ayurveda has barely begun. The moderator argues that a hybrid model — using Western academic frameworks to study Indian Shastras — is epistemologically incoherent. You need a meditative, Indian mind to truly understand these systems.

The panel traces the formation of Vaidyas who have studied through the Gurukul model at Coimbatore Ayurveda College — including a seven-and-a-half-year intensive programme — alongside Tantra, Jyotish, and Vedic knowledge systems. It positions Ayurveda not as “alternative” medicine but as a complete civilisational healing science for Viksit Bharat 2047, accessible only to those willing to undergo genuine decolonisation of the mind.

About the Speakers:
Dr. N.N. Devan Namboothiri (Ashokalayam Ayurveda Hospital, Palakkad)
Dr. T.S. Krishna Kumar ( Professor, M V R Ayurveda Medical College, Kunnoor)
Dr. Thottam Sivakaran Namboothiri ( Sridhari Ayurvedic Hospital, Kottayam)
Dr. Vinod Kumar TG (Ayurveda Doctor)
Dr. Robert Svoboda (Ayurveda Doctor, Author)

Moderator: Dr. Ram Kumar Kutty