Are we using neo-colonial contact lenses?

We have been ignorant that our medical heritage had tackled many complicated evolving diseases over thousands of centuries when there was no international expert/s to tell us what to do because the infant that Western medicine is today had not even been born then

Sri Lanka is currently in the midst of an actual real-life debate pertaining to the use of its traditional medicine for the COVID-19 battle. There are many theories and many bouquets and brickbats for those trying to promote this. In this page where we look at the harmony of all things connected with nature and the human mind, we have on many occasions tried to understand the path traversed by our Lankan ancestors who lived a life far different to us. 

We have spoken in this page how our ancestors used for their life a mind far different to ours and a philosophy for life and death far removed to ours. This encompasses the concept of heritage but sometimes we make the mistake of only seeing the legacy of heritage in monuments. This has been our gravest of errors. 

We also today have many heritage experts and these include those who function on the theoretical dimensions, separated from emotional connection which could be one reason why we are so removed from actually using our heritage (example our medical heritage) in our actual lives. 

Clearly, we are not the people that we were as described by Robert Knox held captive in Sri Lanka for 19 years in the 17th century. He described every Lankan as a physician in his own right and the forests as our pharmacy. This means that all our ancestors who lived then were as good as today’s mainstream medical ‘experts’ but the difference was that there was no medical ‘industry’, no poison-based foods and there were no outsiders to tell us how to keep our nation healthy. 

Today we have cut down our forests for ‘development’ and we hardly know the basic health use of our herbs. Our children are alien to basic herb usage for immunity boosting and one 18-year-old educated at an international school listened to some basic food/herbs (such as ginger, lime, pepper and bees honey) being mentioned for simple lung-based ailments, opened wide her eyes and said with a most annoying foreign accent that it was ‘cool.’ She later revealed that an older Lankan cousin is studying Community medicine at a Western university. Thankfully I did not torture my mind by talking to that cousin because I have gone through trauma many times. 

Listened to Sri Lankans who have left their motherland which had the first hospital in Mihinthale and gone to study ‘holistic medical systems’ or ‘integrative medical systems’ or courses with such fancy terms in foreign lands but who are clueless about their own country’s traditional medical inheritance. Why? Because for seven decades we have not had the vision nor foresight to set up our own universities promoting Deshiya Chikitsa (Sinhala Wedakama) which although having the core of Ayurveda can stand on its own as an inter-connected but distinct medical heritage predating Ayurveda and unique to Sri Lanka. 

For 10 months amidst a raging pandemic we (who are eagerly waiting for a foreign manufactured vaccine) have not had the guts to subject to actual testing on COVID-19 patients the medicines that the many traditional physicians (weda mahattayas) say that they have made to fully combat the early stages of COVID-19. Here too we look at medicines through the Western lens without understanding that we have many, many, many possibilities of curing one disease through separate ingredients put together (Wattoru). 

Now we know that a set of allopathic doctors have had the courage to subject to testing on COVID-19 patients a treatment prepared by a little known holistic/traditional physician. We know that he is discovered to be a ‘unregistered’ physician and we are not questioning why there is so much focus on his registration or where he ‘got’ knowledge of his medicine and not the fact that it actually cured COVID patients! Whatever the outcome, whatever the cynicism arising following it, these allopathic experts had the patriotism start to do their duty by the nation whatever odds they may face.

We also know that this country has over 25,000 traditional physicians. Why have we not through a national policy tested out our medical heritage practically at a time when we need it so desperately. We had not formalised the testing on actual corona patients to see if the immunity boosters/medicine that many traditional physicians say will work, will actually have effect.

However, we have had many pundits tearing these efforts apart, ridiculing these efforts as those made by charlatan and thereby condemning something not tested on patients. Is the reason why we have not used our own sovereign right as a nation to solve our health challenges using our medical heritage, because we have been subtly or overtly brainwashed to think that only a West-based scientist can study the symptoms and cures for a new fangled disease? 

We have been ignorant that our medical heritage had tackled many complicated evolving diseases over thousands of centuries when there was no international expert/s to tell us what to do because the infant that Western medicine is today had not even been born then. Yet we have such a fear of asserting our ancient knowledge and few in our current generations can truly stand up to speak on its behalf and do so without being a ventriloquist for cultural imperialism. 

Despite us valuing all forms of knowledge that is modern, is it not ignorance of our past that prevents us from using the skills of the past for our present? Has this not made us a slavish nation that is not yet truly independent? Are we teaching our younger generation to study our past the way it should be, without the superior neo-colonial contact lenses that we have been freely gifted with through many channels and especially education? If we do not use this pandemic time to genuinely think these through as nation, we never will. 

(SV)