Branding Ayurveda

The past quarter century has seen several campaigns successfully change the opinions of Indians toward India. They have shifted buying patterns of the common people who preferred foreign cars, foreign clothes, foreign cosmetics, and foreign watches and toward items that promote Indian values. Patanjali/Divya, the BJP, and fabIndia have made inroads to the hearts of the Indian people and stolen market share, as well as boasting huge revenues, status and popularity. Make In India has emerged.

But while Indian food, fashion and fun have increased in popularity, Ayurveda as a brand has been unable to penetrate the market, either with products, its soft power as an Indian traditional science, or through its services.

Several reasons exist for this inability. First, most people today do not relate to the worldview of Ayurveda, that we should live today aligned with nature. The majority of Ayurveda's stakeholders that finance ayurveda do not use ayurveda. Those that use ayurveda are not usually in the mainstream. Ayurvedic vaidyas are often considered professional due to their low skillsets in modern IEC (information, education, communication). Most vaidyas also do not behave by the professional standards of most other respected professions in today's society.

While every person is a stakeholder in health, and would love to be more abundant in strength (bala), disease-resistance (vyadhi-ksamatva) and vitality (ojas), few in the mainstream truly believe that ayurveda is the right path to get there. They relegate Ayurveda to preventive practices or minor ailments. They want to substitute their prescription pill with an herbal pill, mostly because they truly do not understand ayurveda's worldview on health. Most people have no idea where to start in taking responsibility for their own health because they don't know how health works. Those who do begin to see the curative and interventional powers of ayurveda for serious diseases shift their lifestyles and then believe strongly -- usually due to personal experiences -- and then they leave the mainstream, where their knowledge was needed.

What does it take to do good branding of ayurveda? Some say that evidence must be created. They propose that we must do clinical trials to show the public and the scientists and NIH decision-makers and doctors that there is real healing ability of ayurvedic medicines.  But thousands of papers and clinical studies and scientific papers have already been written and published. They are ignored. They are not brought into the limelight in a way that convinces minds.

Some say good branding of ayurveda requires relating to the audience. Hundreds of thousands of people have been helped by ayurvedic treatments. These do not shift the conscience of the mainstream.

Others say good branding of ayurveda requires better media attention. Celebrities of different fields have endorsed products, services, books, and events of ayurveda.  These do not shift the naysayers who have already decided that ayurveda has no basis; they will not be convinced.

As funding increases today for ayurveda without concomitant increase in competently understanding the way ayurveda works, nonsense projects are being touted as real, and nonsense branding is permitted by people in decision-making positions but who are unaware what they are promoting. Scientific committees are not led by ayurvedic vaidyas who understand and practice the science of ayurveda. Products of ayurveda are sold by companies who bosses do not understand the practice of ayurveda. Legislators of ayurveda are passing laws without understanding the true laws of nature and ayurveda. And most wickedly, entrepreneurs of ayurveda are pouring rich investors' funds into whimsical projects without understanding how to implement ayurveda.

The biggest obstacle in branding ayurveda is that a clear path of understanding the practices, services, principles, and products of ayurveda as a systematic science are nowhere to be found by the layperson. The authentic ayurvedic vaidya population follow simple ayurvedic principles that honor the power of subtle energies, the power of perception and mind, the power of living energy in plants, the power of animals and mentally-cogent humans, and in the power of concentrated light and sound. When these are used together to help a patient heal successfully, the alignment is honored as authentic ayurveda.

week.134 published in The South Asian Times, New York.
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Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya MD(Medicine), PhD(Ayurveda-BHU) is a Fulbright Specialist 2018‐2023 in Public Health and Clinical Asst Professor of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York.

In addition to be a licensed physician, she has learned ayurveda through guru-shishya parampara, receiving the grantha and diksha of her teacher in 2003 and learning from his faculty at AVP for the past 20 years. In 2018, she completed a mid-career PhD in Ayurveda from Banaras Hindu University.

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