28-29 October, 1994
Colombia University, New York, USA
Inaugural conference of the Dharam Hinduja Indic Research Centre

HEALTH, SCIENCE AND THE SPIRIT: VEDA AND þYURVEDA IN THE WESTERN
WORLD
 
By Jan E.M. Houben

According to a communication from the Dharam Hinduja Indic
Research Centre (E-mail of 21 September for the Indology Mailing
List), the Centre was established on May 19, 1994, by Shrichand
P. Hinduja in memory of his late son Dharam, 'a student in
America who cared deeply about human and spiritual values and the
betterment of relations between India and the United States.'
According to the same communication 'The Hinduja Group, a
worldwide business complex run by the four Hinduja brothers, is
active in international trade, finance, banking, manufacturing,
power, transport, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, industrial
project development, petroleum, and lubricants.' It has offices
in Europe, India, the Middle East, the Far East and the United
States and employs some 20.000 people. The Centre at Columbia
University is said to be dedicated to 'research on the Veda (the
earliest religious texts in an Indo-European language) and the
later Vedanta (philosophical texts) of India.' Another Dharam
Hinduja Indic Research Centre (DHIRC) has recently been
established in Delhi, and a third one is planned in Europe
(Cambridge, GB).
While the cited statement about the aims of the research centre
would suggest that it is planning to focus mainly on philological
studies of Indian religious and philosophical texts, the
inaugural conference showed that it is developing a major
interest in the Indian medical tradition. The conference was
organized in collaboration with the Rosenthal Centre for
Alternative / Complementary Medicine at Columbia's College of
Physicians and Surgeons. At the conference, attention was paid to
the textual sources of this tradition, to its religious
background, as well as to the reception of the tradition in the
modern Western world. After the welcoming and introductory
speeches by Prof. Robert Thurman, Chair of the Religion
Department of Columbia University, John S. Hawley, PhD, acting
director of the DHIRC at Columbia University, Hon. Harry Cahill,
President of the Hinduja Foundation, S.P. Hinduja, Chairman of
the Hinduja Foundation and some visiting dignitaries, Diana Eck,
PhD, Harvard University, presented the paper Science and the
Spirit: a Century of Dialogue between India and America, in which
she reviewed the history of contacts of the US with India and the
Indian traditions. Some major early events in this history were
the establishment of the Vedanta Society by Vivekananda in New
York, 1895, and the establishment of the Self Realisation
Fellowship by Yogananda in the 1920s. When the Oriental Exclusion
Act of 1924 was abolished in 1965, the USA became more accessible
to people from Asia, including teachers and gurus from India.
Movements like the ISKCON 'Hare Krishna' and Transcendental
Meditation (TM) acquired more and more followers in the US. One
of the general long-term developments perceived by Diana Eck is
that the difference between Indian traditions and the West in its
earliest period was defined in  terms of the spirituality of the
Indian tradition versus the science of the West. The next step
was that representatives of the Indian tradition, such as
Yogananda, started to define this tradition as a 'science of
spirituality'. Later on, the Indian tradition of spiritual
practices was even more exclusively presented in the language of
science by the TM-movement, and its Hindu religious background
was strongly de-emphasized.
The next item on the programme was a roundtable discussion on
Spirituality and Health, which, according to an earlier
communication, was originally planned as a discussion between
representatives of Indian traditions abroad, namely the Vedanta
Society, the TM-movement, and ISKCON. The TM-movement withdrew
its cooperation at the last moment, and the discussion became
more a sort of symposium of individual practitioners of Indian
spiritual and medical traditions and Western-trained doctors.
From then on, the conference focused entirely on þyurveda. The
speakers can be divided into two major groups: scholars of
þyurvedic texts attempting to understand it in its early, mainly
Indian context, and modern practitioners of þyurveda. Among the
first were Prof. Kenneth Zysk (New York University) and Dr
Francis Zimmerman (McGill University). The modern practitioners
included traditional practitioners such as Vasant Lad, and those
with a stronger western medical background, presenting þyurveda
in the language of modern science and new age, such as Deepak
Chopra (author of best-sellers like Quantum Healing and Perfect
Health). As pointed out by Prof. Zysk, one of the striking
features of modern 'new age' þyurveda is its association with
'spirituality', whereas traditional þyurveda was a much more
pragmatic system of health and healing. The þyurvedic tradition
was approached from the point of view of history of science by Dr
Francis Zimmerman. Parallels to the Indian þyurveda in the
Tibetan Buddhist tradition were highlighted by Prof. R. Thurman.
Other speakers drew the attention of the audience to modern
developments in the application and the gradually increasing
acceptance of þyurveda in the USA.
The conference was successful in the sense that it brought
together two groups of students of þyurveda, which usually
operate at some distance of each other: those who want to apply
it in a modern context, and those who want to understand it in
its origins and traditional development. It is clear that each of
the two groups can profit very much in its work from the
achievements of the other, and it is to be hoped that the
conference will lead to a more intensive exchange of information
and inspiration. A better practical and theoretical knowledge of
þyurveda may be expected to contribute to solving modern problems
of health and well-being,not only in the USA but also in the
homeland of þyurveda, India, where it has still retained
something of its traditional prestige, and in other Asian
countries. A strong point of þyurveda in this context no doubt
consists in its low-cost techniques for prevention and cure of
initial stages of diseases.
It is clear that þyurveda will remain a major focus of the Dharam
Hinduja Research Centre (DHIRC) at Columbia University judging
from the topic of the conference which is planned for the near
future according to information kindly given to me recently by Dr
John S. Hawley. This conference for which a definite date is
still to be fixed, will again be organized in collaboration with
the Rosenthal Centre for Alternative / Complementary Medicine and
will deal with  methodologies for the evaluation of non-western
medicines.