Misleading Information in NCERT Textbook, Experts Flag 'Overstated Claims' on Ayurveda
Basant Kumar Mohanty, G.S. Mudur | 10 August 2024 | The Telegraph
A chapter on ayurveda in a Class XI textbook from the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) contains “overstated claims” and exaggerates the antiquity of ayurveda by 1,500 years, an ayurveda physician and scholar has said.
The physician G.L. Krishna, a visiting scholar at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, has said the NCERT’s intent to introduce ayurveda to Class XI students is welcome but the introduction “should not be factually and conceptually misleading”.
An educationist and former chairperson of a textbook panel for the NCERT has also cautioned that misleading content has broader and “serious implications” because textbooks are viewed by students, parents, and teachers as “infallible and inviolable”.
Krishna has questioned parts of chapter 7 in the textbook titled “Knowledge Traditions and Practices of India” that explain ayurveda’s Tridosha theory. According to the theory, health and disease are governed by levels and imbalances in three illness-causing factors called doshas — Vata, Pitta, and Kapha….