In the name of science
With cures in cow urine and tips drawn from ancient texts to have a ‘superior child’, pseudosciences are inviting serious research, finds Ankur Paliwal
Apregnant woman should wear a specific gemstone, clothes of specific colours, offer specific flowers to the gods andre cite a specific chapter from The G it a to receive the benefits of planets that influence her and the foetu sin each month of pregnancy. That was the advice S hr add ha V ya sh ad for a group of Ayurv ed a practitioners, orvaidy as, who satin a building named Kunverbhai Jain Dharamshalain Jamnagar district of Gujarat.
Vyasisa lecturer at the Jamnag ar-based Gujarat Ayurved University. She was one of the speakers at a five-day workshop organised by KarishmaNarwani, director of Garbhvigy an Anusandhan Kendra, an NGO, in Jamnagarin late January this year. The NGO’s name translates as“Womb Science Research Centre ”.
The lectures covered different aspects of garbhsanskar — a set of procedures apparently derived from ancient Hindu texts to guide couples to have a nut tam santa ti, or “superior child” who is mentally, physically and spiritual ly strong. V aid ya sf rom six Indian states participated in the workshop. To conceive a nut tam santa ti, the married couple should have sex when their ruling planets were aligned, said Vyas. Participants took notes.
Narwa ni claims that so far 476 couples have had their“superior child” following garbh sanskar’s “scientific procedure ”. It’s a claim scientists aren’ t buying. Parts of garbhsansk ar are“totally pseudo scientific ,” says Soumitro Banerjee, general secretary of Breakthrough Science Society, a Kolkata-based non-profit that promotes science. Pseudoscience is a set of beliefs or practices that masquerades as science to claim legitimacy.
There are other projects like garbhsansk ar, some even initiated by the government. Or, promoted by Hindu organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishwa Hindu Paris had. Promoting pseudo science in the garb of Vedic literature has been an integral part of the RS S agenda since the early 20 th century, says Me era Nanda, a science historian and author of the book Science in Saffron. The eagerness for scientific legitimisation of Hindu dharma and Vedas is actively fostered by Hindu nationalists and their allies, she write sin one of her essays. Prime Minister Na rend ra Mo di, too, a member of the Hindutva-driven Bharatiya Janat a Party, invoked the elephant-headed god Gan es ha as evidence of plastic surgery and Karna, a character from The Mahabharata, as proof of “genetic science” inOctober2014.
Garbhvigy an Anus and han Kendra is the brain child of N ar wan ia nd her teacher, Hitesh Ishwarlal Jani, a senior lecture rat Gujarat Ayurved University. Narwani received her bachelor’ sin Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery from the same university, with special interesting arbhsansk ar, which was part of her coursework. During her internship in 2003 at an Ayurved a health clinic ch aired by Jani, they spent hours talking about garbhsansk ar. Around that time, Ja ni claims to have used Ayurv ed a to help a couple whose two children had died of th alas semi a to have a third child without the disease . “Karishmaji and I discussed whether we could help couples have children with good genes, and devoid of any genetic disorder,” Jani, who has been an RSS sway ams eva ks in ce childhood, tells me. “Parents should have the right to customise the baby they want .” Only strong children can build a strong India, he adds.
N ar wan it hen spent a year researching ancient Hindu texts of Ayurved a and astrology to write the guidelines for cr eat in gut tam santa ti and to treat infertility. In 2005, Narwani founded the NG O, with RS S members on the board, and decided to not marry and instead de vote herself to the “cause ”.
The guidelines include specific monthly instructions, especially for the woman, about diet( mostly vegetarian and derived from the cow ), yoga, breathing exercises, self-conduct and feeding the cow. It begins with a 90-day plan that includes “purification of the body ”, followed by a 72- day plan to form a “good quality” sperm and egg, which is then followed by “purification of the environment” through yajna. This done, the couple is advised a specific date and time, based on the alignment of their planets, to have sex to invite a “pure soul” into the embryo. N ar va ni claims that all 476 couples conceived with this prescription.
After conception, them other has to follow a strict monthly plan that includes listening to a set of compact discs loaded with specific sounds derived from the shlokas. “This planning is in sync with the organ development of the fo et us ,” Narwani tells me. The NGO’s clinic, Ved Garbha, charges~50,000 from a couple for garbhsanskar.
Narwani emphasis es that them other’ s activities and thoughts influence the fo et us. So, if the couple wants the child to be good in math, them other should do math puzzles such as Su do ku .“This is all scientific ,” she insists.
Where is the scientific evidence ?” asks Arun Gadre, a Pun e-ba sedgy na ecologist who has worked in rural Maharashtra for 20 years. Gadre and other gynaecologists say that although a balanced diet, yoga and breathing exercises help in pregnancy, mixing them with astrology and mantras make mum bo-jumbo of the whole procedure. Agrees Subha Sri Balakrishnan, a Chennai-based gynaecologist and chairperson of Common Health, a coalition for maternal-neonatal health and safe abortion .“I respect Ayurved a but such claims malign what science stands for ,” she says. She adds that it could be argued that science itself has not yet caught up with some of the claims that garbhsansk ar makes, but the only way to test the validity of those claims is through well-designed research.
Science is not based on beliefs and assertions. Scientific process requires you to develop a hypothesis and then design an experiment to test that hypothesis, which could be proven true or false. Claiming that 476 couples got the child they wanted by following garbhsanskar is anecdotal ,“which is a low quality evidence ,” says Balakrishnan. The scientific way would bet odo a random is ed controlled study, explains Banerjee. In such studies, people participating in the trial are randomly assigned to two different groups. The experimental group receives the treatment and the other doesn’ t. Their results are compared to check whether or not the treatment worked. Narwani’ s NGO has not done this study.
Gujarat has seven such centres, some run by Vidya Bharti, the educational wing of the RS S. Arogya Bharti, the RS S’ s health wing, will set up centre sin West Bengal and K ar nat aka. Narwani plans to open centres across India.
While Narwani encourages expecting couples to keep a co win their house to receive “positive energy ”, the animal has also become the subject of a pseudo science project initiated by the Mo di government. In 2017, the Department of Science and Technology( DST) started a project—Scientific U ti lisa ti on Through Research Augmentation-Prime Products( Pan ch a gav ya) from Indigenous Cows, or SUTRA-PIC. Panchagavya is a concoction of five cow products—milk, urine, dung, curdandghee. Documents sourced by Business Standard through the Right to Information Act reveal that although the government has renamed the project S UT RAP I C( Research on Pan ch a gav ya ), the project’ s objectives include “validation of utility products from indigenous cows”.
That makes it pseudoscientific, says Banerjee. “If you want to validate something, that means you already believe it is true.” In research that begins with this bias, scientists tend to design experiments that lead to favourable results, adds Nanda. The project is coordinated by Virendra Kumar Vijay, head of the Center for Rural Development and Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Vijay refused to answer questions related to the project.
There is more that clouds the scientific transparency of this project. The 19- member National Steering Committee, constituted by DST and chaired by Science and Technology Minister Harsh Va rd han, has members with conflict of interest. Sunil Mansinghka, for example, runs Go Vigyan Anus and han Kendra, a project of the Vishwa Hindu Paris had in Nagpur. Mansinghka tells me that his research centre collaborates with government research institutions across India to “validate the benefits of pan ch a gav ya ”. He says ,“What is written there[ in ancient texts] is absolute truth and relevant even today .” India’ s mal nutrition can only go away by drinking the milk of indigenous cow, he continues .“Cow urine also cur es cancer and many other diseases ,” he adds. Co-chairman of the committee, Vijay B hat kari sal so the president of RS S-linked Vijnana Bharati, a science movement “with swadeshi spirit”. A Jay kumar, another member, is Vijnana Bharati’s secretary general.
According to the minutes of the committee’ s first meeting held in August last year, members agreed that ~100 cr ore would be required for the first three years of theprogramme.
Mansinghkae mailed me a compilation of research papers about pan ch a gav ya. There were about 15 studies on cow urine. Some were done by Ram Swaroop Chauhan, professor of pathology at the College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences in Pantnagar, Uttarakh and. Ch au han tells me he has been researching panchagavya for over two decades .“It is used as a diuretic, laxative and for treatment of chronic-malaria, enteritis, constipation, baldness, headaches, fever, chemical intoxication, ageing, etcetera. It is proved as a universal cure r of blood disorders, leucorrhoea and even leprosy ,” reads one of the papers Chauhanco-authored.
In the paper, Ch au han also gives examples of people who recovered from cancer after drinking cow urine. Two of the three papers were published in the International Journal of Cow Science in the same year that he was the editor-in-chief of the journal. Around the same time, Ch au han was the president of the Cow Therapy Society, which publishes the journal.
“Saying that some people got cured of cancer by consuming cow urine doesn’t work in science unless you show that this is statistically significant ,” says A KG arg, scientist at the Bareilly-based Indian Veterinary Research Institute. Statistical significance means that it is unlikely that the result has occurred by chance.
Garg has scanned about 100 research papers on panchagavya in the last two months to determine potential areas of research. “So far, most of the research has been superficial,” says Garg. “Most of those papers are not in good peer-reviewed journals.”
The number of journals that publish mediocre papers have been rising over the years .“Predatory journals have a big hand in promoting pseudo science ,” says Upinder Bhalla, professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengal uru. Bhalla, Gargand other scientists say that there is no harm researching cow products, provided scientific methods are followed. Pseudo science takes people away from how science works, says B hall a .“It is for scientists and communicators to present the authentic version .”
On the fourth day of the workshop, Narwani took participants to a school run by Vi dy a Bhartiin Vibhapar village ,25 km from Jamnagar. They met the NG O workers who promote garbhsansk arin the village .“The entire village has decided to follow garbh sanskar,” Hiteshri Patel, one participant, told me. After attending the workshop, Patelis convinced about the power of garbhsansk ar. She plans to have a child and will follow garbh sankar. As an Ayurv ed a practitioner, she will also promote garbhsansk arin Pat an, a district in Gujarat where she lives.
In Jamnagar, I met two mothers, Aarti Changani and Kajal Gosrani, who believe that they got the child they desired through garbh sanskar. When I asked them why they would recommend garbh sanskar to their friends, they replied, “Because it is scientific.”
AFTER CONCEPTION, THE MOTHER HAS TO FOLLOW A MONTHLY PLAN THAT INCLUDES LISTENING TO COMPACT DISCS WITH SPECIFIC SOUNDS DERIVED FROM THE SHLOKAS