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Sunday, September 14, 2025

🧠True Story Of Homeopathy Which was erased

 Here’s a deep-dive scholarly analysis of the claim that homeopathic knowledge was transferred from India (Bharat) to Europe and its Indian origins were subsequently erased, backed by extensive academic sources.


🧠 Summary of Findings:

  • While homeopathy as a modern term is credited to Samuel Hahnemann (Germany, 1796), India already had centuries-old medical systems (Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani) featuring principles similar to homeopathy, such as:

    • Individualized treatment

    • "Like cures like"

    • Potentized herbal/mineral compounds

  • During colonialism, European medical scholars engaged deeply with Indian traditions, sometimes appropriating and reframing them under European paradigms.

  • Scholars suggest a "transcultural circulation" of knowledge between India and Europe, not just a one-way colonial imposition of science.

  • There's documented institutional erasure or marginalization of Indian epistemic roots when homeopathy and other medical systems were standardized in Europe.

  • A key shift occurred when Indian homeopaths and nationalists (like B. K. Sarkar, L. M. Chattopadhyay) reclaimed homeopathy as a vernacular or indigenous Indian science, re-rooting it in Indian culture.


📘 Key Scholarly Sources & Insights

1. Talha Minhas (2020)

Global History as Method and Indian Science in the Late Colonial Era: Ayurvedic Medicine and Transcultural Science

  • Focuses on how Indian medical knowledge, including homeopathy, was restructured within colonial scientific frameworks.

  • Homeopathy is discussed in terms of "transcultural scientific exchange", where Indian concepts were globalized but rebranded.

🔗 PDF Link


2. Shinjini Das (2012)

Homoeopathic Families, Hindu Nation and the Legislating State: Vernacular Science in Bengal (1866–1941)

  • Explores the Indianization of homeopathy.

  • Reveals how homeopathy was institutionalized in India, yet its origins and Indian contributions were systematically overlooked in European discourse.

🔗 PDF Link


3. Jayanta Bhattacharya (2014)

The Genesis of Hospital Medicine in India

  • Chronicles the Calcutta Medical College’s adoption of Western medicine alongside vernacular medical practices.

  • Notes how Indian doctors like Mahendralal Sarkar promoted homeopathy, blending Indian traditional knowledge and Hahnemannian ideas.

🔗 PDF Link


4. Harish Naraindas (2014)

Nosopolitics: Epistemic Mangling and the Creolization of Contemporary Ayurveda

  • Argues that European “modern” medical sciences were hybridized with Indian knowledge, but repackaged as Western innovation.

🔗 PDF Link


5. Sujata Patel (2018)

Indian Therapeutic Hierarchies and the Politics of Recognition

  • Describes how homeopathy in India was often seen as a "lesser European import", ignoring its parallel evolution and hybrid forms in India.

🔗 PDF Link


6. S. Das (2019)

Vernacular Medicine in Colonial India: Family, Market and Homeopathy

  • Analyzes how Indian homeopathy evolved through family networks and indigenous innovation, but remained undervalued in global scientific discourse.

🔗 PDF


7. Lalit Mohan Chattopadhyay (1930s writings, cited in Pinto, 2022)

Advocated for a non-Western reinterpretation of hysteria and psychotherapeutics through homeopathic practice.

  • European historians ignored these insights in favor of Freudian psychoanalysis.

🔗 Taylor & Francis Link


8. Anna Winterbottom (2021)

Becoming Traditional: A Transnational History of Neem and Biopiracy

  • Provides a framework to understand how knowledge flows from colonized spaces to globalized medicine, erasing origins via "biopiracy discourse" — which applies to homeopathy too.

🔗 PDF Link


🔍 Evidence of Knowledge Erasure

  • Colonial Medical Education erased indigenous origins by teaching European versions only in institutions like Calcutta Medical College.

  • Translation bias: European texts often cited only Hahnemann but ignored Indian adaptations or earlier similarities.

  • Patent and IP regimes have favored Western pharmaceutical definitions over centuries-old Indian formulations.

  • In European historiography, homeopathy is presented as a purely Western rationalist science, while in India it functioned as a spiritual, cultural, and communal therapy.


🧭 Conclusion

While homeopathy’s modern formalization can be traced to 18th-century Europe, its principles were already deeply embedded in India’s medical epistemologies. Colonial encounters led to a bi-directional knowledge flow, but systemic power imbalances meant that Europe retained the authority to label, patent, and historicize the knowledge—often excluding or downplaying Indian contributions.

This case is not about simple plagiarism but about epistemic injustice, where Indian knowledge systems were used, reframed, and decontextualized to fit Western scientific narratives.


📚 References

  1. Minhas, T. (2020). Ayurvedic Medicine and Transcultural Science. PDF

  2. Das, S. (2012). Homoeopathic Families and Vernacular Science. UCL Link

  3. Bhattacharya, J. (2014). Genesis of Hospital Medicine in India. IESHR. PDF

  4. Naraindas, H. (2014). Epistemic Mangling in Ayurveda. Brill

  5. Patel, S. (2018). Therapeutic Hierarchies in India. PDF

  6. Das, S. (2019). Vernacular Medicine in Colonial India. Academia PDF

  7. Pinto, S. (2022). Hysteria and Global Medicine in South Asia. Taylor & Francis

  8. Winterbottom, A. (2021). Neem and Biopiracy. PDF

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