International Trans-Disciplinary Workshop on Ayurveda, Siddha, Philosophies and South Epistemologies

July 23-25, 2024, at St Thomas College, Palai, Kerala, India

Organised by

Dept Biochemistry, St Thomas College, Palai & Unnat Bharat Abhiyan Cell India, Center for Advanced Studies and Integrated Research in Ayurveda (CASIRA), Personalised and Precision Health Systems (PPHS), Bengaluru International Cooperative of Universities India (ICU India), Coimbatore L’Université Coopérative Internationale (LUCI)- UMR CNRS LADYSS Paris 8-Vincennes, Université de Paris 8-Vincennes, France

At the crossroads of Ayurveda, Siddha, Philosophies and South Epistemologies, how to rediscover and re-contextualise the fundamental foundations of Codified Traditional Medicine in a pluralistic medical approach ? In the context of People’s Health, which designates the constitution and transformation of research practices, the training and co-construction of an emancipatory health of emancipatory promotion resulting from ecological knowledge, the International Transdisciplinary Workshop aims to include, to at the same time, experiences of resistance through the research of AYUSH doctors and the scientific inter-struggles led by researchers from the Forum for Medical Pluralism with researchers from Epistemologies of the South, in an Indian society crossed by territorial heterogeneities, inequalities plural, radical exclusions and the ecological crisis. This Samsrishta is therefore part of critical engagements and counter-hegemonic appropriations for the establishment of a dialogue between the diversity of knowledge and care practices of AYUSH health systems and the knowledge of western biomedicine aimed at the construction of an ecology of health knowledge. Thus, far from a discipline with strict boundaries, epistemic injustices will be studied by intellectual discrimination, law and anti-discriminatory policies of care practices, the social experience of the oppression of biomedicine against Ayurvedic medicine, the modalities of choice of care practices by patients, inclusion or exclusion and representation of Ayurvedic doctors as minority groups, the conservative mobilisations of western medicine, or the lived experience of the group of Ayurvedic or Siddha doctors as a minority body, from an Indian perspective which requires drawing on law, sociology, political science, ethics, philosophies and Indian literature. The objective of this conversation will then consist of tying together all of these threads without losing coherent links with the episteme of Ayurveda and Siddha medicine and work for an International Cooperative of Universities India (ICU India)