The Prince and Ayurveda

IN THE CHANNEL 4 royal parody The Windsors, there comes a moment in season three when Prince Charles thinks he is within striking distance of the throne and hands a sheaf of papers to his wife Camilla saying it is his manifesto. Top of the sheaf is something called ‘Elocution Lessons for Tree Surgeons’. Funny, yes, but also like the best comedy, it has a grain of truth. Charles’ guru, the self-proclaimed Jungian mystic Laurens van der Post, did after all teach the prince to speak to plants, among other hobbies, considered totally unsuitable for the future King of England.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise when Prince Charles’ office quickly distanced itself from a statement by Shripad Yesso Naik, the Indian minister for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), that Ayurveda had cured the Prince of Wales of coronavirus. Instead, a carefully worded statement thanked the National Health Service (NHS).

A few days later, Charles inaugurated, virtually, a 4,000-bed makeshift coronavirus NHS hospital. But Charles’ relationship with Ayurveda, an ancient system of medicine (found in Atharva Veda, the last of the four Vedas) incorporating the idea of balance in the body, using diet, herbal treatment and yogic breathing, is indeed a reality. It is also quite rooted, given that he spent his 71st birthday in the company of his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, at Bengaluru’s Soukya, an integrated holistic health centre set in a 30-acre organic farm, with its own solar power, rainwater harvesting and cow dung converted to bio-gas to power the kitchen.

It is part of a journey Prince Charles started many years ago in understanding alternative medicine, and its high point—from the point of view of Ayurveda —was the opening in April 2018 of a new Ayurvedic Centre for Excellence at the Science Museum in London by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prince Charles.

Prime Minister Modi, who has spoken several times about the importance of yoga, breathing and Ayurveda in his fitness regime, started an AYUSH Ministry after he took over in 2014. Last year, when he launched the Fit India movement, Modi spoke about the Government’s plan to build 12,500 AYUSH centres in the country. For Dr Isaac Mathai, who runs Soukya, the presence of Prime Minister Modi and Prince Charles at the launch was an endorsement of what Ayurveda can give to the world. “We don’t appreciate our own wealth. With proper scientific study, we can help India and the world understand the importance of Ayurveda and naturopathy in building our immune system, which is the need of the hour,” he says. Not for nothing is Soukya a favourite with the royals, with Camilla having been there five times already, beginning in 2010. “Even two weeks ago, their very close friends stayed with us,” says Dr Mathai.

But Charles’ interest in alternative medicine has not always gone down well with the British public. The Foundation for Integrated Health, a charity he started in 1993, which wanted complementary and alternative medicine, aka integrated health, to be included in the NHS, had
to close down in 2010 after allegations of fraud. In 2006, the Prince made a speech at the World Health Assembly in Geneva to an audience of health ministers decrying Western medicine.

He has admitted to using homoeopathy to cure cattle at one of his estates, Highgrove. All these have only added to the aura of a crank living off the state exchequer, rather than the intended result — that of a thoroughly contemporary man not afraid to experiment with therapies and lifestyles. Charles has repeatedly run up against opposition, most vociferously with a well-regarded professor, Edzard Ernst, who believes the majority of alternative therapies he has promoted are clinically ineffective and downright dangerous.

The British royal family’s relationship with alternative medicine is an old one. The current royal physician is Dr Peter Fisher, clinical director at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine and an accredited homoeopath. Queen Elizabeth, now 94, is known to be a big believer in natural remedies and homoeopathy, taking arsenicum for food poisoning, cocculus for travel sickness, nux vomica for indigestion and arnica for jet lag and bruising. Even her dogs are treated to specific menus with an array of herbal and homoeopathic medicines. The Queen’s father, George VI, and his father George V, were also great believers. There has been a homoeopathic physician treating the royal family since the 1930s. Even Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle are said to have had sessions with celebrity acupuncturist Ross Barr to relieve pre-wedding tension.

But then everything Charles does invites criticism, even laughter. Much of it goes back to the PR war that was his marriage with Princess Diana, which he lost on every occasion, and which portrayed him as cold, unfeeling, out of touch, and in love with Camilla. Some of it is also his prickly personality and tendency to sulk when things don’t quite go his way. Laurens van der Post, one of the many father figures in his life—the others have been Lord Mountbatten and the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII—said on one occasion that he was misunderstood and starved of affection as a young man, and it has remained so well into adulthood.

The Windsors have a history of getting into public trouble over medical practitioners. During the 1960s, Stephen Ward was a well-known osteopath who ran what can only be described as a professional party den for toffs. It was here that Secretary of State for War John Profumo met a pretty party girl called Christine Keeler. Unfortunately for him, Keeler was also, and simultaneously, quite a favourite with a Russian naval attaché, Commander Yevgeny Ivanov. It caused Profumo to resign and there were whispers of Prince Philip’s visits, depicted quite liberally in Netflix’s blockbuster series, The Crown, and never officially denied.

There’s not much that Prince Philip shares with his first-born, having always considered him a bit of a wimp, but troublesome doctors and their prescriptions certainly count among them.

Click here to read all Coronavirus related articles

AyurvedaBritainCoronavirusCovid-19Narendra ModiPrince Charles