Modern warrior for traditional knowledge

 This week Darshan Shankar journeys to New York to receive an award from Columbia University. Its Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the first -of-its-kind in the US, is celebrating its tenth anniversary and Shankar will be one of the five who will be honoured.

 Through it the centre will be paying a tribute to him and the work of the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (located on the outskirts of Bangalore) which he has founded.

 This is not the first or the most well-known award that has been bestowed upon Shankar. Perhaps the most well-known is the Norman Borlaug award which came to him in 1998 for his contribution for the conversation of medicinal plants.

 The 53-year-old bearded former academic from Bombay University, who is mostly to be found in jeans and slippers, has been heading his foundation for the last ten years and it is its unique work which captures his special vision.

 The foundation has three specific goals before it: 1) conserving the natural resources used by Indian systems of medicine; 2) demonstrating the contemporary relevance of the theory and practice of Indian systems of medicines; and 3) activating social processes for transmission of this knowledge.

 Right now work is taking place on botanical and ecological surveys in different types of forests and regions; conservation of wild populations and habitats of natural resources where they occur and helping local institutions to maintain community gardens of medicinal plants.

 This is not all. The foundation has set up a biocultural herbarium and raw drug library of Indian medicinal plants. It is creating a large data base of traditional medical knowledge focused on materica-medica and diagnostics. There is also a programme to impart training to build proper household and community health practices.

 Shankar