Earlier this month, the Ayush ministry offered detailed advice on how to build one’s immunity during the “Covid-19 Crisis”. To help ward of...
Earlier this month, the Ayush ministry offered detailed advice on how to build one’s immunity during the “Covid-19 Crisis”. To help ward off the dreaded disease, the ministry listed a series of specific recommendations, including, “Apply Sesame oil/Coconut oil/Cow Ghee... in both the nostrils in morning and evening.”
However, if one didn’t like putting stuff in one’s nose, the ministry offered an alternative: “Take 1 table spoon sesame oil or coconut oil in the mouth. Do not drink, swish in the mouth for 2 to 3 minutes and spit it off followed by warm water rinse [sic]”.
Other measures recommended by the ministry to stop oneself from getting Covid-19 include eating chyavanprash, drinking herbal tea, doing steam inhalation and so on.
The publicity material put out by the Ayush ministry stopped just short of explicitly saying that a deshbhakt would not get Covid-19 if he or she followed the procedures recommended by it. But the implication pretty much was – if you follow these traditional practices, you are much less likely to catch the virus. Leaders and propagandists of the ruling party have been far less coy in recommending altogether unproven cures for this most deadly of 21st-century diseases.
In my own state, the senior Bharatiya Janata...
