The top court judgment came on a batch of appeals challenging a 2012 Gujarat High Court order, which held that Ayurveda practitioners are entitled to be treated at par with doctors with MBBS degrees.
What the bench said
“By the very nature of the science that they practise and with the advancement of science and modern medical technology, the emergency duty that allopathy doctors are capable of performing and the trauma care that they are capable of providing cannot be performed by Ayurveda doctors. It is also not possible for Ayurveda doctors to assist surgeons performing complicated surgeries, while MBBS doctors can assist. We shall not be understood to mean as though one system of medicine is superior to the other.”
The bench said it is not its mandate nor within its competence to assess the relative merits of these two systems of medical sciences and as a matter of fact, “we are conscious that the history of Ayurveda dates back to several centuries. We have no doubt that every alternative system of medicine may have its pride of place in history. But today, the practitioners of indigenous systems of medicine do not perform complicated surgical operations. A study of Ayurveda does not authorize them to perform these surgeries.”