Ayurveda and religion in Canada: a critical look at New Age Ayurveda from the Indian diaspora perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis examines how physicians in the Indian diaspora living in Canada---both those trained in Ayurveda in India (vaidyas) and those trained in Western medicine in India (MDs)---view the practice of Ayurveda in Canada. More specifically, it examines how their views have been influenced by New Age thought in general and Transcendental Meditation in particular and how these perceptions reflect the changing relation of religion and Ayurvedic medicine. It is the intent of this thesis to show that Ayurveda in Canada exists mainly as part of the greater New Age movement, as a transformed system that is inspired by both Hinduism and New Age thought, and that this transformation of Ayurveda evokes two distinct responses from Indian diaspora medical personnel in Canada---one unsupportive and one partially supportive. To the dismay of "traditional" Indians and to the praise of "modern" Indians, New Age Ayurvedic organizations strongly emphasize their version of "spirituality" as the primary goal of Ayurveda, whereas Indian forms of Ayurveda---both in the past and today---generally approach religion and spirituality secondarily. Thus, the role of religion and spirituality become major controversial issues in New Age Ayurveda. From the "traditional" point of view, the commercial achievements of New Age organizations (such as the Transcendental Meditation Movement) are not indicative of a successful introduction of Ayurveda in North America and run contrary to classical Ayurvedic principles, with regard to religious and medical practice. But, from the "modern" point of view, the New Age Ayurvedic emphasis on spirituality is indicative of an inevitable evolution of the system in North America.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.038 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".