IIT Mandi integrates Ayurveda and Yoga into systemic mental health frameworks to address student distress amid academic pressures

Ayurveda and Yoga, while valuable, represent only a fraction of India’s indigenous healing traditions, which include community-based practices like Dharana (meditative focus), tribal shamanic healing, and folk therapies rooted in local ecosystems. The IIT’s selective revival risks commodifying these systems into marketable wellness products rather than restoring their holistic, community-centered functions. Indigenous knowledge systems globally emphasize relational healing—where mental health is tied to kinship, land, and spiritual balance—yet this dimension is entirely absent in the framing.

Colonial rule systematically dismantled indigenous healing systems in India, replacing them with Western psychiatric models that pathologized non-Western practices as 'superstitious.' Post-independence, the Indian state prioritized biomedical frameworks, marginalizing Ayurveda to a secondary role until neoliberal reforms in the 1990s revived it as a 'soft power' export. The IIT’s initiative echoes 19th-century colonial-era 'civilizing missions,' where traditional knowledge was selectively appropriated to address modern crises while ignoring the structural violence that created those crises.

In Māori traditions, mental health is addressed through whanaungatanga (kinship-based healing), where distress is seen as a rupture in communal bonds rather than an individual pathology. Similarly, in Andean cultures, the concept of 'susto' frames mental illness as a spiritual displacement requiring collective rituals, contrasting with the IIT’s individualistic, technique-based approach. These traditions reveal how mental health crises are often symptoms of cultural alienation—a dimension entirely missing in the IIT’s framing.

While Ayurveda and Yoga have empirical support for stress reduction (e.g., cortisol modulation, parasympathetic activation), their integration into IIT’s mental health framework lacks rigorous longitudinal studies on long-term outcomes for students. The narrative conflates anecdotal success with systemic efficacy, ignoring peer-reviewed critiques of yoga’s commercialization and Ayurveda’s variable standardization. A scientific approach would demand randomized controlled trials comparing indigenous interventions with evidence-based therapies like CBT, not their uncritical adoption as panaceas.

Artistic traditions in India, such as Kathakali or Bharatanatyam, have long used movement and storytelling to process collective trauma, offering a spiritual counterpoint to the IIT’s medicalized approach. Similarly, Sufi practices of sama (ecstatic music) and dhikr (remembrance) provide communal spaces for emotional release, yet these are absent in the narrative. The IIT’s framing reduces spirituality to a tool for productivity rather than a transformative force for healing and resistance.

If unchecked, this model risks normalizing the privatization of mental health care, where corporations and institutions outsource well-being to commodified 'ancient wisdom' rather than addressing systemic stressors. A future-oriented approach would integrate indigenous practices with decolonial education policies, such as reducing academic pressure and expanding access to culturally competent therapists. Scenario planning must also account for climate-induced mental health crises, where indigenous land-based healing could offer scalable solutions.

Dalit and Adivasi students, who face caste-based discrimination and economic exclusion, are systematically excluded from IIT’s mental health initiatives, which center Brahminical interpretations of Ayurveda and Yoga. Muslim students, often stereotyped as 'backward' in nationalist narratives, are similarly sidelined despite their communities’ rich traditions of spiritual healing. The framing ignores how mental health crises are compounded by state violence, such as anti-Muslim policies or the displacement of Adivasi communities for industrial projects.