Vaidyachudamani Madhav Vasudeo Kolhatkar:
A visionary.
Ayurveda, a science which has been the sole health care system of the society for ages had been gradually relegated to being a collection of traditional remedies during the era of foreign invasions on the parts of the world where its studies and practice thrived.
Right from the time of initial invasions there have been people who have taken immense efforts to preserve and propagate the knowledge and use of Ayurveda.
The necessity of such efforts continued to be there through centuries. (It remains like that even today, more so in the face of the impact of the modern medicine that has replaced Ayurveda)
Vaidya Madhav Vasudeo Kolhatkar has been an eminent individual in the line of such great personalities. He had an appropriate perception of the situation regarding the health care systems prevalent in the period he lived. In spite of the fact that he was not a part of the mainstream (allopathic) health care services, he took efforts to get the information necessary to have a grasp of the situation of health care and medical education at the national level.
He had done so with an objective of establishing Ayurveda as the mainstream health care system. He had a complete view of the health care medical education requirements on the demographic scale of our nation. (He never thought about aspirations to spread Ayurveda globally, he used to believe that what would be effectively implemented in our nation first could only be taken to other parts of the world).
Out of this profound understanding of the situation, he had come to a conclusion that the unit on which the efforts towards making Ayurveda the mainstream health care system have to be focused upon in the current situation was the STUDENTS of Ayurveda. Stopping worthy (which will eventually be all the) students of Ayurveda from being misled and carried away by the apparent success of allopathic medicine and bringing them to a sincere study of the Texts of Ayurveda was according to him the foremost important task in this regard. He virtually gave everything it took to accomplish this. Only learned Vaidyas (Ayurvedic physicians) could make for a strong foundation on which the future efforts to establish Ayurveda would hold ground.
In the absence of that, all other efforts to popularise Ayurveda will lose direction and become futile though they may seem effective in short term.
He was completely aware that he had embarked upon a task which wasn’t going to attain fruition in his lifetime. He never was worried about that either. He knew that this was only the beginning and to take this vision further, there was this need of a team of people who had an understanding of this perspective and the ever widening scope of work that it would lead to. Though he succeeded in bringing a large number of students to the fraternity of Ayurveda, his untimely demise left those students in a state of utter nonchalance towards the task they had become a part of.
Vidyarthimitra Vaidya Ma. Va. Kolhatkar Ayurveda Pratishthana (the trust named after him) is a result of the efforts of those students who somehow tried to regroup themselves after that shock.
Date of birth: 25/08/1939
Family background: Well Educated, Cultured Family
Education:
- School:
- Saraswati Mandir Marathi School
- Nutan Marathi Vidyalaya, Pune
- College:
- Inter Arts – S. P. College, Pune
- Ayurved Pravin (D. S. A. C.) – Ashtang Ayurved Mahavidyalaya, Pune
- M. A. (Sanskrit) – Pune University
- Vaidyachudamandi – Vedashastrottejak Sabha, Pune
Research Work:
Research on various diseases in Sasoon Hospital
Basic Theme of – Ayurved Triskandh Kosh – an important research work globally
Hobbies: Singing, Painting
Death: 06/11/1992