The Warrior of Haldi Ghati
A glance into the work of Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar and the "biopiracy" war he fought
Think about this - have you ever used haldi (turmeric) as a home remedy after getting hurt? If you haven’t, putting haldi on a wound is an extremely common thing to do in India. And although it may not look particularly pretty, it acts quickly and effectively.
It’s an age-old cure - so old, in fact, that it’s in the Vedas as well. So it might surprise you to know that in 1995, the “wound-healing properties of turmeric” were patented by researchers in the United States.
Dr. Mashelkar was then already working for the government overseeing industrial labs. One morning, he opened a newspaper and read, quite by chance, about the patent. He was appalled.
“I was shocked, and I said, my God, this this cannot be right because anything that is known - my mother knew it; my mother's mother knew it; generations of Indians around the world knew it - how can you grant a patent on that?” he asked.
That very evening, Mashelkar was scheduled to give a lecture. With the news of the turmeric patent fresh in his mind, he ended up talking about it quite a bit. As he closed his talk, he spoke about how what was happening was wrong, and unfair to generations of Indians. And he was going to do something about it.
With that, war was declared. The modern-day battle of Haldi Ghati had begun.
Why was the Patent Objectionable?
The fundamental basis of patents is that they reward unique, original ideas and discoveries. While the study in the US might have been the first “scientific” exploration of the subject, it was certainly not original.
Having said that, it’s understandable why the researchers might not have known about the pre-existing usage of turmeric. First, it was more of a household remedy, not a miraculous medicine that was widely spoken about. Secondly, it was written in the Vedas, which at the time were not available in English. The material was simply inaccessible - but not for long, thanks to Dr. Mashelkar’s mission.
Progression of the Case
To see the case through, the Indian government eventually went to a Minneapolis-based firm in the United States. The lawyer hired was a man by the name of Doug Mueller. A patent reexamination was filed.
Mashelkar’s team needed adequate materials to prove that the patent should not have been granted. They got hold of over a dozen Ayurvedic texts, and translated them to English as well. Their objective was to show how long-standing the practice of using turmeric as a cure was in India.
This objective was finally achieved. It was actually quite a straightforward process - sufficient evidence was gathered, and the entire patent was withdrawn.
The End - or Not Quite?
Two years after the haldi case began, yet another US patent piqued Mashelkar’s interest - basmati rice.
It’s a lot less likely that you haven’t heard about this product. Basmati rice is grown in the Indian subcontinent - not just India, but Pakistan and Nepal as well. In 2019, India accounted for 65% of international basmati trade. It was mentioned as early as 1766 in the Punjabi epic Heer Ranjha.
Despite all that, a Texas-based company had patented a method for growing basmati rice.
Of course, Dr. Mashelkar and his team began work once more, and got the rice patent withdrawn as well. But then he began to wonder - was this bigger than they had originally imagined?
After quite a bit of research and digging around, he realized that the answer was a resolute yes. There were over 200 appropriated patents all over the United States and Europe.
In fact, this wasn’t just a problem faced by India. It was widespread among so many communities that a new term was coined - biopiracy.
What is Biopiracy?
Put simply, biopiracy (or ‘scientific colonialism’) is the appropriation of knowledge, usually from indigenous communities, by people who want a monopoly over the product or method. Of course, the easiest way to do this is through patents.
Biopiracy is, above all, a deeply ethical issue. If a community manages to develop, say, a cure for cancer in secret, why shouldn’t this knowledge be used to help others? Why shouldn’t the entire world benefit rather than just a few people?
The problem arises here - the community might have spent years, decades or even centuries perfecting their cure. Then, somebody simply swooped in and stole it from them. They wouldn’t get any credit or revenue, no matter how many people it helped.
Further, the medicine could have been made using indigenous crops and materials. For it to be manufactured in large quantities might mean destruction of the community’s natural habitat and overutilization of resources.
The Bigger Picture and Beyond
Getting back to our story, Dr. Mashelkar realized that he was going to have to tackle the issue of biopiracy altogether instead of fighting individual patents. The biggest problem was the unavailability of knowledge. How do you solve that?
Mashelkar and his team assembled once more, this time with a far greater purpose - to create a digital library on traditional knowledge. This might sound underwhelming, but it was a mammoth task. They hired a band of experts and, day and night, everyone was going through records, understanding ancient texts and translating them without hurting the meaning. Other than English, the library was translated into Spanish, French, German and Japanese as well.
Later on, yoga was added to the library as well, due to people trying to patent yoga poses in the US.
Critique of the Project
Naturally, as people praised the project, there were quite a few naysayers as well, especially among IP lawyers. They argued that the library (called TKDL, for Traditional Knowledge Digital Library) was ‘a waste of public money’.
One argument was that, in practice, most patents never actually made it to the market. They wouldn’t harm the Indian government in any way, so why go to so much trouble?
Another point was that the patent system would deal with the odd ones out that did reach the market. If a product started doing very well, competitors would begin to take notice. They’d try anything they could to get the patent withdrawn. Eventually, they’d research and find its Vedic origins. They themselves would go to court with it.
Prashant Reddy, one of the loudest critics, said that TKDL was more of a ‘national honour project’ than anything else.
Mashelkar, while refuting these claims, did admit that he was thinking more about the moral aspect of the issue than the economic. He saw patents as a tool for India to catapult itself into the global market, and felt that what was happening then was unacceptable.
Conclusion
No matter how you look at it, Dr. Mashelkar and his team brought about a revolutionary change in intellectual property. He sent a message to bio-pirates and helped people who genuinely didn’t have access to sufficient information. He also preserved Indian tradition and culture in a fast-evolving world that might have stolen them - in the name of development.