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Through a skill, if rigorous, application of diet, yoga and physiotherapy, India’s Institute of Naturopathy and Yogic Sciences,INYS, in Bangalore, also called Jindal’s farm, coaxes the body to health.
The testimonies are fulsome and numerous. P.K. Das, 50, an engineer from Orissa, India, suffering from chronic asthma, is on his fourth visit. “I’m allergic to dust, but I cannot ask for a world without dust, so I come here for treatment.” Fifty–six–year–old Gangadariah suffers from blood pressure and diabetes. “My health is under control and so am I. Earlier I never missed a single meal, now I have fasted for five days and been on a liquid diet for another three days.”

Bina Sella, 49 and NRI from London, has come for her inflammatory digestive system. “I was treated here two years ago for acute gastritis. This time, my eye allergy was healed by triphala, an ayurvedic herb. My inflammation is down, my body is healing.”

Let’s give the voices a rest and turn to the wonder cure–that nitpicking, difficult and unglamorous therapy called naturopathy or nature cure. And the place is one of its best known practitioners–the Bangalore–based Institute of Naturopathy and Yogic Sciences (INYS), otherwise known as Jindal’s farm. Set up in 1978 by industrialist Sitaram R. Jindal, a keen naturopathy. Says Dr. B. T. Chidananda Murthy, chief medical officer of the naturopathy section: “Dr Jindal saw how naturopathy healed him and his relatives, and set up this institute.”

“According to naturopathy, healing comes from within the body,” continues Dr Murthy. Disease is the offshoot of an accumulation of waste matter. Treatment, therefore, lies in eliminating it by enemas and fasting.

Its austere regimen has given naturopathy the reputation of being an extremist therapy. Despite this, the institute is popular. Admission is by application and there is always a waiting list. The rich and the famous gravitate to it–be they politicians, tycoons, socialites or film stars.

Read more: Calling Dr. Nature