Tamil Nadu College Dean Removed After Students Take Controversial Oath

Tamil Nadu Health Minister has ordered the Director of Medical Education in the state to initiate a probe.

The Dean of a Tamil Nadu medical college has been transferred and put on "compulsory wait" for allowing first-year students to take a controversial oath in Sanskrit instead of the traditional Hippocratic Oath. The state's health authorities said that medical students had taken the oath "Charak Shapath" in Sanskrit during their induction ceremony at the Madurai Medical College. The Dean claimed that the students took the oath on their own.

"The Dean ought to have been careful in this sensitive issue. His claim that medicos chose to do this on their own is unacceptable. Even the medical commission says medicos will not be forced to take oath in Sanskrit," the health authorities said.

Charak Shapath is a certain passage of text in Charaka Samhita, a Sanskrit text on Ayurveda. Abiding by the oath, which has several controversial conditions like practising asceticism during student life, is a precondition to be taught in the science of medicine.

One of the instructions is to treat women only in the presence of a Brahmin/a male family member.