Pandit Shiv Sharma
The Ayurvedic physician who carried classical wisdom into the modern age

Pandit Shiv Sharma was born into a family steeped in traditional learning. He trained as an Ayurvedic physician and rose to become one of the most respected voices for classical Indian medicine in the mid-twentieth century. Before Partition he served as Professor of Medicine at the Dayanand Ayurvedic College in Lahore. After 1947 he settled in Bombay and continued his practice and teaching with quiet determination.

He was a firm advocate of Suddha Ayurveda — pure Ayurveda rooted in the classical texts — and spoke and wrote against the dilution of the system through hasty integration with other streams of medicine. His views were expressed with clarity and conviction in presidential addresses and articles for the All India Ayurvedic Congress, of which he was a leading figure.

In 1959 he was appointed Colombo Plan Adviser on Ayurveda to the Government of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The then Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike invited him to help establish an Ayurvedic research institute in the country. Sharma’s work there strengthened the scientific and institutional standing of Ayurveda beyond India’s borders.

He later served as Honorary Ayurveda Physician to the President of India — a rare recognition of the traditional system at the highest level of the Republic. In 1965 the Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan for his contributions to medicine.

Colleagues remembered a man of scholarly bearing and firm principles. When younger practitioners once asked him whether Ayurveda could survive in a rapidly modernising world, he is said to have replied:

“Ayurveda does not need to imitate anyone. It only needs to remain true to itself. If it is practised with knowledge and integrity, the world will come to it.”

In 1967 he was elected to the Lok Sabha as an Independent member from Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, carrying the voice of traditional medicine into the national legislature.

Pandit Shiv Sharma’s life bridged the pre-Independence centres of Ayurvedic learning and the new institutions of free India. In the story of Indian healers he stands as a steadfast guardian of classical Ayurveda — a physician who believed that the ancient science of life still held answers for the health of a modern nation, and who worked patiently to keep that wisdom alive and respected.