Due recognition

-- The latest Western
celebrity to seek the
East's heating touch
is British billionaire
and father-in-law of
cricket icon lmran
Khan, Sir James
Goldsmith. The healer is the
renowned metal therapist based in
Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh,'Vaidya
Balendu Prakash, who is treating
Goldsmith, 64, in Paris for cancer.

The cancer, that first appeared in
Goldsmith's liver in 1993, went into
remission and surfaced in his pancreas in 1995. It has recently led to
further complications in his gut tissues. It forced Goldsmith to undergo
painful treatment while he was campaigning for the Referendum party during the recent British general election, pushed to the limits of conventional allopathic treatment, his family sought the intervention of Vaedya Prakash, who is well-known in Pakistan and India, where he has successfully treated many multiple sclerosis and cancer patients using burnt traces of heavy metals such as
arsenic and mercury - a therapy
based on the ancient Indian Rasayan
Sastra (Down To Earth, Vol 5, No 13).

Still, the British played the doubting Thomas act. Sir James' brother
and one of the founder editors of The
Ecologist, Edward Goldsmith, made
inquiries about the healer's credentials with Indian environmentalists,
including Vandana Shiva, Sunderial
Bahuguna and the editor of Down To
Earth (DTE).

Prakash, who was in Delhi on his
return from Paris in the first week of
June, told DTE that Sir James had
contributed US $40,000 to the corpus
of the Vaidya's medical research
foundation in Dehra Dun. Prakash
has reason to be proud - two years after being snubbed by Australian doctors, who asked people to stop his metal therapy, he has been accepted by their French counterparts as the last resort for a British noble. He considers it a recognition of his work in traditional Indian medicine.