Kolkata medical college administers 'Charak' oath to students, principal backtracks

Amid a raging controversy over first-year students of Medical College Hospital, Kolkata, being administered the ‘Charak’ oath instead of the traditional Hippocratic oath, Dr Raghunath Mishra, principal of the prestigious college, said on Tuesday it was a mistake as officials of the 187-year-old medical college misunderstood a communication by the National Medical Commission.

The clarification came a day after first-year students of the hallowed medical institute were asked to take the ‘Charak Shapath’ (oath named after the author of an ancient Indian medical text), which various medical forums have opposed in the past.

Charak Shapath finds its reference in the Charaka Samhita, an ancient Sanskrit text on Ayurveda which lays down a code of conduct for healers in ancient Indian medicine.

"A few days back, there was a video conference with officials of the NMC. During that conference there was a reference to ‘Charak Shapath’. Our staff and officials misunderstood it as an official guideline (to be compulsorily followed) and administered it to first-year students," Mishra told PTI.

"It was a mistake on our part ... we misunderstood a reference to be an official guideline," he said.

The principal said interns are administered the Hippocratic Oath, a centuries-old code of ethics for medical practitioners worldwide.

"There has never been any instance where we have administered the ‘Charaka’ oath. We only follow the centuries-old system of administering the Hippocratic Oath," he said.

On Tuesday, the Medical Service Centre, an organisation of doctors, and the DSO unit of Calcutta Medical College threatened to protest against the ‘Charak’ oath which students of the first year were forced to swear by.

"It is against the spirit of long-established conventions of the medical profession where the student interns take the Hippocratic oath. This is an effort to impose a theory propagated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party," secretary of the Medical Service Centre Dr Angshuman Mitra said.

IDSO Medical unit spokesperson Dr Soumyadip Roy told PTI, "We are stunned how this could happen in a premier medical college of the country."

He said their forum would submit a deputation to the medical college against the decision.