Respected members of the Hungarian Ayurveda and wellness community, distinguished scholars and practitioners, members of the Indian diaspora, dear friends —

Namaste and jó napot kívánok!

It is a great privilege to welcome you all to the Embassy of India's celebration of the 11th Ayurveda Day, observed each year on Dhanwantari Jayanti in honour of the sage-physician Dhanwantari. Today that tradition finds a warm home in the heart of Budapest, and I am delighted to see so many friends of India gathered here.

Ayurveda is not merely a system of medicine; it is a philosophy of living. The very word means “the science of life” — Ayuh, life, and Veda, knowledge. Over five thousand years ago, India's rishis asked: what does it mean to be truly well? Their answer was holistic, and it remains astonishingly modern.

Many medicinal streams have treated health as the mere absence of illness, one is healthy so long as one is not sick, and the physician is summoned only when disease strikes. Today, even the World Health Organization defines health as complete physical, mental and social well-being — not merely the absence of disease. Ayurveda arrived at a still richer understanding millennia earlier. The Sushruta Samhita declares:

समदोषः समाग्निश्च समधातुमलक्रियः ।

प्रसन्नात्मेन्द्रियमनः स्वस्थ इत्यभिधीयते ॥

Samadoshah samagnishcha samadhatu-mala-kriyah, prasannatmendriya-manah svastha ityabhidhiyate.

“A person is truly healthy in whom the humours are in balance, the digestive fire is even, the tissues and their functions are in harmony, and the self, the senses and the mind abide in bliss.”

This vision embraces body, mind and spirit in a single breath. Health here is not a negative condition, the mere absence of something, but a positive state: equilibrium, vitality, clarity and joy. The Charaka Samhita teaches that Ayurveda's first purpose is svasthasya svasthya rakshanam, to preserve the health of the healthy and only then, aturasya vikara prashamanam, to cure the disease of the diseased. Lifestyle, food, sleep, seasonal rhythm and inner peace are not accessories to treatment; they are the very foundation of health.

Friends, this ancient wisdom has found remarkably fertile soil in Hungary. Since the 1990s, Ayurveda has steadily entered the mainstream of Hungarian medicine; taught, practised and respected here, not as an exotic curiosity but as a serious therapeutic stream. The sheer number of Ayurveda and Yoga studios that dot Budapest today is itself a testament to how deeply this science has been embraced by Hungarian society. The lectures and panel discussions by Hungarian experts this evening, and the exhibition of Ayurvedic products, speak of a vibrant, home-grown Ayurveda community.

And this should not surprise us, for Hungary and India are kindred spirits in the culture of healing. Hungary is a land of healing waters. A nation that has bathed in its thermal springs since Roman times, whose capital is deservedly called the City of Spas. Your grand bathhouses and your centuries-old faith in the restorative power of water, touch and rest speak the same language as India's Panchakarma, abhyanga and shirodhara. Both our civilisations understood that true wellness is cultivated daily, not purchased at the pharmacy when illness strikes. Hungary expresses this wisdom in a beloved proverb: “Az egészség a legnagyobb kincs” health is the greatest treasure. India's Ayurveda has guarded that same treasure for five thousand years. Two nations, two traditions, one insight.

The Government of India, for its part, has given Ayurveda unprecedented institutional support. We established a dedicated Ministry of AYUSH in 2014 to develop education, research and quality standards across our traditional systems, and Ayurveda Day has been celebrated worldwide since 2016. Through bilateral agreements, academic chairs abroad, pharmacopoeial standards and a growing wellness-tourism ecosystem, India is ensuring that Ayurveda takes its rightful place on the world stage.

Behind this momentum stands the personal vision of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. It was he who proposed the International Day of Yoga to the United Nations General Assembly in 2014, an idea adopted with unprecedented global support. He has championed Ayurveda on the world's stage, laying the foundation stone of the World Health Organization's Global Traditional Medicine Centre in Jamnagar in 2022, the first institution of its kind anywhere, and urging that India's traditional medicine be embraced not as heritage alone, but as a science for the future.

The Ayurveda of today does not rest on the authority of antiquity. It stands on a rigorous scientific and experimental base, validated through laboratory research, clinical studies and modern pharmacological investigation of classical formulations. Tradition gives Ayurveda its soul; science gives it global credibility. That is why universities matter so much to its future.

I recall with special pride the pioneering Ayurveda Chair at the University of Debrecen, the first of its kind in this country, which anchored academic teaching and research for years and built a community of Hungarian scholars. That chapter has closed, but its legacy endures. Today we celebrate a fresh beginning: a new Ayurveda Chair at the University of Győr, which will keep the academic and research focus on Ayurveda studies alive in Hungary, training a new generation of practitioners and researchers and building Indo-Hungarian scholarly bridges for decades to come. To everyone who made this possible, my sincere gratitude.

Dear friends, I warmly welcome all participants — distinguished speakers and panellists, exhibitors, practitioners, students and well-wishers. I have no doubt that today's lectures, discussions and exhibitions will inform, inspire and connect us.

As we say in Sanskrit: Sarve bhavantu sukhinah, sarve santu niramayah — may all be happy, may all be free from illness. And as our Hungarian friends say: Jó egészséget kívánok!

I wish the 11th Ayurveda Day celebrations every success. Köszönöm szépen.