Prime Minister Narendra Modi's two-nation visit to France and Slovakia in June 2025 carried a distinctive cultural dimension alongside its diplomatic agenda, with the PM presenting the Slovakian Speaker two landmark ancient Indian medical texts — the Charaka Samhita and the Sushruta Samhita — as state gifts. The gesture has drawn wide attention as an expression of India's knowledge-based diplomacy at the highest international level.

The Texts and Their Significance

The Charaka Samhita is one of the foundational works of Ayurveda, attributed to Acharya Charaka, who is widely regarded as the pioneer of Indian medical science. The Sushruta Samhita, attributed to the physician Suśruta, is considered among the earliest and most comprehensive works on surgery in recorded history. Together, they represent millennia of structured Indian inquiry into medicine, anatomy, and healing.

What Poet Vyomesh Shukla Said

Renowned Varanasi-based Hindi poet Vyomesh Shukla described the gesture as a significant step toward the global dissemination of India's knowledge tradition. 'The exchange of such texts on the global stage underscores the importance of India's ancient wisdom, culture, and intellectual heritage,' he said.

Shukla noted that at a time when books are increasingly displaced from the centre of daily life by technology, reviving the tradition of gifting and receiving books carries symbolic weight. He expressed confidence that Modi's initiative would spur the translation of Indian texts — spanning Vedic literature, Ayurveda, Natya Shastra, and classical music — into foreign languages, broadening their global reach.

'A vast repository of knowledge is preserved in these books; merely conserving them is not enough — it is essential to read, understand, and share them with the world,' Shukla said. He added that this exchange would further strengthen what he called India's 'knowledge-based diplomacy' and cultural harmony.

Why Slovakia, Why Now

The timing and choice of recipient carry additional context. Slovakia is reportedly positioning itself as a significant medical tourism hub in Central Europe, making texts on ancient Indian surgical and medical traditions a pointed, rather than incidental, diplomatic choice. The gifts signal India's intent to frame its ancient intellectual output as a living, globally relevant resource — not merely a historical artefact.

A Pattern in Modi's Cultural Diplomacy

This is not an isolated gesture. Modi has consistently used state visits to present curated cultural gifts — from handcrafted artefacts to classical manuscripts — as instruments of soft power. The deliberate choice of Ayurvedic texts for a country building its medical tourism credentials reflects a sharper strategic logic than ceremonial gift-giving alone. Notably, this comes amid a broader global resurgence of interest in traditional and integrative medicine systems, in which India holds a foundational position.

As India's ancient texts gain renewed international attention, the question of systematic translation and accessibility remains pressing — and Modi's gesture, observers say, may lend fresh momentum to that effort.