The Unbecoming Ghost: Spectropolitics in the Making and Unmaking of <scp>BHU</scp>'s <i>Bhoot Vidya</i> Ayurveda Certificate Program

ABSTRACT This essay examines the controversy surrounding the Bhoot Vidya certificate program proposed by the Faculty of Ayurveda at Banaras Hindu University in 2019. Drawing on media coverage, curricular materials, and government policy, I analyze how the debate reveals broader tensions in the politics of contemporary Ayurveda, nationalism, and decolonization in India. I situate bhūtavidyā within its classical textual foundations and modern projects of Ayurvedic revitalization, highlighting how colonial transformations, orientalist framings, and selective appropriations of tradition persist in institutional discourse. The program's fraught reception, marked by criticism of foreign media and the disavowal of ghost‐related etiologies, exposes the spectropolitical stakes involved in defining legitimate knowledge. I argue that the proposed program embodies a form of modernity in which ghosts are simultaneously invoked, denied, and repurposed for nationalist projects. The case illustrates how hauntological analysis may help better understand contested negotiations of authenticity, authority, and belonging in Indian medical and political life.