Dr Arun Chandan is an Ayurvedic physician, medicinal-plant expert, and development practitioner from Himachal Pradesh. Healing in his family did not begin with him. His great-grandfather, Pandit Fangu Ram, was a vaidya. His grandfather, Pandit Ram Prakash Chandan, practised Ayurveda, astrology, and karamkand, and was a guide for families in the erstwhile Punjab region. His father, Dr Narender Pal, trained in Ayurveda at Patiala and then served for nearly thirty years as an Ayurvedic physician in Punjab and later in Himachal Pradesh, including remote Himalayan areas.
The family is associated with Chaneni in the Udhampur region, and later with Takhatgarh. The name Chandan is tied to that lineage of practice.
He completed his BAMS in 1990 at Rajiv Gandhi Government Ayurvedic College, Paprola. He went on to study botany and disaster mitigation, and to research medicinal plants, biodiversity, and Himalayan communities. In government service with the Department of AYUSH, Himachal Pradesh, he later led work at the Regional-cum-Facilitation Centre, Northern Region-I, of the National Medicinal Plants Board in the Ministry of AYUSH. That brief covered cultivation, conservation, quality planting material, good agricultural and collection practices, farmer linkages, post-harvest management, traceability, and herbal supply chains.
In the early 1990s the herbal garden at Joginder Nagar was threatened with conversion to housing. He has written that a court ruling saved the garden, and that in 2017 he returned there as SAMO and then Regional Director of RCFC NR-1, serving seven northern states. He calls Joginder Nagar his karmabhoomi: a 24-acre herbal garden, a herbarium, the Lok Ayurveda Museum, a government Ayurvedic pharmacy, and an Ayurvedic pharmacy college.
He retired from government service in May 2026 and continues as an advisor, consultant, and mentor. This account is drawn from his public biography. The longer essay remains on his journal.
Read the biography on Ayurveda Herbs Wellness. For a conversation about his work, write to hello@arunchandan.com or call 7018001026. He is based between Dharamshala and Joginder Nagar, Himachal Pradesh.