CHAPTER XXVII _B

Epilogue (i)

OUR MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS:

MY EXPERIENCES

I found this controversy in nearby Chennai at Porur also where I visited the Sri Ramchandra Medical College & Research Institute to see ailing Ma. K. Suryanarayan Rao, the successor of late Ma. Dr. Abaji Thatte as the guide to the NMO.

To me, the name echoed Lord Rama, but now it was again on a politician, M. G. Ramachandran, who had somehow made possible the allotment of vast lands in Chennai outskirts for the college. Though the DMK Govt. of Tamil Nadu changed the name of the districts, transport, etc. named after persons, it did not touch medical and other institutes.

Probably, the name of Sri Ramchandra needs no change – even in a time-capsule, if you freeze such documents, after a lapse of few hundred years it will be difficult to recall who this Ramchandra was other than Lord Rama, in fact, on whose name, parents of MGR would have named him – where is the Arya/Dravid controversy?

I also do not recall more than three pedigrees – my father, grandfather and great- grandfather though my father had printed a genealogy of some 10-14 generations. No wonder, in an examination answer-book someone had written that Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Mahatma Gandhi, and during the National Emergency (1975-76) a time-capsule describing the Gandhi-Nehru legacy had been put in the earth which was un-earthed when the Janata Govt. came into power in 1977.

But a Deemed University, the Sri Ramchandra Medical College & Research Institute has the idol of goddess Saraswati at its entrance and in the hospital entrance the History of Medicine is carved on the plaques, vividly describing the evolution of medical sciences in Bharat and other parts of the world, really stimulating but the admissions were made on capitation-fee and I had an unexpected interrogation by the care-taker why had I visited the hostel, as if it was a prohibited zone! Or, was he suspicious that I was a person from the intelligence despite my introduction?

Few days prior to it (11.12.1997), I had visited the Boys’ Hostel of the Stanley Medical College and while talking to them I could know that Stanley was the Governor of the erstwhile Madras Presidency.

I had told the final year students that the name of college should better be changed to Subramaniyam Bhartiyar or Thiruvalluvar like great inspirers. When I talked to the first year students, assembled in good numbers, searching for any prospective worker for the NMO, I asked if there was anyone interested in social work, literature, etc. One boy had interest in literature. I asked him to organize Subramaniyam Bhartiyar inter-medical poetry contest under the auspices of the NMO but they could not tell me the birth or death anniversary of this Mahakavi.

When on 12th December, after my conference on diabetes, I went to the RSS, Chennai office (which was blasted on 8th August 1993, with RDX by Islamic militants as a revenge for Ayodhya-demolition), I read there in several newspaper that in fact on 11th December fell the 116th anniversary of Mahakavi Subramaniyam Bhartiyar and it was surprising that I was suggesting his name to be given to this famous medical institute.

If Udaipur can remember Gurudev Rabi Thakur from Bengal why Tamilian pride Subramaniyam cannot replace Stanley’s unwarranted name (and the abbreviation, SMC need not be changed like for the KGMC – if name of Kasturba-Gandhi would have been given).

Names have nothing – people do argue, but it is the most important possession of a man. He/she should be asked to tell his/her name as the last question while testing for the memory functions of brain as one who has forgotten his/her name will not recall anything – name is the last thing to be forgotten. Let us change the names, which depict slavish mentality.

In the Chola’s city of Thanjavur, having the biggest Shivalingam, Brihadeeshwar, about 8.75 meter (13 feet) high, I noted interestingly, there the boys’ hostels were named as House of Lords, Fleming and the girls’ hostels were named after birds of foreign countries like Paragon, Paradise and Skylark apart from the musical note Symphony and the river Cauvery which meets at nearby Thiruvaiaru where saint-poet Thyagaraja took his last breath and there in his memory an annual music festival is held but when I reached there in my first visit to Thanjavur, I found the pandals only where the festival had ended the previous night. Poets choose places of solitude in their end — Mahakavi Vidyapati went near the Ganga (about 100 km south of his abode, Bisfi, in Mithila of Bihar); Rabindranath Thakur chose Bolepur (Shantiniketan).

But I was amazed at Thanjavur, in one of my further visits, in a house of a swayamsevak (having a drug industry), whose son performed a token yajna, lighting fire on a board in the morning before going to an English School and that an under 10 boy used to attend also the Vedic school in the evening.

For the first time, I took a dinner in the medical college girls’ hostel at Surat on the western coast. The Govt. Medical College, Surat has a big library.

I saw the students reading late in the night in the library of the Rangarya Medical college, Kakinada on the eastern coast. Its Principal had asked for the subscription of the Aayurvigyan Pragati during1983-84 and much later in 1993 I delivered a talk there on the AIDS prevention. There in the Kakinada, the Cinema Street has more than 20 cinema halls in a row.

Kurnool famous for three D’s (dust, donkey and doctors) has Kurnool Medical Colleges boys’ hostel which once upon a time was MLA’s hostel, the property of the Rayalseema State.

While Jamnagar (near Dwarka) has a unique system of messes, run by the village-women of nearby areas, who come even with their teen-aged daughters to work, staying for the full day in the hostels and returning to their villages after serving the boarders evening meals (sun sets late in the western cost). Such a thing cannot be imagined in most of the States of India, that too in boys’ hostels. There too, in the MP Shah Medical College, the NMO was initiated by a girl medico of the first year, Bhavna Mehta, in 1977.

The Guntur Medical College had a single big mess for all the boys. Here I delivered a lecture for the first time inside any girls’ hostel on a Pulse Polio Day, well arranged by Nandini. This medical college on the eastern cost has a rare collection of monograms of almost all medical college of the country. Here, an UG medical student, an NMO worker, T. Seva Kumar had written a book in Telugu, compiling his articles on the AIDS awareness.

Once upon a time, the local NMO President, Dr. Asha T. was amongst two lady presidents of the NMO unit (the other was at Ranchi, Dr. Usha Rani). Seeing a patroness like figure, Dr. Sobha Chakravorty, at Ranchi, Dr. Sujit Dhar had earlier remarked that the work assigned to ladies are well executed and hence, later on, I pressed Dr. Shobha Chakravorty to accept the ‘presidentship’ of the NMO’s orphanage, Nivedita Ashram*).

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*Inaugurated on 28.11.1999,the history of its initiation was Mahesh Badhwani’s interest in an orphanage, which he used to point out to me whenever he used to come for collecting the physicians’ samples for a clinic at the RSS, Ranchi Karyalaya. At the same time I could know from Abhas Kumar Chatterjee (when I had enquired him as to what happened for the place he was searching for the Bharat Sevashram Sangh) that it was on the back of the RMC Hostels, built as an old-age home by Dr. Aloka Mukherjee.

I (under an sublime thought of putting the donation-box for the orphans at the DMCH, Darbhanga by the NMO unit during 1980s imagined that the NMO could also run its office from there where old pracharaks of Sangh too could live as well as mould such orphans, having no normal familial bondages, to future Hindu pracharks) asked Mahesh to fix my appointment with Dr. Aloka Mukherjee. After about 19 meetings with her in which Dr. H. P. Narayan, Dr. Shobha Chakroverty, Dr. Usha Rani, like senior members of NMO used to present, lastly she could provide one floor of it to us.

I proposed Dr. Shobha Chakravorty’s name as its president considering her being from the same linguistic group as well as her successor in the department at the RMCH and without knowing Dr. Shobha’s daughter too was named Nivedita, I proposed to continue the old-age home’s name “Nivedita Ashram” to our orphanage too.

Fig. 47__ Nivedita Ashram, an orphanage of the NMO at Ranchi being inaugurated on 28.11.1999 by (central with an orphan) Babulal Marandi the then Minister of State, GOI, on his right Dr. H. P. Narayan, Ranchi, VP, NMO. (Courtesy, The Ranchi Express, 29.11.1999).

Later when we had to transfer the project to the Arogya Bhavan Campus (as the Bharat Sevashram Sangh did not like us; it wanted full space for its projects) probably Dr. Satish Kr. Midha influenced members to change its name to Karuna in a meeting for which I was not informed. He further had some ego problems with Mahesh and on some charges he was adamant to remove him that I was invited by Dr. Archana Sharma to attend a meeting for it on 1.1.2006 and later by Dr. K. P. Sinha (whom I had proposed as the Secretary despite disliking of Mahesh in 2000 ) on 29.1.2006. I vetoed against the removal of Mahesh so much so that I had to take its charge, making it my night duty on coaxing (“Show by living even for a week here” by Dr. Suhash Tetarway (who had left working for the NMO since 1991), I started living at night there since then for a month to avoid the crisis and to streamline the affairs and advised to rename it as “Nivedita Ashram .”

I also found Dr. Rashmiben Bhavsar, Karnavati and Dr. Surekha Shah, Porbandar (who has also written a book on Swadeshi Drug Movement) pleading forcefully for the Process Patent at the NMO’s XVI national conference at Rajkot on the 23rd February 2002. Lady workers like Dr. Sanjeevanee Kelkar, (Madikeri, now at Nagpur) will ever remain green in my memories. I wish some day NMO’s lady members will organise their conference which will be better than what we males have done, so far.

On the first Indian lady doctor, Dr. Anandibai Joshi’s short life of 22 years (31.3.1865-26.2.1887), there is a Marathi book and a TV Serial in Hindi, Anandi Gopal. One of my Bengali patients, Bijali Sengupta provided me an article, Mahila daktar-Bhinna Graher Bashinda (Women doctors-natives of a different planet) in Bangla, on the basis of which I could write a small article on Dr. Kadambini Gangopadhyaya, the first women doctor (and the first graduate with Bidhumukhi) of Calcutta University from the Medical College, Calcutta, who took admission there in 1883.

There are two medical colleges only for the girls, the Lady Hardinge Medical College, N. Delhi, already described before and the Dr. D.Y. Patil Pratishthan’s Padmashree Dr. D.Y. Patil Medical College for Women, Pimpari, near Pune, which I could not visit. Though I feel in this age, there is no need of such only women’s medical colleges as around 30-50 per cent of medicos all over India are girls.

Fig. 48 __ The Ograniser'ssupplement (23.4.1995)on the occasion of the X National Conference of the NMO at the Govt. Medical College, Amritsar, during April 14-16,1995.

The Govt. Medical College, Jammu has a new big hospital. In later visits, I found tight security on account of insurgency. It could be possible for me to visit the Govt. Medical College, Srinagar only on 7.11.2004 where I had a photograph( on back cover page) with young medicos including boys from Laddakh and Kargil but girls did not agree . On the main notice board, I put a copy of the front page of this book marking the completion of my long journey to the all medical colleges (of my student days). Then I visited the SKIMS(Shere-I-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences) where I could talk to the lady librarian only after her Zohar (noon Namaz).There was a section on Islamic books. There should should have been included books on all religions. There I stayed with some initial hesitation for the first time in any Muslim's house (of Muzammil, a young engineer, student of my friend Arun Kumar Jha).

Free Flow of Drugs Nurturing Militancy

Ranchi, June 14 (PTI). Free flow of narcotics and psychotropic drugs from across the border was one of the reasons for growing militancy in Punjab, where youth were at first lured into taking drugs and then virtually compelled to join the militant outfits so as to meet their demands for further drugs, according to the vice-president of the National Medicos Organisation, Dr. Dhanakar Thakur.

The Report: Dr. Thakur in his report entitled the pathetic health scenario of north and central India said drugs like menstrogen, banned in India because of health reasons, were easily made available by Pakistan to users in the Amritsar market.Prepared on the basis of his experience during visits to Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, western U.P., and northern Madhya Pradesh, the report said a virtual drug war was being carried out by the foreign mercenaries to keep alive insurgency in Punjab.

Quacks: Dr. Thakur said it was ironic that quacks were flourishing in almost every village and town of Punjab, who were prescribing banned drugs in spite of a number of qualified medicos in the state. These quacks not only put the patients in danger, but at the same time lead young medicos, to either adopt unethical practices to make money or shift to bigger cities .“Unfortunately, it is the greater nexus which is being forgotten, while doctors were being condemned on the grounds that they did not serve the villagers”, he lamented. He urged for banning of quackery in any form and that no drug be sold without valid prescriptions.(Courtesy, The TOI, 16.5.1992).

Fig. 49 __ On 4.8.2002 at Chandigarh in the NMO's meeting (L.-R.) Dr. K.L. Passi, Justice J.V. Gupta, former Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court,

Dr. Dhanakar Thakur.

On 4.8.2002, at Chandigarh, we could have a very good opening for the NMO in a function organised in the Punjab University campus-the first professor of Transfusion Medicine in India, Dr. J. C. Jolly also addressed the gathering.

The PGIMER (Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education & Research), Chandigarh, is one of the pioneer institutes of the country. Medicos aspire to enter here. Long back I visited it on a chilly day having no sunrays till noon. Surgical ward was centrally air-conditioned. From the top of that floor, I saw a name-board of the Sewa Bharati on the ground. When I went there, I found that they had been working since 1991 to help the patients coming from far-flung areas. They told me about a case which had come from Khagaria of Bihar. In this planned city I also saw a children’s road show for popularising Pulse Polio on the very next day.

On way to the PGIMER, I also saw the Govt. Medical College, Chandigarh from the bus. I hoped, some day it would be a model institute. On returning to Delhi, I was informed that Prabhat was there in the faculty. I was searching for him at the PGIMER. On return to Ranchi, I got a New Year greeting card from Dr. Punit Agarwal of Calcutta. He was then an asst. prof. at the PGIMER, in the Dept. of Plastic Surgery. In fact, it was a record visit by me, an unknown medico to the 119th medical college of the country.

The very next day, with Dr. Kuldip Chander, I visited the 120th medical college, i.e. the Christian Medical College, Ludhiana situated in the heart of the city, which was founded in 1895 as the Ludhiana Medical School for Women. Incidentally I reached first its Women’s Hostel near the main college building. Then I went to its Boys’ Hostel, which was at some distance. I could talk to three students. Almost all students were Christians.

I feel medical education should never be segmented. It should have no preference in admission or service in the name of religions. However, the CMC had very advanced departments of Plastic Surgery and Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. The patients’ number had dropped down due to congested roads and heavy traffic but I was informed that road was to be restricted soon, exclusively for the traffic to the CMC only.

The Dayanand Medical College & Hospital was started at Ludhiana probably to counter the CMC’s mission but to me it looked that it lacked the mission Swami Dayanand’s name would suggest.

Haryana’s the Pt. Bhagwat Dayal Sharma Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Rohtak’s all U.G. hostels are connected by passages. The Sriram Chandra Bhanjdeo Medical College, Cuttack’s Old Hostel is also very big and is compared with a dharmshala _ our NMO worker Sudhiranjan Nayak narrowly escaped when the moving ceiling fan of his room fell down.

In the NMO’s national conference at Mysore, a delegate from Silchar (Assam) told me that he was an alumnus of the Mysore Medical College, Mysore and so he had come to attend our conference.

Fig. 50 __ Dr. Tapodhir Das, of Silchar an alumnus of the MMC, Mysore, with his son and Dr. Dhanakar Thakur (1st L.), Dr. Suhash Teatarway (1st R.), Ranchi, during the VII National Conference of the NMO, 9.9.1990, near the Mysore Palace.

That conference was organised by Dr. Sanjay Kelkar who with his surgeon wife, Dr. Sanjeevanee, had established the Ashwini Hospital at Madikeri in the western ghats of Karnataka where the Kaveri orginates.

The Netaji Subash Chandra Bose Medical College Jabalpur is en route to Bheraghat, famous for white marble rocks of Narmada. Once I visited the college with my wife where also I found a doctor from Imphal, an alumnus of the same college where his son was also studying and I later met that doctor at the RIMS, Imphal.

Once, when I went to the Maharaja Krishna Chandra Gajapati Medical College of Brahmapur, a professor of Physiology had died and his dead body was kept in the portico of the college. How reverent the boys were to that teacher! In one of my earlier visits, I had found, the NMO workers were busy in the printing of the souvenir of their internee batch (having photograph, date of birth and few lines on the personality of each student).

The Andhra Medical College, Vishakhapatanam is the oldest medical college of the A.P. State. When I visited it first in 1984, Dr. Ram Babu told me, “Sir, though I was to leave today after passing my MD, bag and baggage, I’ll stay only for you for today.”

Gwalior’s the Gajara Raja Medical College has the Charak Shapath put on the main building, which we have adopted in the NMO. Later, the NMO, RMC, Ranchi had similarly installed the Shapath written on a wooden-board. In the ANMMC, Gaya, the principal himself got it written on the wall of the administrative office. I feel it should be done in all medical institutes.

The SS Medical College, Rewa is in the Vindhya region of MP. The clinical materials are abundant there.

I found the hostels of the Govt. Medical College, Nagpur not only the cleanest but also one of them adorned the portrait of Veer Savarkar.

The Students of the BJ Medical College, Pune honoured me for the first time for my long tour records of medical colleges in India. Here I came to know that a human skeleton brought from Calcutta was available for Rs.1500. In The City of Joy, Dominique Lapaierre has described how the poor sell their blood! In Calcutta and the eastern part of the motherland, a human skeleton fetched merely Rs.300.

Pune’s and Ahmadabad’s medical colleges are named after philanthropist Behramji Jijibhoy who donated generously for those institutions. During the NEC meeting of the NMO in October 1998, we stayed in ‘Sandwich’ hostel (Boys’ hostel sandwiched between two girls’ hostels) at Pune.

I visited the AFMC (Armed Forces Medical College), Pune and was delighted to see its auditorium named Dhanwantari and college insignia, ^loZs lUrq fujke;%^. I also crossed through the Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College at Pune.

At the J. J. Hospital of the Grant Medical College, Mumbai, I worked in cardiac cath lab. The college, I feel, should be renamed after Bhau Daji, the first Indian graduate in 1850 of this college and there was an agitation for it also by the students of that college long back. At Mumbai, in the college canteen of the Topiwala National Medical College, one person listening to my talk about Ranchi remarked,” What! Are you from Karachi?” Yes, Karachi is nearer and familiar to them than Ranchi!

Much later in 1998, when I visited the UCMS, Delhi, in a small meeting of medicos, I was again astonished to know from a young medico that Ranchi was famous for stupas (in fact, he meant Sanchi of MP, famous for Buddhist stupas).

At Aurangabad, I was stranded due to curfew-bound area in between the Govt. Medical College and Dr. Hedgewar Hospital in 1992, just after the demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya and in the next visit only I could go to the medical college.

The Dr. Hedgewar Hospital is an inspiring institution established by some doctor swayamsevaks who were themselves inspired by the Vivekananda Hospital, Latur, founded by our workers. It has a story parallel to the CMC, Vellore. Dr. R. K. Arulkar and Dr. Ashok L. Kukade decided to settle in that backward area. Dr. Arulkar had worked in the missionary hospital at Miraj and Dr. Kukade though had topped in Medicine did his MS in Surgery to serve the rural people better. They provided the first and the best service to Killary earthquake victims, where the NMO members also contributed.

Among the capitation-fee based medical colleges, the Kasturba Medical College, Manipal is the most famous and updated, which has opened its units even in Nepal.

The South Asia Edition of the British Medical Journal earlier known as the Indian Edition of the British Medical Journal is also being published by it.

Sweta Chandra, a student from Ranchi took active interest in showing me her college in a short time of an hour as I had to take to and fro journey from Manipal, via Udupi (on way to Katila, 30 km from Mangalore, the pilgrim centre of Durga Parameshwari) as a Hindu-Muslim riot had broken out at Suratkal.

Though I was advised not to go to Manipal at the Ladies Hills bus stop (not for ladies but named after some Lady related to the Church in this Christian dominated town of the western coast) of Mangalore, I told people that I would visit Manipal at any cost. At Mangalore, I also saw the Kasturba Medical College on Light House Hill Road but I could not visit it.

Manipal is a small town. It may be considered to have developed education as an industry. Several colleges are flourishing there on capitation-fee basis. In the hospital, neuro-ward is named after Dhanwantari and special ward is named after Charak. The Dental College is well equipped. Every department has over 100 dental chairs for the students there to learn.

Among 200 students of each medical batch, 50 pairs finally do wed. It was reported to me that for students the love affair is the only way of recreation in this village like place. Despite food being supplied free to induce patients to remain in the hospital campus for the training of the students, patients’ number is less than optimal.

On way back, I saw every home decorated with a big star-shaped lighted, festoon, welcoming the New Year. The road was also having fluorescent light and many Santa Claus were displayed.

In one of the most beautiful road-route of the country (Mangalore-Davangere), I had an occasion at Shringeri to converse with the Holy Shankaracharya in Sanskrit. When I told him that I hailed from the native village of Vachaspati II of Mithila, he quipped that he was a great saint.

One co-traveller (also a Kaushik Brahmin like me) told me that he was from that area of Chikmangalore (chick in Kannada means small) which had returned Indira Gandhi as a winner and if Vajpayee stood from there they would make him also a winner as he was a good man. I reached Davangere via Shimoga.

At the JJM Medical College, Davangere, I was impressed to see in its library sections on the WHO, Kannada literature and Humanities in which there were complete volumes (1895-1914) of the Brahmvadin, started by Swami Vivekananda himself which certainly means the founders had imagined more than producing a mere mechanical doctor.

Here too, the dental college was impressive and I visited its museum with keen interest.

Again the next day at the KLE Society's Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Belgaum, I was impressed by the medical hostels named after Charak, Sangam, Rani Chennama and also Chanakya from Bihar — a sign of complete national integrity, as even the people of Bihar have not remembered him in this way. I found on that Sunday there were altogether 54 students reading in the library.

Here at Belgaum, for the first time I had an occasion to visit an orphanage, Bal Kalyan Kendra, run by the Ganga Chikammi Muttha and also a blind school, well run by the Sangh workers through a different Trust. I saw a young Homeo doctor couple, serving the blind and I encouraged the couple. I also saw the Braille script for the first time.

Being confused by my letter (my designation as the editor of the Aayurvigyan Pragati, though vice-president of the NMO was also mentioned) only Ayurvedic doctors were called for the meeting of the NMO. I talked to them for service attitude while seeing the patients and also the need for a new organisation among them. And, I could get the message that the proper time to change NMO’s name in Sanskrit has not come yet.

Here, an ABVP worker had shown me the album of the district conference. I was surprised to find banners in English and asked whether it was due to the Kannada-Marathi conflict of this bilingual area. He replied in the affirmative. I suggested to him to write in the Devanagri script but with a - % ¼folxZ½&vf[ky Hkkjrh; fo|kFkhZ ifj"kn%½ that it was interpreted as Sanskrit name as Marathi is also written in the Devanagri script. Sanskrit is revered by both Kannada and Marathi people (and by all who love Bharat which is much more than India.)

Probably, Sanskrit is the answer for the National Language problem and Karnataka is the best path-finder where two villages in Shimoga district are wholly Sanskrit speaking.

The MR Medical College, Gulbarga though based on capitation-fee imparts good learning. The Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences at Hubli has a boys' hostel named, Anand, where I was welcomed by the medicos.

At Miraj, I was told that the nursing homes were more in number than the population required. The boys of the Govt. Medical College, Miraj were receptive to learn.

I found the Goa Medical College, Panaji was to be developed fully. At the Vijayanagar Institute of Medical Sciences, Bellary, one medico told me that he would work for the NMO as he was also born in 1977 on the 5th November coinciding with that of the NMO.

In the city of gardens, Bangalore, when I visited the Bangalore Medical College, boys were sore at the mushrooming of capitation - fee institutions in the state. The college has the unique distinction of hosting the API conferences thrice—I attended two, in 1984 and 1998.

However, it was in A.P. that a Chief Minister had to resign for the first time in the country on the issue of banning capitation-fee. I had been a part of such agitations in the past in Bihar* and thereafter, in Thrissur where I had addressed the agitating medicos.

One such capitation-fee based college, I visited later in Bangalore is the Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences, named after the founder of Bangalore which is run by the Vokkaliga Society and is one among its several educational institutions.

I was surprised to find that the medical college office with the SPM Department and its library were in the Society’s Science College building. There some girl medicos informed me that the main college building was far off. The nearby hospital complex, I visited, had a big auditorium.

Medical colleges of Kishanganj and Katihar are very close to my home(only 120 and 95 km respectively) which I did not visit for long as I never liked medical colleges run by minority institutions based on capitation-fee business . I knew that such an institution's(the Mata Gujri Memorial Medical College, Kishanganj named after the great Guru Govind Singh's mother) medicos extended help to Gaisal railway accident victims and I appreciated it when I visited it finally on 9.4.2005.

In the same trip on 13.4.2005, I also visited the Katihar Medical College,Katihar where I was overwhelmed to find Dr. Swami Vivekananda as a faculty member.

The Chennai Medical College is very close to Chennai railway station and has a rich tradition of medical education, including that of producing the first four European lady doctors in 1878, even before the UK could do that. In the Kilpauk Medical College Hostel, I could talk to some enthusiastic young students though to strengthen roots of the NMO in Chennai, vigorous effort is needed.

However, I was miraculously saved from being thrown out of a fast running bus returning from the Chingelpattu Medical College, in the hostel of which I had a good gathering.

Likewise, I was pushed to the left side of the road by a running mini-truck in Karnavati (Ahmadabad), and was saved; had I been pushed to the right on the mid-road my story would have ended earlier. On that very day, I could not visit the Smt. N.H.L Municipal Medical College which however I visited after a long gap when the NMO was rooted firmly there.

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*Including Jharkhand

The BJ Medical College, Ahmadabad (Karnavati) has one of the biggest hospitals of the country, which is popularly known, in the city as the Civil Hospital. When I visited it for the first time, the NMO had several good workers there due to the daily running shakha in spite of the protest by the opponents. One of our workers, Dr. Viren Doshi was compelled not to complete his MD due to an anti-Sangh teacher.

The Seth GS Medical College of Mumbai is a reputed medical institution of the country where I met a few boys of the Naigaum Hostel. There I saw Jaypee Publishers lending books to new medicos for the whole session as a part of their publicity campaign for making them future buyers or as a philanthropic move, I could not ascertain.

However, I wish this facility available to Mumbai medicos should be extended all over the country. Those boys accompanied me to the college and the Main Hostel where I found the students being called on loud-speakers if someone was wanted on phone or otherwise. I had a good meeting for the NMO there.

One of the workers accompanied me to the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College on that holiday. The notice-board attracted me and I found Vandana Kumar of II/II (1997) had put some brilliant ideas and collections e.g. there was a difference of 129 years in each of the important milestones of the life-cycles between Napoleon and Hitler (Born 1760/1889; in power 1804/1933; occupying Vienna 1809/1938, conquered Russia 1812/1941; was defeated and died 1816/1945)*.

Describing the dilemma of a man he says, “Woman is the cause of universal war, happiness and joy — if you try to date, she thinks she is very beautiful and if you don’t, she thinks you are blind; if you hold her hand, she thinks you are trying to be fresh and if you don’t, she thinks you are a simpleton; if you talk too much, she thinks you are a cynic and if you don’t, you are a fool; if you are sociable, she thinks your are a playboy and if you are not, she thinks you are a ‘jungle-man’; if you talk love and marriage, she thinks you are proposing and if you don’t she thinks you are cold blooded. Women are fickle minded, in just a minute she can say 10 different things in 10 different ways and 10 different styles. If you ..and pamper them, you’ll live 10 years less.”

No wonder, Kumar had taken the name of a girl (Vandana) in retaliation and his hostel-mates had snatched a wing of the hostel meant for the girls — incidentally, it was the only undergraduate medical hostel where I found boys and girls living on the same floor but in the opposite wings.

*In fact, Napoleon was born in 1769 and died in 1821

Of course, girls’ wing was closed with a door and I could guess about the usurping of their one wing as boys took me to their wing for a meeting, which had also a closed door, but on deeper enquiry, I found only three pairs/would-be pairs in their batch of 100.

I had learnt from someone in my childhood that if you go near the women and Laxmi (wealth) both will run away from you, and if you refrain from going near them, they would come to your feet. Young boys and girls —beware!

I was also impressed by the mention of birthdays of some medicos even on that very holiday in the college on the board with greetings and a wall magazine, Ashwandi-97 and the Jhapuji edited by Alpana Somle containing an article in Marathi on medical profession and also an appreciation for Dr. R.L. Thatte, Prof. and HOD, Plastic Surgery, for his book, Me Hindu Jhale.

After that in the same night, I went to visit the hostel of the Padmshree Dr. DY Patil Medical College in New Mumbai but was informed that actually the college had no hostel till then rather students took flats sharing the rent and I could meet only one such student.

I also saw several times from the buses, the K. J. Somaiyya Medical College & Reseach Centre, Mumbai, which has wide area to grow.

Rajkot, an old princely town and capital-seat of Saurashtra, has one of the best NMO units where in a single day of Raksha Bandhan (25.8.1991), 35 medical camps were organised by our members, who also run a monthly Polio Clinic since long.

Fig. 51 ___ Beneficiaries of artificial limb donation by Polio Clinic run by the NMO, Rajkot on 4.8.1994.

Fig. 52 __ Ma. Sunder Singh Bhandari, Hon'ble Governor of Gujarat inaugurating the XVI National Conference of the NMO at Rajkot on Feb. 23, 2002.

In one of my visits, I enjoyed the Garba dance till late night and also an act of the makhan-chori by child Krishna, so accurately they danced to make ropes, making a platform and after the makhan-chori, again danced to untie the ropes.

At Rajkot, I visited the newly opened medical college (now there is a move to name it as the Deendayal Institute of Medical Sciences) with NMO worker Dr. N.D. Shilu who was also working for a co-operative store for doctors named Suvidha.

No wonder, Gujarat is famous for the co-operative movement which is the most developed in the Kheda and Anand districts and the small township of Anand is countrywide famous for Amul. At Rajkot, a young lady teacher of Pathology had asked me whether I had visited her college at Karamsad, near Anand.

Hence, in the same trip, I went to Anand, where I missed to visit the Amul Dairy but could have a meeting for the NMO. When I went to Karamsad, where Sardar Patel was born, I found the Pramukh Swami Medical College in a village, the land for which had been donated by the villagers.

I was waiting for an appointment with the Dean, Dr. (Ms) Nivedita Desai, and was informed by another lady doctor also waiting there that my friend, Dr. Sharad Shah, a surgeon, was also there who had worked in the Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra, Lohardaga. I could see him after a long gap.

Talking to Madam Dean was enchanting. She told me that she was the first to opt for Anaesthesia as her subject in MD. I told her that my Alma Mater, the Darbhnaga Medical College had the first MS in Anaesthesia, in India.

Dr. Desai was also the first lady becoming Dean in the Gujarat State and she informed me that out of eight deans four were ladies and three of them were anaesthetists. No wonder, brilliant, charming ladies choose anaesthesia, even otherwise males are mum in every house in their presence!

But my friend Dr. Sharad Shah’s story was more inspiring. His madam told me that Dr. Shah had himself operated upon her and it was also a paying case to the hospital. I was surprised. Dr. Shah told me that the hospital had no provision for free cases, of course, poor (and there could be hardly any poor in that rich locality due to the Amul movement) could have very subsidised treatment.

However, my question was why he had decided to operate on his wife himself. He told me that he knew the history of a very famous surgeon of Bihar, Dr. Vijay Kumar Singh, who had lost his son while he was doing his nephrectomy himself, despite that Dr. Shah had decided to do the appendicectomy of his wife himself as his thinking was that the life of every patient on the table was the most precious for him and at the same time he should never be attached more than a doctor should be with his or her patient and if he had not achieved such an excellence as to operate with steadfastness also upon his wife, he should not operate at all morally.

I believe nobody is a VIP (very important person) because I treat every patient equally with the best possible skill or everybody is a VIP (very important patient) for me.

In the same trip of Gujarat, I visited Bhavnagar’s newely opened the Govt. Medical College which was once upon a time a princely palace. Students of all three batches listened to my talk on the NMO. All students not only gave their postal addresses to me mentioning the medical college only, they also had come up (from town) with their bags on that pre-week-end day as after the last period they had to catch buses for their homes __ so homely was the college for those new students.

The first batch had no ragging. I asked them whether they ragged their juniors and their answer was somehow affirmative. Yet, I felt that their ragging would be introductory only because in the state of Gujarat girls are invariably suffixed been (sister) e.g. Manjuben, be she a medical student or a house-maid.

Bhavnagar, I knew since my pre-medical days as being the place where the Central Salt and Marine Chemical Research Institute was located which I could see from the roof-top of the town’s deity, ‘Takhteshwar’ (which was built by the king named so.) From here you can see this teeming city, encircled from three sides by the Arabian Sea.

At the Medical College, Vadodara’s boys’ hostels even outsiders were permitted to take food in the mess, which I had not seen, any where. To my utter surprise I found there a mess servant from the tribal area of Ranchi. There, a Gujarati remarked that their language was very sweet. I told him, “Yes, your pulse is also sweet (sugar mixed pulse).”

As Vadodara is to Gujarat regarding academic centre, so is Patiala to Punjab. It seems some of the old princely states’ Maharajas had taken due care of propagating education, including medical education.

At the Govt. Medical College, Patiala, I told a medico swayamsevak to throw away the picture of Vivekananda if he had no confidence in himself for starting the NMO work there.

When I visited the NIMHANS, Bangalore, a neurologist, Dr. D. Nagraja, was insistently seeking the Sanskrit version of the Charak Shapath, which I could procure only afterwards. Though I had a good meeting there, the NMO could not start in Bangalore till April 2004, despite my several visits.

I was told that Kakatiyas’ capital, Warangal, was menacingly infested with the Naxalites who were also active in the Kakatiya Medical College. Yet, I could find there one of our workers Prof. Satyanarayan Murthy, * a bachelor and a life-worker of the RSS who went with me to the hostels where the NMO workers told me that they had arranged the Krishna Janmashtami Puja but without the NMO’s banner.

I crossed Coimbatore several times and once I took the help of a town-dweller medico of the Coimbatore Medical College to visit his college. The boys had gone to Ooty for an outing.

A few years later, another medico from there sent a letter to me asking how to work for the NMO. Then I could know Coimbatore is called ‘Kovai’ though the Kovai express, I was knowing, like the Nellai Express for Tirunelveli and the Vaigai or Pandayan Express for Madurai, and the Rock Fort Express for Trichy.

I have learned much from a young doctor of Madurai, Sarvanan. In one of my visits he had arranged my meeting in the Gandhi Memorial Museum (Gandhi Mandapam) adjacent to the Madurai Medical College.

As it was expected to be gathering of a few, I suggested to them to cancel the booking of the hall and arrange the meeting in the hostel itself. It was followed by another young medico, Sachin Bansal, who later became a Sanyasi of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) order. Working as a preacher in the district Anand of Gujrat.,he started wearing saffron garb and was given the name as Dr. Savyasachi Das,

When Dr. Sarvanan came, he told me that the girls would not come in the boys’ hostel. I told him that we would go their hostel and talk to them separately. Sarvanan said (in Tamil, highlighting my importance to other medico), “Dhanakarji comes once in a year or two,” and (in English), “the girls will work for the NMO, only when they sit with boys and further we are paying money to maintain an institution like Gandhi Madapam. “

This appealed to me very much. On this, I thought, I was unnecessarily chiding Dr. Satish Kumar Midha, Treasurer of the NMO for not transferring money from the saving bank account to the fixed deposit for higher interest— after all, the SBI is also nation’s property and so what is the difference who gets how much interest?

* He died prematurely despite liver transplantation.

On that night at a Sri Lankan Tamilian medico Dinesh’s house, I relished some of their traditional dishes, which even Tamilian Sarvanan did not know.

Later, Sarvanan went for his practice to Erode but continued the annual medical camps at Sabarimala. In January 2002, I was fortunate to attend the camp and I had also a glimpse of the Makar-jyothi and of Lord Ayyappa, which I had missed in 1984, though on that 14th January also I was at Kottayam.

Fig. 53 ___ Sabarimala Camp, 14.1.2002, Dr. Dhanakar Thakur (Standing extreme R) with the workers (Dr. Sarvanan, second to me).

My visit to the Tribhuvan University’s Teaching Hospital(TUTH),Kathmandu and B.P.Koirala Institute of Health Sciences(BPKIHS),Dharan were the only medical institutions outside the India in Nepal but Nepal is part and parcel of the Hindu culture and preserver of the great Aryavart civilization.

TheBPKIHS,the nearest medical college from my hometown, Forbesganj(about 50 km) is bulit through Indo-Nepal cooperation where every patient has to pay for bed medicines and investigations though there the people are very poor. In its scenic campus, I saw jackals roaming freely in the early night.

Around 4,000 doctors registered with the Nepal Medical Council are inadequate for a population of 25 million who are also very badly distributed __in interiors1:30,000, in towns one for few hundred. Around 15 medical colleges of Nepal draw a good number of students from India on huge capitation-fee who will not be of any use to this poor nation.

The NMO was founded in the ABVP conference at the Sampurnanand Sanskrit University at Varanasi but it could not function properly in the Institute of Medical Sciences despite my several visits. But due to the efforts of Dr. Vijayendra on the 5.11.2001, the Silver Jubilee Celebrations of the NMO were started with token blood donation and other programmes in the IMS, in the presence of its Director.

Fig.-54 __ The inaugural ceremony of the Silver Jubilee Celebrations of the NMO at the IMS, Kashi Hindu Vishwavidyalaya (KHV i.e. BHU), 5.11.2001 (L-R) Dr. H. P. Narayana, Ranchi, Prof. Anand Kumar, BHU, Dr. Narendra Prasad, Patna, Prof. V. P. Singh, BHU, Prof. A. N. Gangopadhyay, President, NMO, BHU.

The IMS is a unique institute, which was previously having an Ayurvedic doctor, K. N. Udupa, as its Dean, who subsequently got fellowship in Modern (Allopathic) Medicine. Mahamana Malaviya had a mind-set like that of Rajnaraian Bose of Calcutta (who wrote in 1866) that our doctors should be equipped with all modern medical knowledge as well as ancient Ayurveda.

I had also an occasion to visit Tirupati’s S.V.Ayurvedic College and its herbal garden, which evoked my childhood memories of collecting herbs. Herbal medicines have a lot to contribute but who can identify them as Jivak had __^^ukfLr ewye~ vukS"k/ke~ (there is no plant root which cannot be utilized as amedicine).” Jivak, who became the first neurosurgeon of the world had told this to his guru at Nalanda in Bihar when he was asked to bring any such herb in gurudakshina, after completing his education in Medicine.

Apart from the hostels of the Ayurvedic Institute of Medical Sciences, BHU, Varanasi, I visited twice the Institute of Post Graduate Teaching & Research in Ayurveda,Gujarat Ayurved University, Jamnagar which is called Dhanwantari Mandir. Aayurvigyan is nothing but a synthesis of the East and the West, not merely a translation of Modern Medicine, so will be our Dhanawantari temples one day __ is my vision for 21st century.

In fact, when I started visiting medical colleges for the spread of the NMO, for long their number was fixed at 106 like that of 103 being the number of elements in the Periodic Table of Chemistry. My fellow NMO worker, Swami Vivekananda, so named as he is, had once suggested to me to visit all those 106 institutions to set a record. I earnestly desired to complete it during my tours, which had always an organisational priority rather than setting an unbreakable record. Hence, I visited several institutions, umpteen times but I could not visit only the Govt. Medical College, Srinagar till 7.11.2004 though I earnestly wished to visit it earlier.

To visit the Govt. Medical College, Srinagar was difficult and impractical from the organisational points of view owing to raging anti-Hindu/Bhartiya militancy stance for which I postponed my visit during peace time in 1987, in order to visit it with the proposed girl student from the SKMC, Muzaffarpur (whose parents later withdrew the proposal knowing that I wanted to marry in the Vindhyachal temple where my father could not solemnise my yajnopavit despite having taken a vow to do so. The NMO, Jammu’s worker, Dr. Satyadev’s wife pressed me to postpone my Srinagar visit till marriage seeing the proposed girl’s photograph with me and also due to a landslide, it was a one-way traffic to Srinagar for the next few days and I could have missed my next leg of tour to Punjab.

In the past two decades many new medical institutions have come up__totaling to 228 for the MBBS course as per the Medical Councli of India's website http\\mciindia.org , out of which 206 were recognised till 24.6.2009 and 22 were permitted for the year 2009-10 to admit total 26705 MBBS students.

Majority of the new institutions are capitation- fee based and the NMO being opposed to it, I did not make serious attempts to visit them. Most of such new medical colleges are located in Karnataka and Maharashtra, which in fact, did not need more doctors. Surprisingly, relatively many poorer states have not opened any such ‘medical shop’ to spin money.

By 1.8.2009, I have paid my visits to 141 medical colleges (and also seen eight from the road) and nine purely P.G. medical institutions(seen Sree Chitra Thirunel Institute for Medical Science & Technology,Thiruvanathapuram from the road) of India and two in Nepal to spread the NMO, totalling 162 medical institutions.

I also visited some of the medical research institutes of the country e.g. the Tropical School of Medicine and the All India Institute of Public Health and Hygiene, Calcutta, and the Rajendra Memorial Research Institute (a unit of the ICMR), Patna.

I have already visited some important hospitals of the country e.g. the Apollo, Chennai, Delhi and Ranchi; the Bombay Hospital, the Tata Cancer Hospital and the Jashlok Hospital & Research Center, the Lilawati Hospital, Mumbai; the Medi-City Hospital(which later developed into the Medi-City Institute of Medical Sciences) near Hyderabad, the Batra Hospital, the Sir Gangaram Hospital, New Delhi, the St. Stephens Hospital, Delhi; the Gandhi Eye Hospital, Aligarh, the Sankar Nethralaya, Chennai; the Arvind Medical Research Foundation, Madurai; the TMH, Jamshedpur; the BGH, Bokaro, the IGH, Rourkela, the JLNH, Bhilai, the IH, Vishakhapatanam; the Central Hospital, BCCL, Dhanbad, the GNH, CCL, Ranchi; the Railway Hospital, Varanasi; the HAL’s Hospital, Sunabeda; the Army Hospital, Namkom and Pathankot; the Vishudhananda Marwari Hospital and Chittaranjan Seva Sadan, Kolkata; the Dental Colleges of Patna, Annamalai (Chidambaram), Bhubaneshwar, Cuttack, Indore, Thiruvanthapuram and of Dharan (Nepal), etc.

In due course of time in order to enhance my knowledge as well as experience, I have also a definite intention to visit the recently established several medical and dental institutions, corporate sector hospitals and big public undertaking hospitals, the railway hospitals, the army hospitals, the charitable trust hospitals, etc., to serve the cause, aims and objects of the NMO.

"mRrqax /;s; ds fy,

ikxy cus O;fDr;ksa

dks 'foJke' &;s rhu

v{kj dgha [kkstdj

Hkh ugha feyrsA mUgsa

foJke ysus ds fy, ,

ck?; djus ,FkiFkikdj

lqykus dh {kerk

dsoy ,d gh ds gkFkksa

esa gksrh gS vkSj mldk

uke gS& 'e`R;q'A "

(Mk]vkckth FkRrs dk

e`R;q'k;~;k ls viuh

Mk;jh esa fyf[kr okD;

dk fgUnh vuqoknA)

Fig.55__ Dr. Abaji Thatte

(24.11.1918-27.11.1995)

The Neo-Dadhichi

My Guide

Dr. Abaji Thatte who after his MBBS from Bombay in 1945 dedicated himself to the service of the nation instead of choosing the glamour of medical practice and had been a source of inspiration to the author of this book