Sushila Nayyar – The Doctor of a Republic Whastic

Dr. Sushila Nayyar is perhaps best known for being the personal doctor to Mahatma Gandhi. She can be seen besides him, supporting him and helping him walk in a lot of photos. Her story however goes much further than these photos. She was a freedom fighter who played pivotal roles in the struggle against British. She went on to be the Union Minister of Health and set up the first rural medical college of Independent India. Her political career and public health advocacy played important roles in shaping the healthcare systems in a young and developing India.



The relatives were afraid to shelter the children of rebelsSushila Nayyar - Understanding Gandhi: Gandhians in Conversation with Fred J Blum



Sushila Nayyar was born in 1914 in a small town in a middle-class family which was devoted to Gandhi. Sushila had two older brothers, oldest was Pyarelal Ji, who was serving as an aid to Gandhi. She met Gandhi the first time when she was just six years old when her mother took her along to meet him in Rohtak where he asked her to meet him later in Lahore instead. Sushila’s father had already passed away and her mother wanted to request Gandhi to let her son Pyarelal return home to take care of her family. During the meeting with Gandhi, her mother could not say what she had rehearsed and instead asked him to return Pyarelal after a few years. Noticing Sushila’s non-khadi clothes, Gandhi later asked her mother “Why don’t you give this little girl to me”, a request her mother denied. While Sushila was at a boarding school, her mother was often in prison for activities related to the Satyagrah movement. This brought her close to the Ashram where she used to spend her vacations. “The relatives were afraid to shelter the children of rebels.” She said in an interview with Fred J Blum.



Sushila studied Medicine at Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi, from where she earned her MBBS. She took a course of studies in maternal and child health in Kolkata. There she helped Gandhi while he was suffering from High Blood Pressure. On insistence of Dr. B. C. Roy, Gandhi’s doctor, she returned with and stayed with Gandhi for a month to monitor his health. In 1939, Gandhi travelled to Rajkot and took Sushila with him as his ‘Personal Physician’. She wrote in her book ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s Last Imprisonment’, “I was flattered but felt somewhat embarrassed by the title as I was just a raw graduate, very young and inexperienced. When Journalists approached me for the news about Gandhiji’s health, I could hardly talk with them”.



Gandhiji was not the man to keep a doctor for himself. So, I became the doctor for all the Ashram inmates and the villagers around Sevagram. I set up a dispensary in Sevagram, and learnt to train and use volunteers to fight epidemics and give medical care to villagers. In this way I was initiated into the concept of integrated, preventive and curative medical practice and community medicine which, as everyone today agrees, must form the basis of India’s health services.Sushila Nayyar - Understanding Gandhi: Gandhians in Conversation with Fred J Blum



Sushila completed her exams for Doctorate of Medicine from the same college in 1942 and was awaiting results. She was planning to travel back to Sevagram but got a tip from her acquaintance working for the Viceroy’s office that there were going to be mass arrests in Bombay during an AICC meeting. Quoting her, “I had no notion at that time that I was going to plunge headlong into the Quit India Movement on reaching Bombay. I arrived in Bombay on August 8, as the train had to do a detour because of breaches on the railway line owing to heavy rains. The next day I found myself in Prison.”



On 8th August 1942, Mahatma Gandhi declared the ‘Quit India Movement’ at Gowalia Tank Maidan after a near unanimous vote at the AICC meeting. It was a clear demand that the British leave India in an orderly manner. Gandhi was arrested the follow