Author’s Note
For fourteen years, I served reluctantly as Medical Superintendent of Kasturba Hospital, Sevagram. Those years showed me the nuts and bolts of running a hospital: managing tempers and shortages, buying equipment, handling midnight crises, and navigating friendships that formed, frayed, or faded.
When I returned to the wards and classroom, Sevagram gave me something rare: time. I’d once edited MGIMS annual reports and thought I grasped the institution’s story. I was wrong.
The realization hit in quiet moments. On a ward round, I mentioned our founder, Dr. Sushila Nayar, to a first-year resident. He drew a blank: “Sir… Sushila Nayar, who?” A week later, at 6 a.m., Mr. Dhirubhai Mehta, President of the Kasturba Health Society, called me—he wasn’t well. I examined him and asked a resident to bring an ECG machine. “Sir, Dhirubhai who?”
That was it. The builders of MGIMS were slipping from memory within the place they created. My generation might be the last to have worked closely with them—learning from them, arguing, admiring, even getting frustrated. Without gathering their stories soon, they’d fade to rumor, then nothing.
Anna Sagar, the lake by the Dean’s office, is familiar to all in Sevagram. Few recall it’s named for Annasaheb Sahasrabuddhe, Kasturba Health Society Vice-President, who lived here for years and later earned the Padma Vibhushan. The name lingered. The man did not.
This book started that way: not from some grand design, but from a nudge against forgetting.
It’s no polished history or nostalgic keepsake. These are profiles, because people reveal institutions best. Buildings and reports give facts; lives give texture—their choices, quirks, loyalties, tempers, strengths, and shortcomings bring MGIMS’s early days alive.
MGIMS was never typical. Planted in Sevagram under Gandhi’s ashram shadow, in rural India away from urban polish, it meant khadi uniforms, shramdaan, village visits, Friday prayers cross-legged on the floor. No private practice for doctors; kids in the village school. It grew through scarcity, discipline, improvisation, and hardship—shaping not just the place, but everyone in it.
I dug into library annual reports from the 1970s (thankfully digitized) and, with permission, early faculty files from the Kasturba Health Society. At first, the typed memos on pay, leaves, and resignations seemed dry. Then personal letters to Dr. Sushila Nayar, Manimala Chaudhary, and Kamla Desikan emerged—many with Sushila’s handwritten notes. The pages warmed; giants from my youth turned human.
Phone calls followed. I spoke for two hours with Dr. K.N. Ingley, our retired Physiology Professor in his late eighties in Nagpur. His recall was sharp: early arrivals, colleagues, student life. My iPhone battery gave out; my wife wondered who could hold me that long.
That set the pattern. I reached former teachers, colleagues, alumni, families—some in India, some abroad; some by phone, some in person. Memories varied: some clipped, some vivid. Notebooks filled, transcriptions ran late. No historian’s training, no grant, no deadline—just a quiet urgency to capture these voices before silence won. Dr. Prabha Desikan (1984 batch MGIMS alumna) kindly polished early drafts before her duties pulled her away. After that, I pressed on alone.
Three years of reading, talking, verifying yielded ninety-three profiles: founders, society members, deans, early teachers and doctors who gave MGIMS its start. Selection leaned on records and reach—others surely belong too.
These aren’t saints. They brought ambition, vanity, courage, flaws, generosity, insecurity—the full human mix. Some came for conviction, others for a paycheck. Some stayed, some left; some inspiring, some tough, many both. Institutions form that way: through ordinary people who show up, clash, persist, and build.
I write from inside, not outside—having known some, heard of others, inherited their world. That brings closeness, but bias too. I’ve aimed for fairness, not detachment.
A true historian might spot slips in dates or details. Memories falter; records gap. Still, they hold what papers miss: a time’s feel, an institution’s character.
I hope this helps students, staff, and alumni see MGIMS anew—not as bricks or reports, but as people: their vision and deals, ideals and routines, grit and give.
Sevagram hides depths beneath its calm—vision laced with compromise, service with self-interest. These profiles recover a slice, flaws included.
Here are MGIMS’s architects, as I found them.
Dr. S. P. Kalantri
MGIMS, Sevagram
18 March 2026