The RG (Radha Gobinda) Kar Hospital and Medical College has become a household name all across the country but few people (outside Bengal at any rate) know of the great humanitarian-doctor Radha Gobinda Kar who was instrumental in starting this institution way back in 1886. It was not only India’s first non-State hospital and medical college but said to be the first in whole of Asia and was a unique nationalist project in colonial times.
I thought I should pen a few paragraphs about this great Calcuttan (and Indian) so that those unware of the man may get to know of him. I shall also mention his active association with Sister Nivedita during their stupendous humanitarian service during the Calcutta Plague of 1899.
Born in 1852 in Howrah’s suburbs in Ramrajtala-Santragachi area, Radhagobinda’s father Durgadas was also a doctor who was involved in founding of the Milford Medical College and Hospital in Dacca (now named Salimullah Hospital). Durgadas, a graduate of the 1835 established Calcutta Medical College (the oldest in the subcontinent) made pioneering efforts to write medical books in Bengali and also transmit medical knowledge (both preventive as well as curative) using indigenous methods and know-how, which he thought would come greatly handy to the traditional practitioners in the vast countryside of Bengal. This was later carrried on with the same earnest by his son too.
Interestingly, Radhagobinda’s first love was not medicine but theatre. He was associated with icons like Girishchandra Ghose and Ardhendu Mustafi in the circles of theatre and also acted in some plays. When he was around thirty that his father sent him to a Scotland (at the University of Edinburgh), a much favoured destination for studying medicine then – father of Aurobindo Ghose, Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose too had studied in the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. The great chemist and nationalist entrepreneur, Prafulla Chandra Ray, was his exact contemporary at Edinburgh, studying Chemistry.
Upon return in 1886, he started a small hospital in Baithakkhana Bazar. It changed many locations until it got settled in the Belgachiya area (then a northern ourskirtish suburb, north-east of Shyambazaar). It underwent a change of names too. First called Calcutta School of Medicine, then Calcutta Medical School, then for a while being named after Prince Albert Victor (son of His Majesty Edward VII and grandson of Queen Victoria), and subsequently Carmichael College. During its long course it was also merged with the ‘College of Physicians and Surgeons’ to make a single entity.
Radhagobinda was helped by many other doctors, including the legendary Dr Mahendralal Sarkar, who had established the ‘Association of Cultivation of Science’ for promotion of scientific temper and knowledge (where CV Raman, then posted in Calcutta in the Indian Financial Service, first undertook his experiments) and had treated Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa during his last illness at Shyampukur Bati and Cossipore (Kashipur) Garden-house.
It was only in independent India, when the legendary doctor and the second Chief Minister of West Bengal, Bharat Ratna Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, thought it was high time that the hospital be named after its chief architect – Dr Radha Gobinda Kar.
Dr. Kar had lost his life to the Spanish Flu that raged in1918 and had claimed millions of lives around th world.
Dr. Kar was not just a doctor who treated patients in the comfortable precincts of a hospital. He was equally active in the challenging conditions of the field whenever any calamity struck. We know about his active involvement in the plague that struck Calcutta in 1898-99. During this time (in summer of 1899) Swami Vivekananda had instructed his disciples to go all out serving people even risking their lives. His Scottish-Irish disciple Sister Nivedita along with the great Swami’s first monastic disciple, Swami Sadananda (known as Gupta Maharaj) flung themselves into action. Nivedita and Sadananda organised a band of selfless, service-spirited youths, who served the ailing people day and night. During these entire operations they reveived valuable guidance from Dr. Kar.
Nivedita had some prior experience of nursing which she had done during a similar situation in the mining town of Wrexham in central England and she brought all that experience to the fore. She exemplified such sterling spirit of a selfless humanitarian that local people were stunned. She led from the front by cleaning the streets of Bagh Bazaar, motivating others to come forward for the same. People got a practical lesson in civic duty from her. She conducted surveys, ran a makeshift dispensary, organised volunteers and planned the delegation of work. She kept awake night after night, nursing and serving the ill even when there was no hope for their survival.
Dr. Kar later reminiscenced about Nivedita’s service as follows :
“During this calamity, the compassionate figure of Sister Nivedita was seen in every slum of the Baghbazar. She helped others with money without giving a thought to her own condition. At one time when her own diet consisted only of milk and fruits, she gave up milk to meet the medical expenses of a patient.” He also narrated how Nivedita sat for hours together in most damp and weather-beaten huts with dying children in her lap, comforting them even in his last moments.”
Such were the times when persons like Dr. Kar, Nivedita, Swami Sadananda, and countless youth did not care a fig for their own saftey in service of others. Who could have imagined that the temple of serving the ailing and suffering that Dr Radha Gobinda Kar built, would one day shock the conscience of the country for being the venue of monstrous deeds and a lady healer of people would meet such an end at this temple of service.
