Associate Professor of Ophthalmology \u00b7 Six Years at Sevagram \u00b7 The Lens Through Which Students Learned to See<\/p>\n
Sudershan Kumar Dhawan was born on November 2, 1943, in Sarai Amanat Khan, a village twenty-nine kilometres southwest of Amritsar, in a family rooted in the Khatri tradition of service. His father, Shri Hukam Chand Dhawan, was Deputy Director of Health Services in Haryana \u2014 a man of unshakeable discipline who brought to his household in Chandigarh an atmosphere where order was tempered by grace. Young Sudershan inherited the resolve. He brought his own spark: the kind visible at the corner of an eye just before a smile breaks.<\/p>\n
He completed his schooling in Ferozepur Cantt and his intermediate years in Hoshiarpur, then entered Medical College, Amritsar, graduating MBBS in 1966. He entered PGI Chandigarh to pursue his MD in Ophthalmology under Dr. R.S. Gupta. His thesis examined glaucoma surgery. During his residency, he travelled around Chandigarh conducting population screening for eye disorders \u2014 the outreach instinct that would drive him to Gadchiroli and Bhamragarh and Sironcha in Vidarbha, and that would never leave him across the decades and continents that followed.<\/p>\n
It was at PGI that he met Dr. Chanchal. She was from Shimla, had studied in Patiala, and carried herself with the calm of someone who knew precisely who she was. They married in 1970. Two years later, they left Chandigarh together for Sevagram.<\/p>\n
MGIMS in January 1972 was three years old \u2014 a fledgling institution in a remote village, its Gandhian values its most developed infrastructure. Dr. Anant Ranade, an Ayurved Visharad who lacked a modern medical degree but had restored sight to thousands through eye camps across Maharashtra, met them on arrival. His reputation, built in the dust of Sevagram through skill alone, humbled the new arrivals immediately. The warmth of Principal I.D. Singh and Dr. Sushila Nayar made the village feel, with time, less like exile and more like home.<\/p>\n
Together, the Dhawans built the ophthalmology department’s teaching and clinical work from its earliest years, conducting eye camps in the remotest corners of Vidarbha \u2014 including areas troubled by Naxalite activity: Gadchiroli, Bhamragarh, Sironcha \u2014 personally leading teams of registrars including Dr. Sanjay Gadre and Dr. D.P. Singh, ensuring their safety alongside the success of the mission. The camps were not supplementary to the curriculum; they were the curriculum’s most effective delivery.<\/p>\n
His theory lectures were performances \u2014 animated, textured with real cases, sparkling with dry wit, keeping even the sleepiest residents attentive. His operating theatre teaching built the hand alongside the mind: “Observe first. Assist next. Then do it yourself.” Students found his presence beside them in the theatre more reassuring than it was intimidating. A treacherous retinal detachment was broken down like a puzzle. A delicate corneal suture: he guided trembling hands until the stitch settled like silk. He corrected without crushing \u2014 the particular quality of a teacher who understands that the confidence of the student is itself a clinical instrument.<\/p>\n
In the corridors and Eye OPD, he was impeccably turned out \u2014 vividly coloured T-shirts and tailored jeans, shoes polished to a mirror finish, steering his white Ambassador with one hand and waving familiar greetings with the other. Inside the hospital, he was a strict disciplinarian: appointments were expected, doors were to be knocked. In the villages, he shed all formality \u2014 sharing meals with locals, exchanging jokes, borrowing music cassettes from his students. Structure and spontaneity served different purposes and he understood which each situation required.<\/p>\n
She was, by universal testimony, his perfect complement. Where he could command a room with presence and wit, she softened it with calm warmth. She never raised her voice, never sought the spotlight, yet her influence on the students who passed through the department was lasting in its own way \u2014 the particular kind that quiet grace produces in those who have been in proximity to it long enough to absorb its standards.<\/p>\n
Their daughter Samriddhi was born in Sevagram in 1977, the year they left. The campus that had given them six years of foundational work had also given them a child. On October 20, 2023, Dr. Chanchal Dhawan died in Pune. Forty years of Riyadh, the Pune years before and after, the Sevagram years at the beginning \u2014 she had been present through all of it, the calm that completed the sparkle, the grace that made the structure habitable.<\/p>\n
The postgraduate programme they had hoped to build had not taken flight. Dr. L.P. Agarwal, Dr. Nayar’s advisor and the ophthalmology doyen at AIIMS, refused to approve Dr. Dhawan’s promotion to Professor on the grounds that the position required more years in a teaching hospital than he had accumulated. Goa Medical College rejected him for the same reason. Then Maharashtra’s government advertised a large number of faculty posts and looked beyond the usual red tape to fill them. Dr. Dhawan applied. This time, he was chosen.<\/p>\n
He and Dr. Chanchal packed their bags, left Sevagram, and moved to Pune \u2014 he as Professor and Head of Ophthalmology at BJ Medical College, she as Associate Professor. From Pune, they moved to GMC Nagpur in 1981. Then the Saudi Arabia chapter opened: thirty-seven years at the National Hospital in Riyadh \u2014 a span of professional life longer than most careers in their entirety. They returned to Pune in March 2022.<\/p>\n
His students scattered across continents remember two things most specifically: the restored sight of patients who came to the eye camps in Gadchiroli and Sironcha and left seeing what they could not see before, and the quality of being taught by someone who understood that vision \u2014 clinical and human \u2014 was what medicine was actually for. The Dhawans had been lenses, as one tribute put it, through which students learned to see not just disease but humanity. In Sevagram, between 1972 and 1977, in a village with more ideals than infrastructure, they had learned it first themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"