{"id":9710,"date":"2026-03-08T03:50:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T09:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/books.kalantri.co.in\/?post_type=architect&#038;p=9710"},"modified":"2026-03-15T11:31:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T17:01:57","slug":"manimala-choudhary","status":"publish","type":"architect","link":"https:\/\/sp.kalantri.co.in\/gmc73\/architect\/manimala-choudhary\/","title":{"rendered":"Manimala Choudhary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Founder of Kasturba Health Society \u2022 Builder of MGIMS \u2022 Chhoti Behenji of Sevagram<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She arrived in Sevagram having already lived several lifetimes. She had survived tuberculosis, a lobectomy, years in a sanatorium, nursing training in Lahore and Patna and Solapur, a marriage she could not fully inhabit, and a separation from her daughter that would never entirely heal. She was twenty-seven years old. She had come because Mahatma Gandhi told her to. On her way back to join the ashram, she heard on the radio that Gandhi had been shot dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She came anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That decision \u2014 to continue toward a place whose animating spirit had just been extinguished \u2014 tells you most of what you need to know about Manimala Roy Chaudhary, known to everyone in Sevagram as Chhoti Behenji, the little elder sister, counterpart and complement to Dr. Sushila Nayar&#8217;s Badi Behenji. She was Secretary of the Kasturba Health Society from its founding in 1964 until 1988. She supervised the construction of MGIMS \u2014 its operation theatres, wards, lecture halls, hostels, kitchen, water supply, library. She helped found the first nursing school in rural India. She built a school for the children of staff. She outlasted nearly everyone around her, living in Guru Nanak Colony, Sevagram, until her death on February 26, 2002 \u2014 fifty-four years after she first arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No medical degree. No administrative qualification. Just an absolute clarity about what she was there to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"bengal-tuberculosis-and-the-long-road-to-sevagram\"><strong>Bengal, Tuberculosis, and the Long Road to Sevagram<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Manimala was born in Bengal in 1923 \u2014 the exact date unrecorded, as with so much of her early life. Her family was elite: her uncle was a distinguished High Court judge, her brothers were educated in England as barristers. Her father had become a sanyasi after her mother&#8217;s death, leaving four children to be raised by relatives. Loss and displacement marked her from the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She was married after matriculation to a doctor serving the French government in Kakinada. She was still a teenager. Within a few years, tuberculosis found her \u2014 the same disease that had already taken her younger brother, brought back from England along with his barrister&#8217;s degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She left her one-year-old daughter with her mother-in-law and traveled to a tuberculosis sanatorium in Kausani, in the hills of what is now Uttarakhand. The year was sometime in the early 1940s. Streptomycin had not yet been discovered. Isoniazid did not yet exist. The treatment prescribed was rest, fresh air, and nutritious food. She stayed for almost four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When her family&#8217;s money ran out after the first two years, she began knitting sweaters and shawls to pay her way. She also began nursing the other inmates \u2014 feeding them, educating them, sitting with them. The surgeon in charge noticed. He offered to send her to Lahore for formal nursing training at the medical college there. She went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Lahore she spent four years. She learned to read and write Gurmukhi and Urdu. She underwent a pulmonary lobectomy \u2014 part of her diseased lung removed \u2014 and recovered. She completed her nursing training and then kept going, traveling to Patna and Solapur for further specialisation in nursing administration and surgical nursing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the time she returned to Kakinada, her daughter was nearly ten years old. Manimala tried to resume the life of a doctor&#8217;s wife in a prosperous household. Within months, she knew she could not. The training she had put herself through, the suffering she had witnessed and survived, had made her into something that a comfortable domestic life could not contain. She was restless with a purpose she had not yet found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"gandhis-instruction\"><strong>Gandhi&#8217;s Instruction<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>A distant relative \u2014 Sarojini Naidu \u2014 suggested she visit Gandhi at Sevagram. Her sister lived in Nagpur, nearby. She went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gandhi listened to her and then directed her to Dr. Sushila Nayar, who had recently established a small five-bed hospital in Sevagram. The instruction was simple. The consequences were vast. Manimala returned to Calcutta to pack her things. On the journey back to Sevagram, the news came through: Gandhi had been assassinated on January 30, 1948.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She did not turn back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She arrived in Sevagram and was placed under the guidance of Barbara Hartland \u2014 renamed Vasantiben by Gandhi \u2014 an Englishwoman who had volunteered at the ashram since 1945 and helped run its self-help groups and the dispensary that Dr. Sushila Nayar had established. When Hartland returned to England after Gandhi&#8217;s death, she handed every responsibility to Manimala. Manimala became matron of Kasturba Hospital, managing the wards, the maternity and child welfare centre, and the growing stream of patients from Sevagram and the surrounding villages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"803\" src=\"https:\/\/books.kalantri.co.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/manimala-choudhary-barbara-hartland-kamla-desikan.jpg\" alt=\"Manimala Choudhary, Barbara Hartland and Kamla Desikan\" class=\"wp-image-10392\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sp.kalantri.co.in\/gmc73\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/manimala-choudhary-barbara-hartland-kamla-desikan.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sp.kalantri.co.in\/gmc73\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/manimala-choudhary-barbara-hartland-kamla-desikan-300x235.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sp.kalantri.co.in\/gmc73\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/manimala-choudhary-barbara-hartland-kamla-desikan-768x602.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Manimala Choudhary, Barbara Hartland and Kamla Desikan<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>She was not prepared for what she found. Coming from an elite Bengali family, she was taken aback by the scarcity \u2014 of water, of food variety, of basic infrastructure. She took offence the first time a villager called her <em>Bai<\/em>, a word that carried derogatory connotations in north and eastern India. She learned Marathi. She learned what <em>Bai<\/em> meant in Maharashtra \u2014 respect, familiarity, affection. She became <em>Mothi Daktarin Bai<\/em> to the villagers: the tall lady doctor, so called because she stood taller than Dr. Sushila Nayar. She wore the word with pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"yin-and-yang\"><strong>Yin and Yang<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>When Dr. Sushila Nayar returned from America in 1950 and eventually came back to Sevagram to lead the Kasturba Health Society in 1964, she found in Manimala Chaudhary her essential counterpart. Their natures were almost opposite. Dr. Nayar blazed \u2014 impulsive, visionary, impatient with obstacles, capable of summoning political will and financial resources through sheer force of personality. Manimala was calm. She absorbed the energy around her and translated it into systems, buildings, protocols, and relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Together, Badi Behenji and Chhoti Behenji built MGIMS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was Manimala who supervised the physical construction of the institution \u2014 the operation theatres, the wards, the lecture halls, the hostels, the kitchen, the water supply,  the Adhyayan Mandir, the prayer hall, the library. While Dr. Sushila Nayar secured the funds and the faculty and the government approvals, Manimala stood on the building sites, managed the contractors, and made the decisions that turned blueprints into functional spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She had a quality rare in institutions: she could identify talent and potential in people that formal credentials would have dismissed. She hired and trained men and women from the surrounding villages \u2014 people without degrees or professional experience \u2014 and built them into the administrative and support backbone of MGIMS. This occasionally irritated her MD-holding colleagues. She was not deterred. Her experience had taught her to see what formal education sometimes obscures: the human being in front of her, and what they were capable of becoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She managed principals. Dr. B.G. Kane, the first principal of MGIMS, reported to her. So did Dr. I.D. Singh, Dr. M.L. Sharma, and Dr. K.S. Sachdeva. They were doctors and academics. She was a nurse. They respected her anyway \u2014 for her integrity, her simplicity, and the quality of her judgment. She guided them not through authority but through the accumulated wisdom of someone who had been building this institution since before any of them arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She brought Gandhian values into the daily life of MGIMS. Khadi clothing, community meals, prayer meetings, shramdaan, and yoga were not occasional rituals; they were woven into the institution\u2019s way of living. She also made sure that the spirit of service reached beyond the campus. MGIMS regularly extended its care to nearby ashrams, including Vinoba Bhave\u2019s ashram at Pavnar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Her work went far beyond hospital care. In partnership with the Catholic Mission, she helped start the first nursing school in rural India, which later grew into a degree college. She also founded Kasturba Vidya Mandir, the school for the children of MGIMS staff. It was strengthened by the devoted work of many women, including the wives of senior doctors such as Mrs. Vidwans and Mrs. Geeta Gupta, who gave their time and energy to help it grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She also understood that an institution must think about the future of its staff. With that in mind, she encouraged them to form a cooperative housing society about three kilometres from the hospital, later known as Dhanwantari Colony. Over time, this initiative helped nearly 180 families\u2014doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, clerks, drivers, and attendants\u2014who had spent much of their working lives in rented campus quarters, secure homes of their own, either while serving at MGIMS or after retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was her way of building an institution: not only through buildings and services, but through care, foresight, and a deep sense of community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-bullock-cart-and-the-insurance-scheme\"><strong>The Bullock Cart and the Insurance Scheme<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Long before the Kasturba Health Society was formally registered, Manimala and Dr. Anant Ranade were riding bullock carts through the villages of Vidarbha at harvest time, collecting jowar as health insurance premium. A handful from one family, a sack from another \u2014 voluntary contributions that entitled rural families to hospital care at Kasturba. It was a moral gesture before it was a financial scheme: the recognition that health was not a commodity to be purchased in illness but a shared responsibility maintained in good health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The scheme formalised over the years. Families paid \u20b910 annually, then \u20b935, then \u20b9600. By 2026, it covered nearly four lakh individuals. It remains one of the oldest community health insurance models in India, studied and cited by researchers and policymakers. It began in a bullock cart. Manimala was in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"confidante-counsellor-conscience\"><strong>Confidante, Counsellor, Conscience<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Her relationship with Dr. Sushila Nayar was the central professional bond of both their lives. It was built on deep mutual trust and \u2014 crucially \u2014 on Manimala&#8217;s willingness to speak plainly. She told Dr. Nayar what she thought, even when it was not what Dr. Nayar wanted to hear. In an institution whose director commanded considerable authority, this was not a small thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was Manimala who, in 1964, traveled to Delhi with Dr. Anant Ranade and refused to leave until Dr. Nayar agreed to return to Sevagram and lead the newly forming Kasturba Health Society. &#8220;You must not refuse to help,&#8221; she told her. It was characteristic \u2014 direct, urgent, entirely in the service of something larger than either of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Dr. Nayar&#8217;s health declined in her final years, Manimala&#8217;s presence became an anchor. When Dr. Nayar died on January 3, 2001, Manimala was among those who had known her longest and most completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"what-she-carried\"><strong>What She Carried<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Her daughter Bithika never forgave the separation. She grew up resenting Gandhi and Sevagram for taking her mother away during her earliest years \u2014 a wound understandable to anyone who thinks about it honestly. She chose to remain a homemaker, keeping her distance from the world her mother had inhabited. But Manimala&#8217;s two granddaughters \u2014 Prabhati Lahiri, MGIMS batch of 1983, and Deepika Lahiri, batch of 1990 \u2014 both became doctors, both received their degrees from the institution their grandmother had helped build. Something passed across the generation that had withheld it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Manimala spent seventeen years in Sevagram after stepping down as Secretary in 1988, living in Guru Nanak Colony among the doctors and staff who were her family. She was twice nominated for the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation Award for lifetime achievement. She was present at the deaths of colleagues she had worked alongside for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She died on February 26, 2002, at home in Guru Nanak Colony. Nearly all of Sevagram and the surrounding villages came to pay their respects. She was buried among the people she had served.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two years earlier Dr. Sushila Nayar had died. The two women had arrived in Sevagram within months of each other, both in their twenties, both drawn by Gandhi&#8217;s vision, both without any clear understanding of where it would take them. They had built something that neither could have built alone. They left within two years of each other, as if the institution they had created was finally strong enough to stand without them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Founder of Kasturba Health Society \u2022 Builder of MGIMS \u2022 Chhoti Behenji of Sevagram She arrived in Sevagram having already lived several lifetimes. She had survived tuberculosis, a lobectomy, years in a sanatorium, nursing training in Lahore and Patna and Solapur, a marriage she could not fully inhabit, and a separation from her daughter that &#8230; <a title=\"Manimala Choudhary\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/sp.kalantri.co.in\/gmc73\/architect\/manimala-choudhary\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Manimala Choudhary\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10418,"menu_order":6,"template":"","department":[13,11],"role":[],"class_list":["post-9710","architect","type-architect","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","department-kasturba","department-leadership"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Manimala Chaudhary \u2014 Secretary, Kasturba Health Society | Architects of MGIMS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"She heard Gandhi had been assassinated. 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