Dr. B.C. Roy and Us!

By Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD

The Friday that just went by two days ago, happened to be a very special day for all doctors across our nation. It was July 1st, the day that is celebrated as our ‘National Doctors’ Day’, on which we doctors are made to feel special by our patients, friends, relatives and the hospitals we are attached to.

Being a doctor, let me say here that on this day every year, I get more messages wishing me, than on my birthday itself! So, at a personal level too, our national day makes us all doctors feel special and happy that our role in society is being recognised and we are being honoured by a grateful fraternity of happy patients.

It is interesting to note that while there are dozens of days designated across the world, as international day of this and international day of that, including some very comic and absurd themes, an ‘International Doctors’ Day’ is surprisingly not celebrated across the entire world, on one particular day. Different countries observe it on different dates of their own choice, with their own significance.

In our country, this unique day was designated so only very recently, in the year 1991. It was done in memory of Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, a stalwart among doctors, who very interestingly, was both born and also died on 1st July, having lived a life of exactly eighty years. How great a man he was to merit this honour and what he did during his long lifetime, was very well highlighted in his article on Doctors’ Day in Star of Mysore by Dr. B.V. Rajagopal (BVR), who along with Dr. C.D. Sreenivasa Murthy, happens to be among the senior most Physicians of our city.

In his article, Dr. BVR has shed a great deal of light on the illustrious life of Dr. B.C. Roy and my appeal to all readers of Star of Mysore is that if they have missed reading it, they should go back to that issue and read it without fail. By doing this they would not only get to know about the life of one of the greatest doctors of our country but would also be paying their own homage to his great soul. And, this towering man deserves this homage because he was ‘many men in one man’, which is how I see him. He was the person who in addition to starting the Medical Council of India (MCI) also founded the Indian Medical Association (IMA), the largest professional body of doctors in our country. When he started it, this body had a membership of just 226 across the country, which has now grown to more than four lakhs and is still continuing to grow.

I feel that our Government was very kind not only to him but also to the entire medical fraternity of the country when, in the year1961, it conferred  on Dr. B.C. Roy the nation’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, which he very richly deserved.

But, mind you, I am not at all surprised that his name was not even considered for many similar awards at an international level, because I have found that such nominations are most often highly biased, with many other considerations, rather than merit alone, guiding them. I will also not hesitate to assert here that the most notable culprit in this regard is the world’s most notable and famous Nobel Prize, which with its many miserably wrong hits and complete misses, like shots in the dark, has now completely fallen from grace!

Dr. BVR has also mentioned in his article that an award was instituted by The Indian Medical Association in the year 1976, in memory of its founder, Dr. B.C. Roy and named after him, which was meant to be conferred every year on some of the leading achievers in the field of medicine, in recognition of their outstanding work and service as medical professionals. The National IMA and sometimes its State branches, with its approval, were  meant to be the only bodies which were authorised to confer this very prestigious award and that is how things were until a few years ago.

But sadly, a time soon came when we started seeing awards in the name of Dr. B. C. Roy being instituted and conferred by many lesser-known institutions across our country.

While this itself was a very bad turn of events, being very disrespectful to the great man and the award itself, a trend has now come where these so-called ‘Dr. B.C. Roy Awards’ are being showered like paper confetti, by all kinds of unknown non-entities, on doctors of their choice.

The situation is so bad now that whenever a locality level group wants to hog the limelight by honouring a doctor who happens to be practicing in their area, or who makes a donation to their cause, they confer on him or her a ‘Dr. B. C. Roy Award’, at a hastily arranged function, held in a local choultry! The result is that what used to be the highest award for doctors, at the National level, has now become only a dubious, locality level award. 

I am very sorry to say here that some doctors too, being only too happy to receive any award, irrespective of who it is comes from, very obligingly accept such honours. This only proves right the age-old adage that, ‘Some people, mistaking notoriety for fame, would rather be notorious, than unknown’!

It is really a very sad turn of events that the prestige and sanctity of an honour given in memory of such a great and noble soul like Dr. B.C. Roy, has been denigrated to this low level. So, as a doctor, I feel that, keeping away the persons who come to us with such offers, we doctors, in the interest of preserving our own dignity and the dignity and sanctity of our profession too, should simply refuse to accept them.

I hope that we all keep this in mind in the days to come and put an end to this sad trend, which is in very poor taste. Let the glint of happiness in our patients’ eyes alone, become the best and highest award in our lives!

e-mail: kjnmysore@rediffmail.com