Dr Jivraj Mehta: The First Dean of Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College and King Edward VII Memorial Hospital
29th August 1887- 7th November 1978 (91 years)
Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College opened its doors in June 1925 while King Edward VII Memorial Hospital started functioning in January 1926. The college and the hospital stood tall as an icon of Indian national pride. Dr Jivraj Mehta, the first Dean, was one of the pioneering leaders who formed an integral part of the team of distinguished doctors who worked towards the formation of this august institution. Dr Mehta had been working as Chief Medical Officer in Baroda State when applications were invited for the post of the Principal Officer in charge of both the hospital and the college. This post later became known as Dean. Dr Jivraj Mehta applied for the post and the Medical and Public Health Committee of the Bombay Municipality selected him and he became Dean on 1st April 1925.
Jivraj Mehta was born in Amreli district of Saurashtra, in Bombay Presidency, in a Kapol Bania family, on 29th August 1887 to Jamakben and Narayan Mehta. During his youth, Dr Eduljee Rustomjee Dadachandjee, who was a civil surgeon in Amreli prompted him to study medicine. Subsequently he passed a stiff entrance examination, both written and viva voce, to gain admission to the Grant Medical College and J J Hospital in January 1904. His medical education was sponsored by the Seth Vurjeevandas Madhavdas Kapol Boarding Trust. The organization paid for his college fees, supplied him books as well as clothing, lodging and boarding. He also secured the Jamkhande scholarship of Rs 10 per month which was awarded to the poorest of the freshly admitted students and he was able to send this entire sum to his ageing father to help in maintenance of the family. Throughout the years of his medical education, he won scholarships in the annual examinations, which sum too he would send to his father, keeping aside a small sum for pocket expense.
Girls too had been gaining admission to medical college since many years and the front seats were chivalrously left for them. Dr Jivraj Mehta remembered being taught by some excellent teachers, such as Col. Childe in Medicine, Col. Quicke in Surgery and Col. Hutchinson in Physiology. He must have been brilliant since history records that he topped his class in the first Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery which was the equivalent of the MBBS examination. Indeed, in his final year, he won seven of the eight prizes available for his batch and shared the eighth with his hostel roommate Kashinath Dikshit. After winning all these awards he requested the trustees of the Kapol Trust to convert him to a paying boarder rather than a free boarder.
Dr Jivraj Mehta then proceeded to England for his postgraduate studies. He was one of only two students who was awarded a prestigious fellowship from the Tata education foundation, which financed his further studies. The amount was a loan, with the agents of the House of Tatas paying the sum during each term and the money had to be returned in installments after returning to India. Dr Jivraj Mehta travelled to England by the SS Arabia. He lived in London from 1909 to 1915. In 1909 he entered the London Hospital Medical College and qualified to practise medicine in 1912. He was a junior doctor in the Outpatients Department of the London Hospital. He then went on to work as Pathological Assistant in the London Hospital Pathological Institute. In December 1914, his MD thesis was awarded the prestigious University of London Medal for Medicine and he became a Member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1915. He displayed his leadership qualities from a young age and during his time in London, he was President of the Indian Students Association. It was during his stint in England, that he connected with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He also had the good fortune to meet Shri Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Rabindranath Tagore and Lala Lajpat Rai. In August 1914, Gandhiji arrived in London and suffered an attack of pleurisy and Dr Jivraj Mehta nursed him back to health.
The genesis of King Edward VII Memorial Hospital had started at the time of the death of the monarch, in 1910. The Governor of Bombay had made an appeal for donations and the Bombay Presidency King Edward Memorial Association raised an initial sum of Rs 5 and a half lakhs, which was handed over to the Bombay Municipality on condition that a large hospital be constructed to the North of the island to serve the needs of the growing population. The government offered a large plot of 50000 square yards of land on the campus of the Bombay Bacteriology Laboratory (as the Haffkine Institute was then known).
Around this time too, there arose a dispute between the heirs of the estate of Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas, a wealthy cloth merchant, from the Mulji Jetha family. Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, Sir Chimanlal Setalvad and Sir Narayan Chandavarkar helped to resolve the dispute. As a token of their gratitude, the heirs of the estate of Seth Gordhandas, donated a sum of Rs 12 lakhs, which was later increased to Rs 14.5 lakhs, to set up a medical college to be named after Seth Gordhandas, on the condition that only Indian nationals would be appointed on the staff of the college and hospital.
The Bombay Municipality accepted the donation with gratitude and approached the Bombay Medical Union for a detailed scheme for organising the college and hospital. This occurred in 1915, when Dr Jivraj Mehta had just returned from London after completing his postgraduate studies.
The Bombay Medical Union invited Dr Jivraj Mehta to their committee meeting where he suggested a radical departure from the traditional design of medical colleges and hospitals followed in India.
Traditionally teaching hospitals in India, had their different departments located in isolated blocks. Based on his experience at the London Hospital, Dr Jivraj Mehta had a different vision for the new institution. He suggested that all the departments be located in one college building so as to encourage cooperation between the departments. He suggested that the medical college be housed in one large two storied building and the hospital be housed in another large two-storied building. The two buildings should be connected by corridors to facilitate the movement of staff, students and patients, especially during the monsoon. Also, KEM Hospital, at the suggestion of Dr Jivraj Mehta, was the first in India to have the Out Patients Department located in the main hospital building.
After leaving the London Hospital, and returning to India, Jivraj Mehta had started private practice which in his own words was quite rewarding. However, within a year, the family of Sir Ratan Tata requested Dr Jivraj Mehta to accompany Mr Tata to London where he was proceeding to seek medical treatment. Dr Mehta readily agreed since he was deeply indebted to the Tata family for enabling his postgraduate studies. Accordingly, he set sail with the Tatas for England, in the same SS Arabia, the P&O liner, that he had earlier travelled in on his first trip to England. The party consisted of Sir and Lady Ratan Tata, Lady Tata’s female companion, Sir Ratan’s secretary, assistant secretary, nurse and personal servant and an aged medical friend of Sir Ratan besides Dr Mehta. There were daily morning drills to practise measures in case of a torpedo attack. On 11th November 1916, (as per Dr Mehta, though the date is described as 6th November, 1916 as per other historical records) as the ship left Port Said, the ship shook under the impact of a German torpedo. The German submarine UB-43 had torpedoed her without warning 97 nautical miles (180 km) south by west of Cape Matapan, Greece.
Dr Mehta rushed down to the cabins to bring up all the members of their party. By the time they reached the deck, their designated lifeboat had already pulled away. Fortunately, the ship’s surgeon noticed their plight and ordered another lifeboat which had been lowered but whose ropes had not yet been cut, to wait while the party on deck could slide down the ropes to reach the boat. Many sustained injuries to their hands and fingers. Two crew members and Dr Mehta and another passenger rapidly rowed the lifeboat away from the sinking ship. It was only when they reached half a mile away, that they paused to look back to see a sight, never to be forgotten: the hull already sunk and the stern was sticking up in the air and soon that too sank and no trace was left of the ship. One eyewitness described hundreds of wooden deck-chairs float to the surface as the SS Arabia slipped stern first into a tranquil sea. Later, Germany conceded, the sinking of a passenger liner, was a regrettable mistake. The commander of the U-boat explained that he had expected passenger liners to be painted white, not black, and that the bright clothes (of the women and children lining the railings) suggested to him “workmen soldiers… coloured persons in their national costumes,” implying a troop ship from the British empire. RMS Arabia had launched her boats within 15 minutes. Eleven seamen were killed but miraculously all the passengers survived.
The party of Jivraj Mehta’s lifeboat were picked up by a small trawler and sailed towards Malta. Though, initially the weather had been fair and calm, it then worsened and the sea became rough and a strong wind blew and it rained. The trawler had only a limited supply of warm blankets and they were exposed to about 14 hours of rain and cold before they reached Malta. Dr Mehta could not rest since he had to attend to the rest of the party, with fomentations and dressings for the blisters. They then sailed to Marseilles and Dr Mehta noticed some cough and occasional chills. When they reached London, Dr Jivraj Mehta consulted Dr Percy Kidd, the senior consultant at the London Hospital, who diagnosed tuberculosis. Dr Mehta thought that he had picked up the bacillus from his patients in Bombay in 1916 and that the condition had been aggravated by the strenuous situation caused by the torpedo incident. Because of the war situation, it was not possible to go to Switzerland for rest and treatment. Later, he did avail of two years of sanatorium therapy and returned to India in 1919.
On his return, Dr Jivraj Mehta lived with Gandhiji at Sabarmati and also accompanied him on his trip to Punjab, where Gandhiji was enquiring into the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and other atrocities. He then stayed with Gandhiji at Sinhgadh. Subsequently he had to return to Switzerland for further sanatorium treatment. Here he met Maharaja Sayajirao Gaikwad of Baroda. The Maharaja invited Dr Jivraj Mehta to Baroda first in the capacity of his personal physician for two years and then in 1925 as the Chief Medical Officer of the state.
In India, he had married Hansa Mehta (3rd July 1897 – 4th April 1995) in 1924. What is not commonly known is the fact that Hansa, the wife of Dr Jivraj Mehta, was an equally formidable person. In fact, though her family approved of the union, Hansa was excommunicated by her Nagar Brahmin community for marrying a Vaishya. Hansa was the daughter of Manubhai Mehta, the Dewan of Baroda State, and granddaughter of Nandshanker Mehta, the author of the Gujarati novel Karan Ghelo. She was a philosophy graduate who had studied journalism and sociology in England. Those were the heady days of the Independence struggle and Hansa, organized the picketing of shops selling foreign goods and participated in other freedom movement activities, mentored by Gandhiji. Together Hansa and Jivraj were also incarcerated by the British in jail, during the freedom struggle of India. Jivraj had participated actively in the Non-Cooperation movement and the Quit India Movement and was jailed twice by the British. Later on, both husband and wife were to become members of the Constituent Assembly of India which was responsible for framing the Constitution of India.
In 1925, Jivraj Mehta was selected to be Dean of the newly opened Seth G S Medical College, which was to be staffed exclusively by Indian doctors. He was joined in this venture by fellow doctors who had graduated from the London Hospital, G V Deshmukh and P T Patel.
The first batch of teachers of the hallowed institution included Dr MDD Gilder, Dr PC Bharucha, Dr AS Erulkar, Dr PT Patel, Dr G V Deshmukh, Dr RN Cooper, Dr VL Parmar, Dr NA Purandare, Dr VR Khanolkar and Dr BB Yodh, who, according to Dr Jivraj Mehta, were individuals of the highest capability and deepest integrity. These illustrious doctors agreed to forego the title of ‘Professor’ and adopted the lesser nomenclature of ‘Lecturer’ which helped to inculcate a sense of camaraderie.
A lion’s share of the success can also be attributed to the sterling qualities of Dr Jivraj Mehta. In his own words: “I would come over to the hospital in the middle of the night keep my car outside the hospital compound so that no one knew in advance of my presence and moved about the hospital, entering the wards through the servants’ staircase to check for myself that no one on duty misused his time. I preferred using the small, winding staircases near the toilet blocks so that I could check on the sanitary facilities. Call books were checked regularly and doctors not attending within a reasonable period were disciplined. I would taste the patient’s food from time to time and walk into the student’s hostel and resident’s quarters at midnight to see how they lived and worked.”
In the 1930s, Dr Mehta had gauged the importance of research in medical education. As Dean, he made several efforts towards securing adequate funds for research. Dr PC Bharucha, Dr MDD Gilder, Dr NA Purandare and Dr RN Cooper gave significant donations to the college research corpus. However, the Indian Research Fund Association did not respond. Dr Jivraj Mehta then persuaded Sir Walter Morley Fletcher to visit KEM Hospital, during a visit to Bombay and attend a dinner. Sir Walter was shown the commendable research going on in the institution and the need for government support. Consequently, within a few weeks, the government sanctioned funds for these projects through the Indian Research Fund Association.
The tuberculosis which he had suffered from continued to trouble him. In 1938, while in jail during the struggle for Independence, his health broke down, and the medical superintendent of the Central Prison in Poona recommended his release. He was out of jail after 10 months. After he regained his health, he was reinstated as Dean, which he attributed to the efforts of the then Municipal Commissioner and the goodwill of the Medical and Public Health Committee and the general body of the Municipal Corporation. Dr Mehta’s tuberculosis got reactivated during his second stint in prison. He had retired on superannuation in 1942 and had once again plunged into the movement for independence. He was arrested in 1942 and once again released on medical grounds after 8 months in prison. Though the apex of his right lung which was first affected in 1916 had fully recovered, in 1970, he had to have a removal of the right lower lobe.
Seth G S Medical College and King Edward VII Memorial Hospital were served by illustrious doctors. It is no wonder that the institution grew to be considered as one of the premier establishments of India with a shining reputation in the world at large.
Dr Jivraj Mehta’s work in medical education and teaching hospitals was not restricted to Seth G S Medical College and KEM Hospital alone. He played a key role in persuading the government to establish the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi. Over the years, he was also involved in the planning of medical colleges and hospitals at Poona (Pune), Ahmedabad, Nagpur and Aurangabad. In Mumbai he played an important role in the establishment of Topiwala Nair Municipal Hospital, Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Hospital and Dr Balabhai Nanavati Hospital. He was thrice elected president of the All-India Medical Congress and also president of the Indian Medical Association.
Dr Jivraj Mehta continued as Dean for a generous tenure of 17 years, from 1925 to 1942, till the age of 55 years. Even after superannuation, he served the public tirelessly and went on to achieve great heights. After Independence, he served as the “Dewan” (prime Minister) of the erstwhile Baroda state in free India, sworn in on 4th September 1948. He served till 1949. He also served as director general of health services. He was secretary to the ministry of health in the central government during the period of partition. He was minister for public works, finance, industry and prohibition in the earlier state of Bombay. After the division of the state of Bombay in 1960, he headed the Gujarat state as its first Chief Minister, from April 1960 till September 1963. Later, he was appointed as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 1963 to 1966.
Dr Jivraj Mehta passed away on 7th November 1978 at the age of 91. During his lifetime, he had served the field of medical education and healthcare with utmost diligence. He was a visionary both in his private and public life. His marriage to Hansa had apparently created a stir, in those days, since inter-caste unions were little known. His service to the country during the struggle for independence and upliftment of public health was yeoman.
References:
1Interview of Dr Jivraj Mehta by Dr Sunil Pandya from the Golden Jubilee Souvenir reprinted in the Platinum Jubilee Souvenir of Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jivraj _Narayan_Mehta
3 A Pioneer in India (Incorporating the Barts Journal and the London Hospital Gazette) BLC Barts and the London Chronicle Spring 2006 Volume 8, Issue 1
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Arabia
5 https:gillshaddick.net//joorney/tag/SS+Arabia
The Writer’s Journey Part3: The Sister Ships
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansa_Jivraj_Mehta
7 Women and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By Rebecca Adami, Routledge, 2018
8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constituent_Assembly _of_India
9 Photo https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw116924/Jivraj-Narayan-Mehta-Mrs-Hansa-Mehta-Sir-Manubhai-Nandshankar-Mehta
