INSPIRING LIVES: DR. DWARKANATH KOTNIS

INSPIRING LIVES: DR. DWARKANATH KOTNIS 

The Doctor Who Belonged to Two Nations

"The army has lost a helping hand; the nation has lost a friend. Let us always bear in mind his internationalist spirit."

— Mao Zedong, on the death of Dr. Kotnis  

In the history of India's freedom struggle, we remember soldiers, saints and statesmen. But in a small town in Maharashtra, a young doctor decided that his freedom meant nothing if he could not use it to heal another nation in pain.

That doctor was Dwarkanath Shantaram Kotnis.

A Boy From Solapur Who Wanted to See the World

Dwarkanath was born on 10 October 1910 in Solapur, Maharashtra, in a middle-class family. He was one among seven children.  

He studied medicine at the Seth GS Medical College of the University of Bombay, with a simple, beautiful dream — as his younger sister Manorama recalled, he wanted to “practice medicine in different parts of the world.”  

The opportunity came sooner than anyone expected.

When India, Still in Chains, Reached Out to Help China

The year was 1938. India was still under British rule. In China, the Second Sino-Japanese War was raging. Communist General Zhu De wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru asking for medical help.

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, then President of the Indian National Congress, made a public appeal on 30 June 1938 and collected Rs. 22,000 to send a medical team. It was a profound gesture — a nation struggling for its own freedom sending help to another nation fighting for its freedom.  

Five young doctors volunteered. Among them was 28-year-old Dr. Kotnis. The team included Drs. M. Atal from Allahabad, M. Cholkar from Nagpur, B.K. Basu and Debesh Mukherjee from Calcutta, and D. Kotnis from Sholapur.  

His mother wept — her son was going to a war zone. His father, Shantaram, blessed him to venture out.

They landed at Hankou, and were then sent to Yan’an, the revolutionary base. There, Mao Zedong and Zhu De personally received them — they were the first medical team from another Asian country to volunteer.  

72 Hours Without Sleep

What followed was service beyond human endurance. Dr. Kotnis worked in mobile clinics on the battlefronts of northern China, near the Wutai mountains.  

Medicines were scarce. Winters were brutal. The wounded came in hundreds. During one long battle in 1940, Dr. Kotnis performed surgeries for 72 hours straight without any sleep, treating more than 800 wounded soldiers.  

He did not just treat bodies. He learned to speak and write Chinese, joked and sang in Chinese. The soldiers lovingly called him Ke Dihua dai fu — Doctor Ke Dihua. In 1939, he joined the Eighth Route Army led by Mao Zedong and was later appointed Director of the Dr. Bethune International Peace Hospital.  

Four of the five Indian doctors eventually returned home. Dr. Kotnis stayed back. He had fallen in love with China.

A Love Story Called Yinhua

At the Bethune Hospital, he met Guo Qinglan, a 23-year-old nurse from a Christian family who had volunteered for the army.  

She first saw the tall, curly-haired Indian doctor at the inauguration of Dr. Norman Bethune’s tomb and was charmed — “He was vivacious and liked singing,” she later recalled. He was touched when she gifted him a sweater after seeing his frayed army jacket.  

They married in December 1941. On 23 August 1942, a son was born. On the suggestion of Nie Rongzhen, they named him Yinhua — Yin means India, Hua means China.  

An Immortal Legacy at 32

The relentless stress took its toll. Just three months after his son’s birth, on 9 December 1942, Dr. Kotnis died of epileptic seizures. He was only 32.  

He was buried in the Heroes Courtyard in Nanquan village. The whole nation mourned.

Madame Sun Yat-sen, wife of the founder of modern China, said of him: “His memory belongs not only to your people and ours but to the noble roll-call of fighters for the freedom and progress of all mankind.”  

Today, he is still revered in China during the Qingming Festival, the day to commemorate martyrs, along with the Canadian Dr. Norman Bethune. His statue stands tall in the Martyrs' Memorial Park in Shijiazhuang, Hebei. A small museum there preserves his vocabulary handbook, his surgical instruments, and photos with Mao and other leaders.  

Both India and China have honoured him with postage stamps. His story was made into the classic Hindi film Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (1946) directed by V. Shantaram, and a Chinese film Ke Dihua Dai Fu in 1982.  

Even today, when Chinese leaders visit India, they make it a point to meet the Kotnis family in Mumbai — a tradition kept alive from Zhou Enlai in 1950 to Xi Jinping in 2014.  

What Dr. Kotnis Teaches Us Today 1. Service knows no passport: He went to a country he had never seen, whose language he did not know, because suffering was universal. 2. Greatness is in staying back: When everyone else returned, he stayed. Inspiration is not a single brave act, but the quiet decision to continue. 3. Love makes you belong: He became Chinese to the Chinese and remained Indian to his core. He proved that you don’t have to choose between roots and wings. 

In a world that builds walls, Dr. Kotnis built a bridge — with his own life — between Yin and Hua. His son’s name was that bridge.

And that bridge still stands.

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