Military assistant surgeons

Lahore, Friday, August 8, 1924

WE have said that if ever a resolution was brought forward in the Provincial Council which had everything to be said for it and nothing to be said against it from the Indian point of view, it was the resolution moved by Pandit Nanak Chand at Tuesday’s meeting of the Council regarding military assistant surgeons (MAS). The resolution, for the text of which the reader must be referred to the report of the discussion published in these columns yesterday, was, in fact, a belated attempt to have a most serious grievance of one of the most efficient branches of the public service in India redressed. Incidentally, it was an attempt to have equal justice secured to His Majesty’s Indian subjects in the matter of public employment, so far as the Medical Department is concerned, which was guaranteed to them in a royal proclamation more than 60 years ago. This was made abundantly clear in the speeches of the honorary members who spoke in favour of the resolution, particularly in those of the mover and Dr Nihal Chand. The former gave no less than 10 reasons, all equally cogent and convincing, in support of his proposal. The most important of these were that although the MAS started with inferior academic equipment, went through a simpler and shorter course, and had actually lower qualifications and standard of medical training, although their diploma was inferior in quality and recognised value to the degree of civil assistant surgeons, who unlike the former, was registerable in the UK, and although the actual duties of the MAS were mostly administrative and clerical rather than professional, they were as a class treated preferentially in the matter of higher civil employment.