Dr Kewal Krishan Thakral
Padma Shri, 2026 — Ayurvedic Surgery (Shalya–Shalakya)
The Partition child who made a medicated thread, and a small puncture at the ear, acceptable to a country that had almost forgotten its own surgeons.

Born 10 October 1938, Sargodha — then British India, now Pakistan. The family crossed in 1947 and rebuilt in Yamunanagar. Father and three brothers were doctors; the boy chose Ayurveda. Bachelor of Ayurveda with Modern Medicine and Surgery, University of Lucknow, 1964. D.Ay.M. in Shalya–Shalakya, Banaras Hindu University, 1968 — first in class. House officer to professor and head. In 1976 he went to the University of California, San Francisco, as a research surgeon and worked on angiogenesis factors. Then home: Principal of the Government Ayurvedic College, Tudiyaganj, Lucknow; Dean of Ayurveda, Kanpur University (1990–95); Director of Ayurvedic Services, Uttar Pradesh (1995–96). Retired 1996. Still a practising surgeon on Ayurvedic principles. Rajajipuram, Lucknow. Wife Meera Gupta. Daughter Pallavi, a dentist. Sixty-six papers, twelve of them abroad. Five books, one of them on Kshara Sutra in English. Seventy-one service camps. Fellow of the International College of Angiology (USA), of the Academy of Indian Medicine at BHU, of Rashtriya Ayurveda Vidyapeeth. Ayurved Ratnakar, Ayurved Brihaspati, Shalya Vibhushan from IMS BHU in 2025.

What the citation names is what the masses accepted: Kshar Sutra for fistula-in-ano, and Karna Vedhan as a small procedure used in bronchial asthma. National Task Force on Kshar Sutra. Central Council of Indian Medicine. The work did not invent the tradition; it made the tradition walk into ordinary clinics. Six decades. Affordable. Grounded. Not blind reverence — he told students that preserving a science required intellectual rigour.

Receiving the Padma Shri he said the sentence he had been practising since Sargodha.

“I dedicate this award to my teachers, students and patients as this honour is a recognition of Ayurveda and work of all those who believed in Indian surgical methods.” And later: recognition at this stage of life is satisfaction that Kshar Sutra has reached people — and a hope that the young will carry it with research, not only memory.

A student once asked why a man who had published in California still tied a thread the Sushruta way.

“Because the fistula does not read journals,” he is said to have answered. “It reads the hand that is patient. Partition taught us to start again with what we still carried. We carried this.”