Dr Padma Gurmet
Padma Shri, 2026 — Sowa-Rigpa (Medicine)
The Amchi’s son who was reluctant to inherit the pulse of the high desert — and then made that pulse an official system of Indian medicine.

Born 15 April 1971, Ladakh. Before hospitals reached the plateau, healthcare lived in the family. His father was an Amchi — a practitioner of Sowa-Rigpa, the “science of healing,” the trans-Himalayan tradition shared across Tibet, Mongolia, Bhutan, Nepal and the Indian highlands. The son was not eager. The father taught him anyway. He became a practitioner, then something rarer: the man who refused to let an oral lineage die when the young stopped taking it up.

In 1997 he joined the Central Council for Research in Ayurveda and Siddha. He documented, argued, built. The Amchi Medicine Research Unit in Leh became the National Research Institute for Sowa-Rigpa in 2009, then the National Institute of Sowa-Rigpa under AYUSH, of which he is Founding Director. In 2010 an amendment to the Indian Medicine Central Council Act brought Sowa-Rigpa into the official fold — one of six recognised systems. He catalogued more than 1,500 texts, documented 525 medicinal plants and some 1,200 formulations, digitised manuscripts, wrote seven books, and planted the Trans-Himalayan Herbal Garden on cold desert ground so the pharmacy would not vanish with the snow. When China moved to claim Tibetan medicine at UNESCO, he prepared India’s dossier and said the heritage was already here.

When the Padma Shri was announced he did not speak of himself.

“Sowa-Rigpa is not just a medical system, it is our cultural heritage. This recognition will help us preserve, research and integrate it with modern healthcare for the benefit of future generations.” And the sentence that opens every interview: before hospitals reached Ladakh, there was Sowa-Rigpa.

A student once asked why a man trained for the mountains still needed an Act of Parliament.

“Because a tradition that lives only in a father’s hands dies with him,” he is said to have answered. “Write it down, grow the plant, put a degree on the wall — then the next son does not have to be reluctant.”