The Woman Who Refused to Take No for an Answer: The Story of Dr. Saroj Chooramani Gopal

On 25 July 1944, in the pilgrimage city of Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, a girl named Saroj Chooramani was born with a quiet fire in her spirit. When she announced she wanted to study medicine, her family resisted. She responded with a five-day hunger strike. Only then did they relent.

She graduated from Sarojini Naidu Medical College in Agra in 1966. When the time came for postgraduate studies, the expected path for a woman was obstetrics and gynaecology. Saroj wanted general surgery—a field then reserved almost exclusively for men. She fought the admissions committee, arguing that if men could study gynaecology, women should be allowed to study surgery. She became the first woman postgraduate student in general surgery at her college and earned her MS in 1969.

In 1973 she completed her MCh in Paediatric Surgery at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi—the first woman in India to earn the superspeciality degree. She finished the course in three years while others took longer. That same year she joined the Faculty of Medicine at the Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University. Over the next three and a half decades she rose to become Medical Superintendent of the hospital and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, retiring in 2008. She later became the first woman Vice-Chancellor of King George’s Medical University in Lucknow.

Throughout her career she developed new surgical techniques and practical, low-cost innovations for children of poor families—a specialised stent for hydrocephalus and an affordable humidifier for newborns among them. She helped establish a well-equipped Department of Child and Newborn Surgery at BHU.

One case from her early years stayed with her forever: a beautiful baby born with meningomyelocele, a condition in which the spinal cord is damaged. A senior doctor told her nothing could be done—the child would never walk or control bowel movements. Saroj decided then that she would find a way.

Decades later, long after most people would have rested on their laurels, she returned to the classroom. In January 2024, at the age of 79, Padma Shri Dr. Saroj Chooramani Gopal enrolled for a PhD at IIT Kanpur. Her research focuses on using stem cells from bone marrow or the abdominal lining to regenerate damaged spinal nerves—work that could one day help children born with spinal defects and adults with spinal injuries walk again.

In 2002 she received the Dr. B.C. Roy Award, the highest honour for physicians in India. In 2013 the nation conferred upon her the Padma Shri. She has also held numerous fellowships and oration awards, and has served as President of the National Academy of Medical Sciences.

One afternoon, after a long day of research discussions, a young scholar asked her, “Ma’am, after a lifetime of firsts and so many achievements, why start a PhD now?”

Dr. Saroj Chooramani Gopal smiled the determined smile that had once carried her through a hunger strike and the closed doors of a male-dominated speciality.

“Because that baby I saw long ago is still waiting,” she said. “As long as there are children who cannot walk and families who have been told there is no hope, the work is not finished. Age is only a number. The need remains.”

And so the girl from Mathura who refused to accept limits continues her journey—surgeon, teacher, innovator, and now doctoral student—proving that the courage to say “I will find a way” can open doors for generations of children yet to come.