Dr. Daljit Singh (11 October 1934 – 27 December 2017) was a pioneering Indian ophthalmologist who restored sight to thousands and transformed cataract surgery in the country. Known as the father of intraocular lens (IOL) implantation in India, he combined surgical innovation with deep compassion and a lifelong commitment to serving the poor.

Born in Amritsar to Professor Sahib Singh, a respected Sikh scholar of Gurbani, young Daljit grew up immersed in values of service and inquiry. Encouraged by a relative who was a doctor, he studied at Khalsa School and Khalsa College before earning his MBBS from Government Medical College, Amritsar, in 1956. After a house job and an ophthalmic diploma (DOMS), he worked for two and a half years as a general practitioner in rural Punjab. He then completed his MS in Ophthalmology in 1963.

“Seeing patients in the villages opened my eyes,” he later recalled. “So many lost their vision simply because modern care never reached them. That had to change.”

He taught pharmacology and physiology briefly, then spent 23 years on the faculty of the medical colleges in Amritsar and Patiala, becoming Professor Emeritus in 1986. In 1976 he performed India’s first successful intraocular lens implantation—a breakthrough that replaced the thick, heavy aphakic glasses of the past with a permanent artificial lens. Three years later he introduced the Singh-Worst iris-claw lens, a design that gained worldwide acceptance (and reached the United States nearly two decades later). He went on to train more than 450 eye surgeons across India, sparking a quiet revolution in cataract care.

In 1985 he established the Dr. Daljit Singh Eye Hospital in Amritsar. Its guiding principle was simple and uncompromising: no patient would ever be turned away for lack of money. Free camps, free Thursday OPDs, and thousands of free surgeries became part of the hospital’s daily rhythm. He also innovated techniques such as Trans-ciliary Filtration and collaborated on the Fugo “plasma scalpel” for glaucoma and cataract surgery.

He served as honorary eye surgeon to President Giani Zail Singh and operated on other national leaders, yet treated every patient—rich or poor—with the same quiet care.

“A doctor’s real success,” he would tell young surgeons, “is not measured by the number of VIPs he operates on, but by the number of ordinary people who walk out seeing the world clearly again.”

The Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri in 1987. In 1994 he received the Dr. B.C. Roy Award, the highest medical honour from the Medical Council of India. He was also given an honorary D.Sc. by Guru Nanak Dev University and elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences.

Beyond the operating theatre, Singh was a poet, writer, and social thinker who wrote in Punjabi and remained engaged with the challenges facing society. He was married to Swaran Kaur until her death in 2007; their two sons and daughters-in-law continued the family tradition as ophthalmologists.

Dr. Daljit Singh passed away in Amritsar on 27 December 2017 at the age of 83. His hospital still stands as a living testament to his belief that the gift of sight should never be reserved for those who can afford it. Through the lenses he implanted and the surgeons he trained, countless people continue to see the world—and themselves—more clearly because of one determined doctor from Amritsar.