Dr. Khushwant Lal Wig
The physician who helped shape medical education at India’s premier institute

Khushwant Lal Wig was born on 30 September 1904 in Gujranwala, in the Punjab of British India, into a prosperous family. He studied at the local Mission High School, then at Government College and Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College in Lahore, before graduating in medicine from King Edward Medical College. Postgraduate training took him to London, where he earned the MRCP in 1931 and later became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

He began his academic career in Lahore as an assistant professor of medicine at King Edward Medical College and Mayo Hospital. After Partition in 1947 he moved to Amritsar, becoming Professor of Medicine at the Medical College and senior physician at V.J. Hospital, while also serving as Dean of the medical faculty at Punjab University. His special interest lay in tuberculosis and diseases of the chest — conditions that still exacted a heavy price across the subcontinent.

In 1958 he was invited to join the newly established All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi as its first Professor of Medicine. He later became Director of the Institute, a position he held until his retirement in 1969. At AIIMS he worked to introduce modern methods of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, drawing on insights gained during a Rockefeller Foundation travelling fellowship that took him to medical schools in the United States and the United Kingdom. Colleagues remembered a teacher who insisted that clinical skill and scientific curiosity must go hand in hand.

One young resident, struggling with a complex case of pulmonary tuberculosis, once asked him whether the newer drugs alone would be enough.

Wig replied quietly, “Medicines are only half the story. The other half is understanding the patient, the family, and the conditions in which the disease thrives. Treat the disease, but never forget the person.”

In 1962 he was appointed Honorary Physician to the President of India. The Government recognised his contributions with the Padma Bhushan in 1964. He also received the Dr. B.C. Roy Award, the highest honour in the Indian medical profession, and was a founder Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences. The Royal College of Physicians of London elected him a Fellow, and he held office in the American College of Chest Physicians.

After leaving AIIMS he continued to write and advise on medical education. He died on 8 June 1986 in Bern, Switzerland, at the age of eighty-one, survived by his wife Shanta Puri, a son and two daughters.

Today the K.L. Wig Centre for Medical Education and Technology at AIIMS stands as a living reminder of his influence. In the story of Indian doctors, Khushwant Lal Wig represents the generation that moved from the medical colleges of undivided Punjab into the new institutions of independent India, bringing rigorous clinical standards and a deep commitment to teaching the next generation of physicians.