Dr. Siddha Nath Kaul (also spelled Sidh Nath or S. N. Kaul) was a pioneering eye and ENT specialist, institution-builder, and one of Delhi’s most respected physicians in the decades before and after Independence. In 1955 he became one of the earliest recipients of the Padma Shri in medicine, recognised as “the eye specialist” of the capital.

From Edinburgh to Delhi

Born in the late nineteenth century, young Siddha Nath left India for the University of Edinburgh, where he earned his medical degree (recorded as M.B.B.S. Edin., 1916). In the grey lecture halls and crowded clinics of Scotland he specialised in diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat—fields that demanded both delicate skill and deep patience.

When he returned to India, Delhi was still a city of narrow lanes, horse-drawn tongas and a growing population of people losing their sight to cataract, infection and neglect. He set up practice on Curzon Road (now Kasturba Gandhi Marg), a quiet address that soon became known among patients as the place where “Kaul Sahib gives light.”

One elderly man who had travelled from a village outside Delhi once sat nervously in the waiting room.
“Doctor Sahib,” he said, “I have not seen my grandson’s face clearly for three years. Is there any hope?”

Kaul examined him carefully, then smiled.
“There is always hope if we act in time. Rest tonight. Tomorrow we will begin.”

A leader among colleagues

By the 1930s Kaul was already a senior figure in Indian ophthalmology. In 1938 he was elected President of the All India Ophthalmological Society. At the annual meeting in Bombay he delivered the presidential address, speaking not only of surgical technique but of the responsibility doctors carried toward the vast number of people who still had no access to eye care.

Colleagues remembered him as precise in the operating theatre and generous outside it. Younger surgeons often sought his advice. When one of them confessed anxiety before a difficult cataract case, Kaul placed a hand on his shoulder and said quietly:

“The hand must be steady, but the heart must be steady first. Remember the patient is not a case—he is a person waiting to see the world again.”

Building Sir Ganga Ram Hospital

After Partition, Delhi was flooded with refugees and medical needs multiplied overnight. The Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Trust looked for a medical superintendent who could turn an idea into a working institution. They turned to Dr. S. N. Kaul.

He had long admired the philanthropic spirit of Sir Ganga Ram. When the offer came, he accepted at once.

“It is an honour,” he told the board, “to serve the community in the memory of the values that great man stood for.”

Using his good relations with the new government, Kaul helped secure land adjoining the Ridge in Rajinder Nagar. Under his guidance the hospital took shape—first as a modest facility, later as one of Delhi’s major medical centres. He remained its first Medical Superintendent, setting standards of care that outlasted him.

Recognition and quiet dignity

In September 1955, when the Padma Shri awards were announced, the newspapers noted two eminent citizens of Delhi: Rameshwari Nehru and “Dr Siddha Nath Kaul, the eye specialist.” He received the honour for a lifetime of restoring sight and building institutions.

Those who knew him said the award changed nothing in his daily routine. He continued to see patients, teach younger doctors, and insist that medicine was first a service, then a science.

A lasting light

Dr. Siddha Nath Kaul belonged to a generation that bridged the colonial and independent eras of Indian medicine. He brought European training home, adapted it to Indian realities, led his professional peers, and helped plant a major hospital in the soil of a newly independent capital.

Today, when patients walk through the gates of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital or when young ophthalmologists open the history of the All India Ophthalmological Society, they are walking paths he helped clear.

Somewhere in the quiet of an old clinic on Curzon Road, one can still imagine the soft voice of a doctor saying to a worried patient:

“There is always hope if we act in time.”