Tulsi Das was born on 1 October 1901. He began his medical career in 1927 in the Provincial Civil Medical Service of Punjab. In 1939 he obtained the FRCS from Edinburgh and the DOMS from London, specialising in ophthalmology while remaining equally skilled in otorhinolaryngology.

He joined the Medical School at Amritsar as a lecturer in ophthalmology. When the school was raised to a full medical college in 1943, he became its first Professor and Head of the combined Department of Ophthalmology and Otorhinolaryngology. After formal retirement he served as Director of the Institute of Ophthalmology at Aligarh Muslim University. Later he was appointed Director of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh and was given the responsibility of helping to establish and shape the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) there.

He held high office in the profession: President of the All India Ophthalmological Society and of the Association of Otolaryngologists of India, Founder Fellow of the Indian Academy of Medical Sciences, Vice-President of the Medical Council of India, and a member of the Governing Body of the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Colleagues remembered a clinician of unusual skill and perfect bedside manners. One younger ophthalmologist, watching him operate with quiet precision, later recalled Das saying:

“The eye is a small organ, but it holds a whole world. Treat it with the same care you would give to the life it lights.”

In 1967 the President of India conferred on him the Padma Bhushan in recognition of his services to ophthalmology and to the Postgraduate Institute at Chandigarh.

Dr. Tulsi Das is remembered as the doyen of Indian ophthalmology — a surgeon who raised the prestige of his specialty, trained successive generations, and left a lasting institutional legacy.