In the restless years after Partition, when families from Lahore carried both memories and hopes across the new border, a young boy named Jasbir Singh Bajaj arrived in Delhi with his parents and elder sister. Born on 26 September 1936 in Lahore to Sardar Makhan Singh Bajaj, a respected homeopath, and Jaswant Kaur, he grew up in a home where books and conversation about healing filled the evenings. His sister Ajeet Cour would later become a celebrated writer; Jasbir chose the path of medicine.

At Amritsar Medical College he shone brightly, standing first in medicine and winning the Dr. H.B.N. Swift Medal for pharmacology with a university record. After his MD he travelled to Britain as a Commonwealth Scholar, training in endocrinology and metabolic medicine at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London and at Newcastle upon Tyne. He returned with a mind sharpened by rigorous research and a quiet determination to understand the mysteries of diabetes and hormones in the Indian context.

In 1966 he joined the faculty of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. By 1979 he was Professor and Head of the Department of Medicine. Students still speak of his teaching rounds with a mixture of awe and affection. One winter morning a nervous intern presented a complex case of uncontrolled diabetes.

“Sir, the blood sugar remains high despite insulin. What should we increase?”

Bajaj looked at the patient, then at the young doctor. “First, sit with him. Ask about his meals, his work, the stress at home. Numbers alone do not tell the full story. The body and the life around it must both be understood.”

He spent nearly four decades studying the entero-hypothalamo-insular axis, insulin dynamics, and the metabolic effects of protein-calorie malnutrition. His work on malnutrition-related diabetes mellitus was accepted into the international classification of diabetes, and some colleagues began to speak of “Bajaj’s syndrome.” He published widely, wrote books on insulin and glucagon, and mentored generations of physicians who carried his insistence on careful clinical observation into their own careers.

The nation recognised him early. In 1981 he received the Padma Shri; the following year the Padma Bhushan. In 2009 he became one of the rare physicians to receive the Padma Vibhushan—the first diabetologist so honoured. Between these milestones he served as Honorary Physician to the President of India (1977–1982 and 1987–1992) and as Consultant Physician to the Prime Minister. From 1991 to 1998 he sat as Member (Health) of the Planning Commission with the rank of Minister of State, shaping national policies on health manpower, medical education, and primary care.

Internationally he rose to the presidency of the International Diabetes Federation from 1985 to 1988—the first scientist from outside Europe and North America to hold the post. The Karolinska Institute in Stockholm conferred upon him an honorary Doctorate in Medicine during its 175th anniversary celebrations. He was a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of both London and Edinburgh, and a founder fellow of the Indian College of Physicians.

Yet those who worked closest to him remembered not only the titles but the man who still walked the wards of AIIMS with the same attentive curiosity he had shown as a young researcher. Late one evening a colleague found him reviewing notes long after the last student had left.

“You never stop, do you, Bajaj?”

He smiled. “Diabetes does not stop. Neither should our effort to understand it—and to make life simpler for those who live with it.”

In his later years he continued to advise, to write, and to encourage younger researchers. On 8 January 2019, at the age of eighty-two, Jasbir Singh Bajaj passed away quietly in Gurugram. He was cremated with state honours.

His legacy lives in the clinics where careful history-taking still begins every consultation, in the policies that sought to bring diabetes care into primary health systems, and in the international recognition that an Indian physician could lead the global conversation on a disease that affects millions. In the long story of Indian medicine, Dr. Jasbir Singh Bajaj stands as both scientist and statesman—a man who moved from the laboratory and the bedside to the highest councils of health planning, always guided by the simple belief that knowledge must serve the patient first.