In the quiet corridors of India’s medical colleges and crowded government hospitals during the late 1970s, the white coats moved with the same quiet determination they always had. Yet something felt different in the air—an absence that no stethoscope could diagnose. The Padma awards, those lotus-emblazoned honours that had, for decades, recognised the nation’s most distinguished doctors, had fallen silent.

It began in the summer of 1977. After the general elections, Morarji Desai’s government decided that the civilian awards had become “worthless and politicised.” With a stroke of policy, the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri were suspended. For the next two years—1978 and 1979—no names appeared in the Republic Day lists. The Gazette of India carried no announcements. The ceremonies at Rashtrapati Bhavan did not take place. And for the doctors who had spent decades under dim operation-theatre lights, walking village paths with medicine kits, or bending over microscopes in research laboratories, the silence was profound.

Imagine a late evening in early 1978 inside the staff room of a large teaching hospital in Madras. Professor Balasubramanian Ramamurthi, the pioneering neurosurgeon who had only the previous year received the Padma Bhushan, sat with a younger colleague over cups of strong filter coffee.

“They have stopped the awards,” the younger man said, staring at the newspaper. “No Padma this year. Not even for medicine.”

Ramamurthi smiled faintly, the lines around his eyes deepening. “Awards come and go, my boy. The patient on the table does not care whether you wear a medal or not. He only cares that your hands are steady.” He paused, then added more softly, “Still… it is strange. For years the nation has said ‘thank you’ this way. Now the thank-you has been put away in a drawer.”

Across the country the same conversations were happening. In Hyderabad, Dr Perugu Siva Reddy, the ophthalmologist who had also been honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 1977 for bringing eye care to remote villages, told his students, “Do not wait for the lotus to bloom on your chest. Plant the seeds of service wherever you stand.” In Delhi, Dr Lucy Oommen, one of the few women surgeons of her generation and a Padma Shri recipient the same year, continued her long operating lists at the Lady Hardinge Medical College hospital as though nothing had changed. “The award was never the reason I picked up the scalpel,” she would say quietly when asked. “The reason was the woman on the table who needed to go home to her children.”

The years 1978 and 1979 passed without a single Padma award in any field—medicine included. No doctor’s name was announced. No citation was read out. The lists that had once included names such as Ajit Kumar Basu, Colathur Gopalan, Prem Prakash Sahni, Badri Narain Sinha, and so many others simply did not appear.

Then, in January 1980, the awards returned. Indira Gandhi’s government restored them on 25 January. Yet the first year of restoration was almost as quiet as the years of suspension. In 1980 only one Padma Bhushan was conferred—on the cricketer Sunil Gavaskar. The Padma Shri list was empty. Not a single doctor, not a single medical scientist, received the honour that year.

It was as if the nation, after two years of silence, was still clearing its throat.

The real return for medicine came in 1981. That year the lists began to fill again with the names of healers. Dr Prafulla Bhagubhai Desai of Mumbai received the Padma Bhushan for his work in oncology and surgery. Dr Jasbir Singh Bajaj was recognised with the Padma Shri for endocrinology. Dr Pramod Karan Sethi, the orthopaedic surgeon who had invented the famous Jaipur Foot, was also honoured with the Padma Shri. Dr Dhanwant Singh, Dr K. Varadachari Thiruvengadam, and Bakulaben Motibhai Patel joined them. The lotus had begun to bloom once more on the chests of India’s doctors.

But the story of those three years—1978, 1979 and 1980—remains a peculiar chapter in the history of Indian medicine. It was a time when the nation’s highest civilian recognition was deliberately withheld, not because the doctors had stopped serving, but because the machinery of honour itself had been paused.

One can almost hear the quiet conversations that must have taken place in hospital canteens and faculty lounges.

“Will they ever start again?” a young resident asks an older professor in 1979.

The professor looks out of the window at the patients waiting in the long corridor. “They will,” he answers. “But whether they do or not, we will still be here tomorrow morning. The wards will still need us. That is the only award that never gets suspended.”

And so it was. Through the silence of 1978, 1979 and 1980, India’s doctors continued their work—operating, researching, teaching, travelling to villages, fighting diseases that did not care about political decisions. When the awards finally returned, they found the same dedicated professionals still at their posts, still wearing the same white coats, still answering the same call.

In the long story of Indian medicine, those three years stand as a reminder that recognition may come and go, but the work of healing does not wait for any list. The true Padma—the lotus of service—continued to open every single day, whether or not the official medals were being given.