The Gentle Giant Who Gave India New Joints: The Story of Dr. Kandarp Tuljashankar Dholakia

On 12 August 1920, in the city of Rajkot in Gujarat, a boy named Kandarp Tuljashankar Dholakia was born into a modest family. His father, a schoolteacher, died when the child was only two years old. His mother, Sukhwa Ben, struggled to raise him. The boy was taken in by his maternal uncle, a doctor in the state medical service, and it was in that household that young Kandarp first absorbed the quiet discipline and sense of duty that would shape his life.

He studied at schools in Palanpur, Bhavnagar and Rajkot, then moved to Bombay for college at St. Xavier’s. Medicine called him strongly. He entered Seth G.S. Medical College and King Edward Memorial Hospital, graduating with his MBBS in 1943 and completing his Master of Surgery in general surgery in 1946. The war years had just ended; orthopaedics was still a young specialty in India. Determined to master it, Dholakia sailed to Britain. In 1948 he earned both the FRCS from Edinburgh and the M.Ch. in Orthopaedics from the University of Liverpool. He visited leading centres on the Continent and attended the First International Conference on Poliomyelitis in New York before returning home.

Back in India he began as a polio surgeon at the Children’s Orthopaedic Hospital of the Society for the Rehabilitation of Crippled Children. Soon he joined KEM Hospital as an honorary orthopaedic surgeon and, in 1952, was appointed Professor and Chief of Orthopaedic Surgery. Over the following decades he became the leading orthopaedic figure of his generation in western India. He worked at Breach Candy Hospital and later at P.D. Hinduja National Hospital, where his reputation drew patients and young surgeons from across the country.

Dholakia pioneered joint replacement surgery in India at a time when the procedure was still new even in the West. He also advanced scoliosis surgery and the correction of spinal deformities. Trauma, paediatric orthopaedics, fracture fixation—he mastered them all. Yet it was arthroplasty, especially of the knee and hip, that made his name. Surgeons from abroad came to Bombay to watch him operate. He trained a generation of Indian orthopaedic surgeons who would themselves become leaders. Colleagues called him a good mentor—strict in standards, generous in support.

He served as President of the Indian Orthopaedic Association and of the Association of Surgeons of India. From 1978 to 1981 he was President of the Société Internationale de Chirurgie Orthopédique et de Traumatologie (SICOT), bringing international recognition to Indian orthopaedics. In 1973 the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri. Later honours included an Honorary FRCS, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Indian Orthopaedic Association, and the Orthopaedic Surgeon of the Millennium Award from the Orthopaedic Association of SAARC countries.

Those who knew him remembered a towering physical presence matched by a commanding voice and an effective speaking style. Off duty he loved music, cricket, travel and photography. He married Dr. Saroj Kandarp Dholakia, herself an obstetrician and gynaecologist; the couple had no children, and their lives were devoted to their patients and to the profession.

On 17 June 2004, at the age of eighty-three, Dr. K.T. Dholakia passed away. He left behind more than a list of firsts. He left a specialty that had grown under his hands from a modest branch of surgery into a confident, modern discipline capable of restoring mobility to thousands. In the operating theatres of Mumbai and in the careers of the surgeons he trained, the influence of the “gentle giant” of Indian orthopaedics continues to be felt.