The forgotten student resistance at King Edward Medical College in undivided India

The immediate trigger for the strike was a series of condescending and derogatory remarks targeting Indian medical scholars published in British newspapers

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, King Edward Medical College (KEMC) in Lahore stood as one of the premier institutions of medical education in undivided India. Originating as the Lahore Medical School in 1860, the institution grew rapidly to serve the complex health infrastructure of the vast Punjab province. By the time it was formally expanded and renamed as King Edward Medical College in 1911, it had become a flagship imperial campus, drawing top academic talents from across the Indian subcontinent. Yet beneath its impressive red-brick facade, sprawling quadrangles, and bustling clinical halls, KEMC was constructed on a rigid, institutionalised colonial hierarchy.

"Basically, higher education was a racialised enterprise in colonial India. The core of the tension was professional parity. Indian scholars could move up to the middle level, but could not reach elite positions given their exceptional acumen. Indian professors and residents could not be promoted to become full professors," Dr. Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, a public health historian of South Asia and Assistant Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School at Columbia University, told The Hindu.

Indian medical scholars were trained under European faculty within a two-tiered colonial framework. Under British Raj medical policy, Indian graduates were predominantly recruited into subordinate Assistant Surgeon cadres with lower pay scales and stipends, while executive leadership within the Indian Medical Service (IMS) and senior professorships remained heavily restricted to European officers.

This racial and professional divide was particularly visible during practical training across the street at Mayo Hospital -- established in 1871 near Lahore's historic Anarkali Bazaar and Nila Gumbad as the primary clinical teaching facility for KEMC. Indian candidates faced systemic barriers in obtaining senior clinical postings and surgical privileges at Mayo Hospital, while European scholars were groomed for executive posts in the IMS, regardless of relative academic distinctions or clinical acumen.

This institutional friction reached a critical breaking point in February 1913. The immediate trigger was a series of condescending and derogatory remarks targeting Indian medical scholars published in British newspapers and circulated among administrative circles.

When senior Indian students formally requested that the college administration and Principal Lt. Col. D.W. Sutherland address these slights and defend the professional dignity of his scholars, their concerns were summarily dismissed. The administration's refusal to acknowledge student dignity ignited an unprecedented wave of collective action. On February 12, 1913, students organised undivided India's first major medical college walkout.

Mobilising within the campus dormitories, the students formed solidarity networks, refusing to attend morning lectures or report for daily ward rounds at Mayo Hospital. The 16-day strike paralysed the hospital's daily operations and shocked the provincial educational bureaucracy.

Swift use of force

Unused to organised pushback from young scholars, the colonial state retaliated with swift administrative force. Four student leaders were detained for a year, six scholars had their academic scholarships forfeited, and 90 military-class student scholars were completely rusticated. Although the provincial government appointed a formal Enquiry Committee to investigate the breakdown of discipline, the proceedings were strictly restricted within administrative channels to prevent the strike from inspiring similar actions in other provincial colleges.

Seven years later, in 1920, a second landmark strike broke out at KEMC. As Dr. Sivaramakrishnan notes, these actions did not happen in a vacuum: "In 1920, the Lahore student protests happened in the context of the Rowlatt Acts and Gandhi having started the civil disobedience movement. The grievances of the students to be treated with racial and professional parity echoed and aligned with the broader unrest in the city and the province of Punjab."

Following the structural reorganisation of the college, the separation of the lower medical school, and the broader post-World War I political awakening across undivided Punjab, medical scholars re-organised against continuing institutional inequities. Strikers protested against racial segregation in hospital wards, unequal access to surgical equipment, and arbitrary disciplinary curfews enforced by Principal Sutherland.

Tactics utilised

The 1920 mobilisation demonstrated an evolved tactical sophistication: students formed organised strike committees, held late-night assemblies in student hostels, drafted detailed charters of demands, and enforced a disciplined boycott of clinical duties at Mayo Hospital. They argued that medical ethics required not just obedience to authority, but the defense of fairness and equal professional standing.

This campus-level friction operated alongside a wider framework of state-mandated academic surveillance across Lahore. As documented in the Disorders Inquiry Committee Report (1919-1920), the colonial administration routinely relied on strict martial regulations and administrative opacity to keep educational institutions under tight control.

In Lahore, college campuses were viewed by district authorities as primary centers of youth political consciousness. To neutralise student activism and prevent scholars from joining urban processions or political meetings, military commanders implemented draconian daily disciplinary regimens.

At several major higher education institutions across Lahore, students were subjected to compulsory roll calls held up to four times a day. Scholars were forced to march long distances in intense heat to report to military officers, ensuring their time was entirely accounted for and tethered to institutional supervision.

Furthermore, the administration restricted student mobility across the city, issuing specialised travel permits, banning public gatherings of more than four persons, and monitoring the distribution of student-printed handbills and political posters.

College authorities were explicitly ordered by military officers to enforce internal punishments -- including fines, hostel expulsions, and degree withholdings -- against scholars suspected of sympathizing with broader civil rights movements. In addition, the administration restricted student mobility across the city, issuing specialised travel permits, banning public gatherings of more than four persons, and monitoring the distribution of student-printed handbills and political posters.

The ripples of these early regional agitations carried deep historical momentum into the following decades. As Dr. Sivaramakrishnan notes, the momentum from these early protests in undivided Punjab gained widespread significance, eventually culminating in the 1920s and 1930s with nationalist efforts to build independent institutions -- such as the National Medical College (Topiwala) in Bombay -- where Indian founders actively sought to compel the British establishment to formally recognize autonomous Indian medical degrees.

Reflecting on the historical arc of these movements, Dr. Sivaramakrishnan highlights that early medical student activism was fundamentally about social mobility and systemic parity -- themes that mirror ongoing structural struggles in medical education today. While post-independence decades saw concerted efforts by doctors in the 1940s and 1950s to construct public hospital networks, contemporary medical education remains deeply fragmented.

Today, stark disparities persist: while privileged students in metropolitan hubs train in premier institutes like AIIMS or Maulana Azad Medical College, students from smaller towns frequently find themselves navigating mediocre colleges with inadequate infrastructure, proving that the struggle for true institutional equity and upward professional mobility remains as relevant as ever.

The early 20th-century student strikes at King Edward Medical College stand as crucial milestones in the history of Indian medical education and student activism. From the 16-day walkout of 1913 to the structured demands of 1920, the medical scholars of KEMC demonstrated that campus-level resistance against administrative opacity was an essential strand of the country's broader intellectual awakening. By challenging racial hierarchies at Mayo Hospital and asserting their right to equal professional treatment, these young doctors proved that the pursuit of healing and the demand for justice were inextricably linked.

Sources:

David Arnold, Colonising the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India, University of California Press, pp. 240-245

Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine 1859-1914, Cambridge University Press, pp. 22-28

King Edward Medical University Historical Archives

King Edward Medical University Historical Chronicles / Contemporary Press Accounts, February 12-28, 1913

Punjab Government Gazette, Part V, 1913

Hindustan Times Historical Archives, "A brief history of student protests in India"

The Hunter Committee Report

Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine 1859-1914, Cambridge University Press, pp. 22-28