Seeing is believing

Ophthalmologist Ramniklal Doshi gives India the gift of sight.

Matt Kettmann | June 2008 issue

A day’s drive north from the urban chaos of Mumbai, the plains of India’s Gujarat state are beautifully bucolic, with golden wheat fields alongside meadows of bright orange marigolds. But if it weren’t for the work of 92-year-old ophthalmologist Ramniklal Doshi, thousands of Gujaratis wouldn’t be able to see any of it.

His non-profit Gujarat Blind Relief and Health Association has treated more than 600,000 patients and performed more than 150,000 eye operations since 1949. That’s the year Doshi started bringing mobile eye clinics to rural villages. “We had no money. We had no medicine,” remembers Doshi, “but we were doctors.” He and his colleagues paired treatment with nutritious meals and health education. Donations followed, and although they charged minimal fees for the surgeries, Doshi explains, “We didn’t say ‘no’ to anyone,” a philosophy still employed.

Doshi built the Ravi Shankar Maharaj Eye Hospital in the 1960s. These days, on an annual budget of $125,000, a rotating team of volunteer doctors cares for the flow of patients. Treatment is offered for maladies unrelated to eyesight, and health educators are sent to communities.

The hospital is located in the tiny, mango-tree-filled village of Chikhodra, where Doshi lives with his wife, who also still volunteers at age 85 by distributing bags of grain to hungry villagers. A devout member of the Jain religion, Doshi, who stopped performing surgeries in 1985, owns just two pairs of white linen kurtas and walks barefoot with a wooden cane. As one Jain monk recently visiting the hospital explained, “Dr. Doshi has worked all his life for humanity.” And without him, there’d be a lot less beauty in Gujarat.—Matt Kettman

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