Dr B.C Roy has had many things to distinguish him- from being West Bengal\u2019s Chief Minister to one of Gandhi\u2019s physicians. But none of these things prevented him from what he termed as \u2018an example of the American caste system.\u2019<\/p>\n
In July 1947, the doctor was visiting the USA. When he, along with five others went to a restaurant in Decatur, Illinois, the waitress, frollowing the restaurant operator\u2019s instruction told them that she wouldn\u2019t be able to serve them, though she would only be glad to prepare food to take out. The men, upon hearing this got up and left the restaurant.<\/p>\n
The incident resonates well in the Trump era when the discrimination is fast becoming a fixture in American mainstream politics.<\/p>\n
The incident takes on an even more curious light in the light of Roy\u2019s visit to the US in 1961. In that year, the doctor called on John F Kennedy, the then US President since \u201che wished to talk with the President about his ailing back.\u201d Kennedy, for his part, said that he hoped he would be as spry as Dr.Roy when he was his age. At the time, Roy was 79 while Kennedy was just 44.<\/p>\n
Strange to think that the same person could experience such diverse levels of treatment in the same country.<\/p>\n
Discrimination, notwithstanding a rich global exposure<\/strong><\/p>\n Not even the rich international exposure that the doctor amassed prevented him from being discriminated against in the US.<\/p>\n Though he graduated with an MD from the Calcutta University, he went to England where he cleared the exams of both the Member of the Royal College of Physicians(MRCP) and Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons(FRCS). In fact, Roy trained at one of the most prestigious British institutes- the St. Bartholomew\u2019s Hospital in London. The interesting tidbit is that the dean at the hospital was initially reluctant to admit Roy. Roy had to keep knocking on the dean\u2019s door for about a month and a half, meeting the man almost 30 times before he would be given permission to train in the hallowed institution. He started training at the hospital in 1909.<\/p>\n Being treated not in the best way at the American restaurant aside, Roy was well-regarded back home, so much so that when Nehru was taken ill in April 1962 and the Prime Minsiter wouldn\u2019t heed the advice of the panel of doctors, Roy intervened, making an American newspaper quote one of the doctors as saying, \u201cRoy is tall enough to ask Nehru to obey medical orders.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the positions he held, he was both the CM and the mayor of Calcutta- succeeding Subhas Chandra Bose in 1931. He also held at different times the vice-chancellorship of Calcutta University(1942-1944), the presidency of the Medical Council of India(1939) and the governorship of the United Provinces(the present UP).<\/p>\n The esteemed position in which the medical world held the doctor came through in the obituary that the British Medical Journal ran. The obit termed him the first medical consultant in the Indian subcontinent and suggested that at the height of his profession, he may even have had the world\u2019s biggest consulting practice. The news of his visit to a city of a railway station, said the obit, brought forth hordes of would-be patients.<\/p>\n It\u2019s mighty shameful when a person is discriminated against on the color of his skin or his nationality. His tall stature aside- both literally and figuratively, his color and his nationality were also things that the doctor carried proudly.<\/p>\n But some restaurants are just plain bad!<\/p>\n Image credits: Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dr B.C Roy has had many things to distinguish him- from being West Bengal\u2019s Chief Minister to one of Gandhi\u2019s physicians. But none of these things prevented him from what he termed as \u2018an example of the American caste system.\u2019 In July 1947, the doctor was visiting the USA. When he, along with five others […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[275,476,24],"class_list":["post-4057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-america","tag-b-c-roy","tag-doctor"],"yoast_head":"\n