Abstract
Study the past if you would define the future
—Confucius
Dr M. N. Passey
Dr Mohinder Nath Passey was born on 1 January 1934 in Lahore, the capital of the Punjab state in undivided India (Figure 1). His father Mr Jagan Nath Passey worked in the Railways and his mother Mrs Sarla Sondhi was a homemaker. The family migrated to Gwalior after the partition. Dr Passey started his medical career with a Licentiate of State Medical Faculty from Arya Medical School in Ludhiana, the forerunner of Dayanand Medical College. He went on to do his MBBS from Gajra Raja Medical College, Gwalior, the first medical college established in Madhya Pradesh. Dr Passey subsequently completed his MD in Medicine from the same institution under the renowned clinician Prof P. N. Laha. His dissertation on “A study of the circulation time in health and disease” submitted to Vikram University was an important work in those times.
Dr M. N. Passey (Kind Courtesy Dr Rajiv Passey).
Dr Passey moved to Delhi in 1961 and worked at Irwin Hospital (now known as Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital) where he met his wife and soul mate Mariamma Abraham who hailed from Kerala. They married in 1964 and she changed her name to Pushpa Lata after her marriage. It was in 1964 that Dr M. N. Passey moved to Hindu Rao Hospital. Hindu Rao Hospital was the former residence of Raja Hindu Rao, a Maratha nobleman and the brother-in-law of Maharaja Daulat Rao Scindia of Gwalior. It started as a small 16-bed nursing home in 1911. Post-independence the Delhi Government converted this into a general hospital in 1951 with 125 beds. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi took over the hospital in 1958 and the Ministry of Health, Government of India, designated this hospital as a referral hospital in 1963. Dr Passey’s shift to the upcoming Hindu Rao Hospital in 1964 proved to be a watershed moment in his career. It was to become his karma-bhoomi.
Dr Passey was a dedicated clinician starting his OPD at 9:00 a.m. and finishing well past 4:00 p.m. Lunch was forsaken for the sake of the patient. No one was ever refused a consult and patients accosting him even when he walked to his car was the norm rather than the exception. He was unassuming to a fault and anyone could approach him anytime. He existed for the patients, most of whom came from less privileged sections of the society. His clinical acumen and smiling countenance brought him fame. Members of the Delhi Metropolitan Council (the administrative authority of Delhi in those days), politicians, bureaucrats and the ordinary public thronged to him for medical advice. No one, consequential or inconsequential, was turned away. Dr M. N. Passey was an honorary physician to the President of India—Giani Zail Singh. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of Padma Shri in 1991 (Figure 2). He epitomised the maxim by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. ‘Don’t work for recognition, but do work worthy of recognition’.
Padma Shri Award and Investiture Ceremony (Kind Courtesy Rajiv Passey).
Dr Passey came to be identified as the face of Hindu Rao Hospital. Hindu Rao Hospital, for the masses, meant Dr M. N. Passey. Though Dr Passey superannuated in 1991, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi refused to let him go. The unpretentious man he was—he sought no favours, no extensions. The administrators, on popular public demand, wanted him to stay and extended his contract multiple times till 1996.
Dr Passey was deeply interested in Rheumatology and remained an active member of the Indian Rheumatology Association (IRA) throughout his active professional career. He was one of the founder members and guiding forces behind the Delhi Branch of the IRA (the forerunner of the Delhi Rheumatology Association [DRA]). In 1997, he was unanimously elected the 3rd President of DRA. Rheumatology in Delhi, and indeed, India was in its infancy in those days. The awareness among physicians and the lay public was minimal. Industry support was conspicuous by its absence. The Annual Update of the Delhi Rheumatology Association was the flagship regional meeting in those times. Dr Passey helmed those meetings and contributed enormously to the growth of DRA. He encouraged us to bid for the Annual Conference of IRACON in 2003 which was held in Delhi with Dr S. J. Gupta as the Chair and the author as the organising secretary. Unfortunately, Dr Passey passed away on 30 May 2002. His untimely death due to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis left a void in the medical community at large, and DRA in particular. IRACON 2003 went on to become a huge success. A grateful DRA instituted the eponymic award to celebrate and perpetuate his enormous contribution.
Dr Passey carried out all the spade work for the medical college in the Hindu Rao Hospital. However, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) Medical College in Hindu Rao Hospital came into existence only in 2013 several years after his death. The auditorium in NDMC Medical College is named after him. The road connecting Hans Raj College to Kirori Mal College in Delhi, known as the Bungalow Road, was renamed the Dr M. N. Passey Marg by the Standing Committee of MCD in 2006.
The Award
Recognition matters and it matters hugely. As Denis Waitley said, ‘Recognition is the fuel that drives the fire of excellence’. All organisations and professional societies have instituted awards and orations to recognise outstanding contributions to the field or to encourage active participation in the society. The IRA started with one oration whose name changed over the years as Boots oration, Knoll oration, IRA Aventis oration to its present avatar ‘IRA oration’ which recognises the contribution to the field of Rheumatology in India. It was meant to honour senior members of the IRA for their academic/scholarly/research achievements and/or service to their patients, students and profession. This was followed by the Zydus oration, later renamed the ‘IRA Young Rheumatologist oration’ to recognise the scientific and research work of young rheumatologists. This was complemented by the Kolkon Oration, now renamed the ‘Kolkon Oration for Community Service’ to recognise individuals not working in academia but contributing significantly to Rheumatology through organisation strengthening, increasing public awareness, fundraising etc. The IRA leadership had for long perceived the need to institute an award for overarching, panoptic contribution to the field of Rheumatology in India. This would recognise and honour individuals for their lifetime of contribution in multiple areas such as clinical medicine, patient care and advocacy, research, education and mentorship, capacity building or administration. The actuation took time.
The Delhi Rheumatology Association, after the successful annual meeting IRACON 2003, which was conceived under the patronage of Dr Mrs S. Sachdev and Dr M. N. Passey with Dr S. J. Gupta as the Chair and Dr Rohini Handa as the organising secretary, proposed Dr M. N. Passey award for Distinguished Services and provided the necessary corpus to operationalise this. The then IRA leadership headed by Dr U. R. K. Rao unanimously accepted the proposal and this award, which is the highest honour that can be bestowed by the IRA, was instituted in 2004.
To begin with, the Award carried a prize money of ₹15,000 in addition to a certificate and medal. Subsequently, the monetary component was withdrawn. Also, the Dr M. N. Passey Award predated the IRA Master Award that was the brainchild of the late Prof. Debashish Danda and was instituted in 2019 with Drs V Krishnamurthy and Arvind Chopra as the first awardees. The award hierarchy of the IRA continues to recognise Dr M. N. Passey Award as the highest accolade of the IRA. IRA Masters can be nominated for the Dr M. N. Passey Award but not vice versa.
The Awardees
The first award was bestowed jointly on Dr Mrs S. Sachdev and Dr K. M. Mahendranath in 2004. The other recipients are listed in Table 1.
Dr M. N. Passey Awardees (city in parenthesis).
Dr Passey was a true embodiment of compassion and dedication whose only ornament was his humility. He touched countless lives and in honouring him we honour our profession. The Dr M. N. Passey Award is as much a celebration of the coruscating legacy of Dr Passey of ‘putting the patient first’ as it is an exhortation to all rheumatologists to place ‘service before self’, for patient centricity is the defining feature of our specialty—Rheumatology! The awardees, in their own ways, have left indelible imprints on the field of Rheumatology in India and continue to serve as torchbearers of Dr Passey’s unmatched legacy.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I thank Dr Rajiv Passey son of Dr M. N. Passey for sharing a wealth of information and providing photographs of the late Dr M. N. Passey. I acknowledge the help provided by Dr V. R. Joshi, Binoy Paul, Dr K. M. Mahendranath, Dr V. Krishnamurthy, Dr Sukumar Mukherjee, Dr S. J. Gupta and Dr A. N. Malaviya.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.