Recongnizing India's Doctors: The Institutionalization of Medical Dependency, 1918–39

Abstract

In 1975 the British General Medical Council ceased to recognize Indian medical degrees as sufficient qualification for practice as a doctor in Britain. For several years previously the G.M.C. had refused to grant automatic recognition to the degrees of the new Indian medical colleges, and this had soured relationships between the G.M.C. and its Indian counterpart, the Medical Council of India. In retaliation for the British move, the M.C.I. ceased to recognize British medical degrees, and higher qualifications from Britain awarded after 1976 would not be accepted from candidates for promotion in medical colleges and other public sector jobs. This controversy was not as novel as recent commentators have supposed. Indian medical degrees had been refused recognition once before—in 1930—and the issue of G.M.C. recongnition had been at the heart of a dispute between the Indian medical colleges and the British medical authorities which had raged from the end of the First World War to the eve of the Second.