India and China rightfully celebrate the legacy of Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis, an Indian physician who selflessly served as a volunteer in mobile clinics to treat wounded Chinese soldiers for five years until his death at the age of 32 in 1942. Kotnis was part of the five-member Indian Medical Mission sent by the Indian National Congress, after General Zhu De made a personal request to Jawaharlal Nehru.

The person leading this humanitarian mission was Dr. Madan Mohan Lal Atal, who was attracted to left-wing ideology from his days as a medical student in Edinburgh, Scotland. An anti-colonialist and staunch believer in the right of self-determination of peoples, Atal got involved in causes that were well beyond the borders of British India.

In 1937 he joined the Spanish Medical Aid Committee, a British organisation that supported the Republicans in the war against the nationalist General Franco regime.

“The Red Cross work is more absorbing when it is in connection with a struggle,” Atal was quoted as saying in the Amrita Bazar Patrika newspaper. “It also lends encouragement to feel that it is for a people who one considers are fighting and fighting under severe hardships for the idea held of freedom.”

A year later when the Indian National Congress decided to send a medical mission to China, which was then fighting off a brutal invasion by Imperial Japan. Atal was asked to return to India from Spain and lead the mission. While returning to Bombay, he specifically brought medical equipment and supplies for China.

For the mission, India sent five doctors, equipment and medicines. An ambulance and truck were also ordered from the US for the mission.

The group went to China by ship and arrived in Hong Kong before going to Guangzhou and travelling overland. The Chinese National Red Cross Society facilitated their movement in the war-ravaged country.

Once they reached Hankow (now a part of Wuhan), they were incorporated into the Curative Unit No. 15 of the Chinese Red Cross.

Atal who was 50 years-old at that time was well........

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