Poor patient denied treatment in GBP hospital for not addressing the doctor as ‘Sir’
By Our Correspondent
Agartala, August 5, 2026
The British colonialists left India eight decades ago but the legacy they left behind still burns bright in the form of a cultural hang-over. Even the prime minister Narendra Modi’s repeated exhortations that as part of building the country into ‘Vikshit Bharat’ by the year 2047 Indians should rise above slavish mentality and cultural hang-over of the colonial era do not seem to have had any significant effect. The Indians still bask in the glory of the cultural hang-over of the colonial era-a project initiated by the British bureaucrat Thomas Babyngton Macauly in his notes on Indian education way back in 1835 . Macaulay wanted Indians to be native only in blood and English in education , taste , cultural preferences and day-to-day behavior.
The success of the Macaulay project is borne out daily by the attitude and behavior of the social elite as we still have tradition of feeling glorified if addressed as ‘Sir’ in stead of the more endearing ‘Dada’ (elder brother). A poor but serious patient from Dharma Nagar learned this to his cost recently in the emergency section of GBP hospital.
According to a report in a local media outlet, Abdul Hossain (35), a poor man from Kadamtala area in Dharma Nagar subdivision, had reached Agartala by an arduous journey to consult doctor in GBP hospital for his swollen gum within his mouth, pain and fever. Despite being in agony of pain Abdul managed to enter the emergency section of GBP hospital and addressed the doctor in charge there as ‘Dada’ in stead of as ‘Sir’ before telling his problems. But Abdul realized the cardinal mistake he had made when the colour on the face of the doctor changed and he refused to see the patient. As a befuddled Abdul Hossain stood still in front of the doctor a few security men who had seen Abdul’s predicament came forward and told him to seek forgiveness from the doctor by falling at his feet. What Abdul did after listening to the sage counsel is not known ; he must have done something to assuage the ‘Saheb’ doctor’s ego . But the news became viral and hit a headline in the media.
The people who came to know of this have reacted differently, saying Abdul should have addressed the doctor as ‘Sir’ while others opined that the doctor could have made his displeasure known in a different way in stead of refusing to treat him. However, what stands out from the caustically hilarious episode is that Indians are far away from rising above colonial hang-over and servility of foreign , particularly British culture.
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