Sushila Nayyar

In 1944 she set up a small dispensary at Sevagram, but this soon grew so large it disturbed the peace of the ashram, and she shifted it to a guesthouse donated by the Birlas, in Wardha.

This time was, however, highly fraught; several attempts were made on Gandhi's life, including Nathuram Godse, the man who ultimately killed him, and Sushila Nayyar testified on several occasions to the attacks.

In 1948 she appeared before the Kapur Commission regarding the incident in Panchgani in 1944 when Nathuram Godse allegedly tried to attack Gandhi with a dagger.

She was elected to Lok Sabha from Jhansi in 1977 when her new party was voted to power that created history by overthrowing Indira Gandhi's government.

She had set up the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences in 1969, and remained committed to confine her energies to developing and extending it.

She felt strongly about the need for prohibition and linked this to the domestic concerns of poor women whose lives were often blighted by alcoholism in their husbands.

She was one of the circle of young women who followed Gandhi and were deeply impressed by his charisma and magnetism, such that he became the central focus of their lives.

In an age when it was extremely difficult for single young women to have careers, she managed by sheer grit and dedication to carve out a life for herself without concessions to her gender or status.

She also believed like Gandhi that there was no such thing as a dirty job, and that medicine required hands-on involvement with patients and their ailments, regardless of feminine delicacy or upper caste squeamishness.