The princess who built India’s healthcare system

With a Cambridge-educated father and schooling in England’s Sherborne School for Girls and Oxford University, Kaur developed a reformist zeal and a global outlook—along with a deep compassion for the less privileged.

In 1950, Time magazine named her one of the world’s 100 most powerful women, noting: “In leaving her life of luxury, Kaur not only helped build lasting democratic institutions, she also inspired generations to fight for the marginalized." It was a rare international acknowledgment of an Indian woman at the time.

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Born on 2 February 1889, in Lucknow, Kaur was the youngest of ten children of Raja Harnam Singh, a progressive member of Punjab’s Kapurthala royal family. Her mother’s early death and her father’s close ties with nationalist leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale shaped her formative years.

In what now seems like an early reversal of the modern brain drain, she returned to India in her 20s from England—drawn to a nation in political ferment. A chance meeting with Mahatma Gandhi in Kapurthala in 1919 changed everything. Inspired by his vision, she became one of his closest associates, and served as his secretary for over a decade.

By the 1930s, Kaur had thrown herself into India’s freedom struggle and the fight for women’s rights. She joined the All India Women’s Conference in 1930, serving as its president from 1938 to 1944. She championed education, health, and legal reforms for women, including voting rights and the right to divorce. Kaur participated in landmark movements like the Dandi Salt March (1930) and Quit India (1942), enduring arrest and prison time.

Her efforts extended far beyond politics. She tackled India’s public health crises head-on, founding the Tuberculosis Association of India in 1939. Her empathy was radical for its time. Touring leprosy colonies in the 1940s, she would embrace patients—then considered untouchable—and even share tea from the same cup. When a horrified official tried to stop her, she reportedly said, “If I can’t touch them, how can I heal them?"

All of this shaped her for a pivotal role after independence, when she became India’s first health minister—one of only two women in Jawaharlal Nehru’s inaugural cabinet. In 1951, India had just 50,000 doctors for a population of 350 million and a health budget gutted by colonial neglect. But Kaur took to the task like an evangelist.

Zeroing in on the crucial healthcare needs of the country, Kaur launched the Central Leprosy Training and Research Institute, the Indian Council for Child Welfare and expanded vaccination programmes, slashing smallpox and malaria rates. Her BCG (Bacillus Calmette–Guérin) vaccination drive against tuberculosis reached millions by the mid-1950s.

But her grandest vision was the creation of an Indian equivalent of Johns Hopkins. Securing funding from New Zealand, Australia, and the US, she established the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in 1952. By 1960, AIIMS was training 120 doctors and treating 50,000 patients a year. That it remains India’s premier medical institution today is testament to her foresight.

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Under her leadership, the number of primary health centres tripled from 725 in 1951 to over 2,000 by 1957, with a strong emphasis on rural access. She combined hands-on fieldwork with savvy global networking, regularly touring remote clinics while using her international ties to bolster India’s medical resources.

Eloquent, principled, and fearless, Kaur was not afraid to challenge the most powerful—Nehru included. She lived with monastic simplicity, donating her Kapurthala estate to the public and driving a battered Fiat instead of using government transport. In one memorable episode from 1952, when her car got stuck in a flood-ravaged village, she hiked up her sari and waded knee-deep through water to reach a health centre.

She stepped down from the cabinet in 1957 due to ill health but remained active, co-founding the Indian Cancer Society and serving as a Rajya Sabha MP until her death on 6 February 1964, at the age of 75.

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Her legacy—AIIMS, a national rural health network, and pioneering work in women’s advocacy—continues to shape India today. More than any single policy, Amrit Kaur’s enduring contribution was her determination to transform a colonial-era health system into one built for an independent, equitable India.