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Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Had a Hindutva organ ruled India after Independence and closed down CMC, Kattaiah would have died young; he broke superstition to let modern medicine save his life

Kancha Kattaiah was born in 1948 in a small forest zone village, Papaiah Pet, Chenna Rao Pet Mandal, Telangana. After school education up to 11tt grade in a small town nearby, he dropped out and got married. He then entered into his family’s double occupational job, shepherding and agriculture.

In 1976, he developed a major heart disease.

According to doctors in Hyderabad, who examined him as an outpatient, he would not survive, as two valves in his heart were dysfunctional.

To CMC Vellore

It was found out that only in the Christian Medical College Hospital (CMC) Vellore, Tamil Nadu, the valve replacement could be done, if at all possible. Even in the then united Andhra Pradesh capital Hyderabad, there was no fully trained cardiologist at that time. There was no medical technology like an echogram as well.

Kattaiah was a courageous man. He pulled together his financial resources and went to Vellore CMC. With the help of his younger brother – this writer, whom he had educated up to a masters in Hyderabad’s Osmania University – he applied for financial assistance for medical purposes from the Nizam Trust.

The Trust, at that time, was allotting grants for chronic heart patients. Kattaiah got Rs 8,000. That was his first financial lifeline.

It was diagnosed at CMC that his mitral valve in the heart needed to be replaced, and it could be done. His admission number in that life-changing hospital, 912829, is archaic. For the entire operation, his family spent Rs 50,000, mostly borrowed.

With that medical opinion, he picked up courage and hope of life that was already declared to end soon. He was operated on on December 17, 1979. He lived for another 46 years and passed away earlier this month in his Hyderabad apartment, aged about 77.

Source of science

The question is: why was such a pioneering valve replacement done in a Christian missionary hospital, but not in a Hindutva missionary hospital?

The claims of the present ruling RSS/BJP forces are that Hinduism, from ancient to now, is the source of all science, and we do not have to learn anything from the West.

Of course, the Western scientific growth happened by challenging the Christian dogma. But the medieval ancestors of the Hindu dogma were never challenged by the Brahmin intellectuals, who were custodians of all knowledge.

The Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis, who constitute the majority of people whom they claim Hindu now, were not allowed to study the Hindu dogmas and challenge them to create a scientific base. In fact, they were not allowed to learn the Hindu religious language, Sanskrit. At no stage were Galileo and Copernicus allowed to emerge in the Hindu history.

Weakness of past

The modern organisers of the Hindutva forces do not accept the weakness of their past. They want to project weakness as strength; their superstition as science.

This is where Indian universities and research institutions are in danger, particularly the medical institutions. They are forcing Indian youth to read Sanskrit books that promote superstition as religion and science.

No doubt, there is a subtle relationship between religion and science. The historical spiritual discourse around the conflict between science and religion is framed in terms of Evolutionism Vs Creationism. The idea of God is based on human speculation.

But ideas like Karma in Hinduism and Original Sin in Christianity are superstitious but religious. Superstition cannot negotiate with science. Medicine is a science. The hospital is its institutional base.

Islam that arrived in India in the medieval times has created its own superstitious myths – that Allah cures all diseases. Indian Islam has not created a hospital of CMC standards.

Kattaiah’s anti-superstition life

Kattaiah realised well before he became a heart patient that superstition does not allow villagers to prosper. It adds only to their financial distress. He did not encourage superstitious practices in his house after his mother and father died, and he took over the responsibility of the family.

The village cultural atmosphere in those days was very superstitious. People would spend a lot of money around mantrics and villages, regional temples and priests.

Kattaiah overcame such superstitious beliefs by the end of his school education.

Normally, such a health condition generates fear and makes a person run to anything that constructs a myth around life. Kattaiah while going to Vellore had to halt at Tirupathi. When the attendant brother asked him whether he would go for a darshan of the deity, he said, “If the surgeon who operates on me is good I will survive and if the physician is good and recommends proper medicines I will live long, but not with the darshan of divine images.”

He proved himself so right by living for 45 years and six months with a single valve.

Nehruvian science Vs RSS anti-science

India is a country of superstitions. Even educated men and women, with the campaign of organisations like the RSS, Hindu Mahasabha and Bajrang Dal, are spreading superstitions against the Nehruvian scientific spirit, which encouraged Christian missionary hospitals and schools.

The RSS did not establish a single hospital matching CMC in Nagpur or elsewhere.

While the CMC was established by a Christian missionary organisation, Hindutva organisations have organised Kumbh Melas, temple visits, Kasi yatras, Durga poojas, and so on, but never focus on modern medicine.

In fact, modern medicine was seen as British colonial medicine and against the ancient indigenous Ayurveda. But Ayurveda did not advance like what they abusively call

did not advance like what they abusively call ‘English medicine. They never differentiated between science and colonialism.

Even in Telangana, people were forced to believe that dipping in the Ganga (often it just means some water body nearby) would cure them of diseases. They did not distinguish between religion and superstition.

The Star Edward steel valve

To go back to Kattaiah, he wanted to live by all means. He got operated on in CMC and the valve was replaced at a cost of Rs 50,000, raised through loans. It was a huge amount way back in 1979.

Dr Stanley John operated on him and placed a Star Edward steel valve just brought into the medical market in America. Dr George Cherian was his physician. That was the first ever manmade valve in the world. It worked for over four decades before failing earlier this month, causing his death.

Nehruvian nationalism allowed Christian hospitals akin to CMC and advanced institutions akin to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.

The CMC was established as a nursing and delivery clinic by an American missionary woman, Dr Ida Sophia Scudder. It has grown into a major world-class medical institution in India. It developed with the help of foreign mission funding and also money collected from patients over time. The government in Delhi supported its growth by allowing fund flow.

Opposite entities

Imagine the RSS/BJP being the first ruling force in India. They may have closed down CMC as a ‘conversionist’ and ‘beef feeding’ hospital. Beef was sold in the CMC canteen at a subsidised price both for attendees and patients for protein supply. Doctors recommended beef for patients like Kattaiah. There was no force-feeding of any food item.

Science and superstitions are opposite entities and human practices. The RSS spreads superstition, which does not have any theoretical capacity to negotiate with both science and religion. This is where anti-superstition laws are needed in India. Many heart and other disease patients died depending on superstitious practices, even after spending huge amounts.

Constant feeding of superstition into people’s minds was used as a tool to keep them as slaves of casteism and Brahminism.

Caste construct

One of the main institutions that the ancestors of the RSS ideologues constructed was caste. The caste system

has built superstitious beliefs into the mind of most Indians now. Caste is not a religious institution. It is a superstition in itself.

Had an RSS (though it calls itself a social organisation) kind of political force come to power after Independence and closed down

CMC, Kattaiah would have died 46 years ago. He set a record in the history of artificial valve survivors in India, maybe in the world.

We now know that medical science in the world has advanced far more, and daily discoveries are happening. But India remains backward in that field, and RSS/BJP anti-science and anti-English language is likely to keep us more backward. There is no discourse around the scientific spirit in India now.

(The late Kancha Kattaiah was the brother of the writer.)

About the Author

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Kancha llaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book is The Clash of Cultures – Hindutva – Mullah Conflicting Ethics.

https://thefederal.com/category/opinion/rss-science-cmc-kancha-kattaiah-christian-missionary-194284

by Bheenaveni Ram Shepherd

In a record-setting case, an Indian patient lived 46 years after receiving a first-generation Edwards-Starr heart valve at CMCH in Vellore in 1979. His survival defied medical expectations — a powerful testament to how science, institutional motivation, and family care can together extend human longevity.

In a world still reckoning with the aftermath of COVID-19, where health consciousness, structural inequality, and the social determinants of wellbeing dominate public discourse, it has never been increasingly important to understand how scientific belief and social care together intersect to shape human longevity — especially in the face of chronic illness. The life of Kancha Kattaiah — born on July 17, 1948, into a historically excluded shepherding caste in a remote village of southern India, and who died on June 7, 2025, in a small apartment in Hyderabad — offers not only an inspiring story of 77 years of survival, but also a compelling case study in how rational thought, family care, and access to medical science made one of the longest-surviving heart valve replacement cases possible.

Back in the late 1970s, when India’s life expectancy barely crossed the mid-50s, most advanced medical treatments remained confined to the privileged few. Open-heart surgery, particularly valve replacement, was considered miraculous and rare. For poor or rural Indians, chronic heart disease often led to quiet, early death. And yet, in 1979, Kattaiah — just 30 years old and already diagnosed with valvular heart disease — defied that future. He did not merely survive a complex heart surgery. He outlived expectations by decades, building a life that serves as a case study in how science and social support together can radically extend human life.

Born into a marginalised pastoralist community in Telangana, Kattaiah was no stranger to the systemic barriers that shape the lives of lower-caste Indians. His mother, Kancha Kattamma, was a formidable figure — a community leader known as Pedda Golla, who resisted feudal landlords and fought for grazing rights for shepherds. Her struggles sowed the seeds of critical thought and resistance in her children. Kattaiah, a bright student with a fiercely rational mind, carried that legacy into his youth. When local karanams—village tax officials—tried to prevent children from lower castes from accessing education, he confronted them directly: “Why do you send your children to school and stop ours in the name of tradition?”

Kattaiah did not believe in divine intervention. He was unambiguous about what could heal: “God will not save me from this illness. Only doctors, medicine, and proper food can cure sickness.” That belief would be put to the test when, at age 30, he was diagnosed with a severe valvular heart disease. The only solution was surgery to replace the damaged heart valve — an advanced procedure rarely available outside a few elite hospitals in India.

At the time, the Edwards heart valve, developed by the American company Edwards Lifesciences, represented a pioneering leap in cardiac care. Made from bovine or porcine tissue, this bioprosthetic valve mimicked the function of a natural human valve, improving blood flow and reducing the need for lifelong anticoagulation therapy. But such innovation came at a steep cost. The surgery at Christian Medical College Hospital in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, would cost Rs. 50,000 — an astronomical sum for any lower-middle-class family, let alone one from a marginalised caste background in late 1970s.

What followed, however, demonstrated the power of social care and institutional support. At the request of his younger brother, Prof. Kancha Ilaiah — with whom Kattaiah had lived his entire life — the Vice-Chancellor of Osmania University recommended a grant of Rs. 8,000, established by Nizam Trust for heart patients. Though it did not cover the full cost, the grant was more than financial aid — it was a signal that institutions, when guided by equity and humanity, can meaningfully extend life.

The surgery was performed at Christian Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, by Dr. Stanley John — one of India’s first cardiothoracic surgeons and a recipient of the Padma Shri in 1975 — with Dr. George Cherian serving as the physician.  Founded in 1900 by Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder, CMCH traces its origins to the work of American medical missionaries from the Dutch Reformed Church, among them Scudder’s own family, who had served in India for generations. Though established on religious principles, CMCH became a place where faith never stood in the way of science. Unlike many religious institutions that have long prioritised ritual over reason, CMCH embraced a more inclusive and scientific ethos. It stood out as a space where belief and medicine coexisted — welcoming patients like Kattaiah, who, though irreligious, believed deeply in the promise of science.

His surgery was successful. He survived. And with that survival came not just extended years, but dignity and purpose — a testament to what happens when medicine meets compassion, and rationality is met with support. Over the following decades, Kattaiah’s life became an emblem of resilience. He had outlived not only a grim diagnosis but the assumptions of a casteist, fatalistic society.

Kattaiah’s extended life, however, was not without struggle. His condition placed restrictions on what medicines he could safely consume, and even minor illnesses became serious. It was his wife, Kancha Bharathi, who became the quiet pillar of his long recovery. She cared for him with patience and strength, attending to his daily needs with the attention one gives to a child. During the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors advised against vaccination due to his heart condition. He complied with strict self-imposed quarantine, practicing social distancing long before such habits became common.

That is where his story still echoes powerfully. It forces us to ask: How many lives remain shortened not because treatment doesn’t exist, but because access is denied? Kattaiah’s decades-long survival stands in stark contrast to the many who never made it to the operating table. It also testifies to the endurance of belief — not in the divine, but in rational hope, grounded in human systems that choose compassion over caste, and equity over exclusion.

Today, as healthcare becomes increasingly commercialised, and as universal health coverage remains a distant goal in many countries, this story offers a quiet yet firm reminder. Life is not simply extended by science — it is sustained by a shared moral duty to apply that science equitably. When access is fair, when care is personal, and when science is driven not by profit but by humanity, even the most fragile hearts can beat long into the future.

Kancha Kattaiah’s story is perhaps one of India’s longest surviving cases of heart valve replacement. But more than a medical record, it is a human record — of what is possible when rational hope, care, and science come together. His life did not defy death by miracle. It did so through medicine, support, and a belief in something far more radical than faith: reason, science, and love.

https://countercurrents.org/2025/06/a-rational-heart-how-reason-and-care-sustained-one-of-indias-longest-heart-valve-survivors/

by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

After having a discussion with Delhi University students on 27 May, 2025 the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, in a social media post, said that a practice of “not found suitable” was being followed in case of vacancies on SC/ST and OBC seats and called it a new form of “Manuvaad”. This was a very apt ideological statement. A national leader, not himself from the OBC/SC/ST background, has become a game changer in our higher education system.

REFORM IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Rahul Gandhi’s sudden initiative to reform higher education institutions marks a new beginning in contemporary India. The statement “Not Found Suitable is Manuvadi” on university recruitment after the interaction with research scholars and post graduate students came as pleasant surprise for hundreds of OBC/SC/ST scholars, getting rejected as ‘Not Found Suitable’ by the upper caste selection committees is also shocker to upper caste professors, who evolved this technic after Mandal reservations came into existence.

It was not a big meeting that he addressed, what usually a political leader of his stature usually does. He sat amidst a few students like one among them and asked what problems they faced in the present regime of RSS/BJP in the universities? It was a free-wheel discussion.

Many scholars told him that the OBC/Dalit/Adivasi students, though qualified do not get teaching jobs because the selection committees, mostly headed by upper castes (Brahmin, Bania, Kayasthas, Khatris and Skatriya) keep most reserved back log and newly released posts by adopting a simple technic “Not Found Suitable”.

Generally the open category posts do not remain unfilled because all the applicants in that category are treated as suitable and they select some among them and fill all the vacancies. But the selection committees feel sorry for not filling the other seats because they are reserved for “Not Suitables”. This idea of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis being Not Suitable for education is age old and it is adopted by the Sanatana Dharma school. Manu Dharma Shastra turned that idea into Brahminic law. The Left Liberal upper castes had no problem using this theory against OBC/Dalit/Adivasi candidates. Now Rahul has punctured this Manuvad strategy even when it is fully operative, when an OBC Prime Minister rules the country with a new education policy.

In the RSS/BJP regime, all those affiliated to the Sangh networks, properly certified by one of powerful pracharaks gets selected as most suitable, whether one performs in the interview or not. Even for the reserved posts, properly trained OBC/SC/STs find themselves suitable in the shakas, not so much in the relevant subject. This model is akin to the model Bengal CPI (M) implemented when they were in power. Of course they were one step ahead, no caste hence no reservation.

During the non-BJP regimes, UPA ten years rule and earlier, the Congress had no shakha network of its own to systematically recruit its own ‘Suitables’.

All the Liberal and Left upper caste professor committees had their set of Found Suitable, foreign and Indian educated, caste network youth. They kept thousands of OBC/SC/ST posts as backlog with the same method of “Not Found Suitable” file noting.

In central universities, IITs, IIMS, best medical schools and so on, most OBC/SC/ST candidates who acquired their PhD in the same institute were written off as Not Found Suitable. In universities like JNU and Delhi university the upper caste Left-Liberal professors kept all the OBC/SC/ST posts as a backlog for the RSS/BJP force to come to power and fill, at least some, with their own Shakha members.

They rumoured a theory that the Shudra/OBCs own all the wealth in the villages and they only exploit Dalits, if they come into universities the merit will collapse. They reframed the Mahatma Phule time Brahmin language “If the Shudra studies Paap (Sin) will engulf Bharat. But all the professors born Punya Prada families have not improved our economy, science and philosophy to match China.

WE ARE MOST SUITABLE MOVEMENT

Taking clue from Rahu’s Samvad on Not Found Suitable a movement of the OBC/SC/ST students must start in all central universities and institutes. As Phule and Savitribai said in Film Phule India will fight the Western hegemony in the domain of knowledge only the youth productive Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasi communities occupy high end positions. Seminars, debating sessions, reading competitions, not just slogan shouting, must be organised by inviting even the upper caste professors who have been using the Manuvad strategy “Not Found Suitable” to tell the nation what makes a candidate Suitable? Should one have a Ph.D on a topic ‘Production is Pollution’.Name: Email: 

Prof. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a prominent Indian social activist, political theorist, and scholar known for his influential writings on caste, social justice, and the rights of marginalized communities. A retired professor of Political Science at Osmania University, he has authored several groundbreaking books, including Why I Am Not a Hindu and Post-Hindu India, which challenge upper-caste hegemony and advocate for the empowerment of Dalits, Adivasis, and Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

https://countercurrents.org/2025/05/anti-not-found-suitable-movement-rahul-gandhi-enters-the-fight/

Kancha llaiah Shepherd

While Rahul Gandhi went against the understanding of three PMs of his family, the Brahmin-Bania-Kshatriya leaders of RSS-BJP doggedly opposed caste census

Why has the Narendra Modi government suddenly decided to take up the caste census now even though the

RSS and BJP were against it as part of their Sanatana Dharma ideology all along? Is the RSS fully aligned with the decision?

Though the OBCs within the RSS-BJP had been asking for such an enumeration, the Brahmin-Bania-Kshatriya leaders were against it. Even the monopoly capitalists-mostly from the Brahmin-Bania communities-were against a caste census.

Concerns of big businesses

The big businesses worried that once the 50 per cent Supreme Court cap got removed, the reservation issue would reach the private sector. After the caste data is put before the court, it may not have an excuse not to do so, as it has been repeatedly asking for a credible figure of OBC population.

The monopoly houses knew that the next step by OBCs and Opposition parties would be to push for reservations in the private sector. In fact, immediately after the government’s decision, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) met and demanded reservations in the private sector. The CPM, though weakened, except in Kerala, also passed in its Madurai conference that reservations should be extended to the private sector.

Also read: Caste census: Congress steps up efforts to own narrative, deny political mileage to BJP

But is the RSS-BJP realising that Rahul Gandhis image among the OBCs and farmers of India is growing and Narendra Modi’s weakening?

Rahul Gandhi and caste census

The Congress and Rahul Gandhi-pushed to a corner by the RSS-BJP and the monopoly capital-had no way but to take up the issue of caste census and seek the removal of the 50 per cent cap before the 2024 elections to win over at least a section of OBCs.

In fact, there was no unanimity within the Congress, until the RSS-BJP announced the decision to do a caste census. But in the post-Bharat Jodo Yatra rallies, Rahul made it his main campaigning point.

After Amit Shah’s attack on BR Ambedkar in Parliament, the Congress, at the instance of Rahul, adopted a new slogan: “Jai Bapu, Jai Bhim, Jai Samvidhan”.

This was also unexpected-a party being led by, among others, a man from the Nehru-Gandhi family has changed so much.

Rahul’s altered avatar

Rahul has now become a movement leader after his Bharat Jodo and Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra. He is not a leader aspiring only for the prime minister’s position. There is a social reform aspect in his activism.

Also read: Kharge writes to PM Modi, urges him to consult all political parties on caste survey

As the BJP under Modi, an OBC, pushed Rahul to a wall with constant insults, attacks, and cases, he had to fight back with the twin weapons of social reform and politics. And once a leader goes beyond power politics and takes to movement politics, any kind of harassment, including court cases and losing parliament membership, becomes a weapon of determination, sacrifice, and willingness to fight for the people. That gives a different image to members of eminent political families such as Rahul’s.

Until Rahul took up the issue of caste census, reservation was mainly an issue of OBC regional leaders, social organizations, and so on. They have been, of course, demanding a caste census from different forums ever since the Supreme Court imposed a 50 per cent cap on reservations. But it could not become a national issue.

After VP Singh, who steered the implementation of the Mandal Commission report in central jobs, no other upper caste leader has owned the agenda of OBCs like Rahul has. But Rahul’s family, social and political location is far more different than VP Singh’s.

Moving away from family tradition

Rahul’s great grandfather discontinued the caste census as the prime minister in 1951. His grandmother did not implement the Mandal Commission report with a view that it was retrograde and would go against the merit theory of the elite of her times. His father opposed the implementation of the Mandal Commission report on the same ground of merit.

But Rahul has quite determinedly gone against the understanding of three prime ministers of his family. It was a risky step given his background. But he realised that the Backward Classes got alienated from the Congress because of Nehru, Indira, and Rajiv’s approach to the OBC reservation.

However, Modi gave him a chance to own the social justice agenda more firmly than any other upper caste leader in Indian history. The RSS-BJP thought of marginalizing the Nehru-Gandhi family by attacking Rahul as a “joker”. But he turned the joke on them instead.

Rahul became Opposition leader with that agenda. The Congress won in Telangana and Karnataka with that agenda. He pushed those governments to go for caste census. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge is his go-getter as the most senior Dalit leader in the country.

An uncomfortable subject

My generation has repeatedly heard during the Mandal and post-Mandal discourses that caste was a British construct. Some even said that it was a Muslim construct. All the left-liberal upper-caste intellectuals opposed OBC reservations as a retrograde step in a secular democracy.

Even after the Congress put it in the 2024 election manifesto, most upper-caste intellectual supporters of the party were uncomfortable, as it was seen as a divisive agenda. All Left Front governments in the past were against such caste count in what they call a “class society”.

The Kerala Left Front government, though headed by an OBC, Pinarayi Vijayan, was not willing to take a caste count even after the 2024 elections. Telangana did that. Karnataka approved the 2015 caste survey.

Bihar, of course, took the first step. Now, how can all these people, who were earlier avoiding counting caste populations in their states, avoid the central government caste census?

Also read: As Centre prepares to embark on national caste census, here’s how Telangana did it Yogi Adityanath-a strong opponent of the caste census-now welcomes it. Mamata Banerjee has always been silent about it. Normally, Bengali “bhadraloK’ intellectuals ignored caste as if it never existed, particularly in Bengal. Now they, too, will be counted. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswas Sarma, I am sure, must be boiling within himself, unable to shout out his opposition to the Cabinet approval.

A divisive issue now a unifier

Before the Telangana caste survey, some upper-caste forces moved high court for the inclusion of a “No Caste” clause in the survey manual, and several enumerated in that category. Will they do so in the national caste census as well?

Caste is a mystical psychological category. It makes people crazy when entitlements are assigned on the basis of its oppressive history. It makes a progressive a reactionary when the oppressed caste’s shade reaches the comfort zone of the oppressor castes, like the shade of Phule haunts his contemporary Brahmins in the film Phule.

The RSS-BJP have to organise serious re-education camps for their karyakartas and leaders. The caste census is a national step against the Brahmanic tradition and more so from the age-old Sanatana Dharma.

However, some of their ideologues started a new explanation that the caste census will work for Hindu unity.

Therefore, what was seen as a divisive issue now becomes a unifier. Good if such a change of explanation is part of a change of heart. But the question still remains: will the RSS allow the caste census to happen?

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal)

About the Author

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book is The Clash of Cultures – Hindutva – Mullah Conflicting Ethics.

https://thefederal.com/category/opinion/will-rss-agree-to-caste-census-186178