Topiwala National Medical College and B. Y. L. Nair Charitable Hospital Mumbai

It was 1920, and the island city of Bombay had only one medical college, the Grant Medical College. India was under British rule and naturally the college was managed by the British. No Indian doctors were appointed irrespective of their academic background and experience.This was the time when the country was in the throes of the independence movement. Local nationalistic leaders felt that the city should have a medical college that is established only with the help of locally generated funds without taking any help from the British rulers.

Through donations from the Tilak Swaraj Funds, on the 4th of September 1921, the National Medical College was established This College started functioning at the Victoria Cross Lane, Byculla. The founding fathers wanted to train doctors who could serve not only through hospitals, but would also reach out to the community. Incidentally Ayurveda was an obligatory part of the curriculum in our college. As, in those days, even the Universities were controlled by the British the founders affiliated the institution to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Bombay and the first batch of students was admitted for its Licentiate Medical Practitioner (LMP) course.