At the time when Usha Sikdar joined Military Nursing Service (MNS) as a trainee in 1964, not many Indian girls joined nursing profession. The service still carried the legacy of the Raj. In the pre-independence era nurses from England were brought to care for British soldiers in India. Even after independence only unmarried women and divorcees were allowed to join MNS; anyone who chose to marry was expected to resign.
There was no concept of maternity leave or posting husband and wife together in the same station. In effect, nursing officers were not expected to have a family life at all, but to devote themselves entirely to their work in a way that was never demanded of other male officers and jawans in the Armed Forces.
But the world around her was already beginning to change. In 1965, she was tending war casualties at 8 Air Force Hospital, Secunderabad; in 1971, she served in a blacked-out field hospital at Jodhpur, delivering a baby on the very first night of the war and later caring for Pakistani POWs. Years later, she would handle relentless terror-related casualties at 92 Base Hospital, Srinagar, and then, as Principal Matron at Army R&R, help lead the nursing response during the Kargil conflict. Her journey from trainee to Major General is not just a personal story of courage, but also the coming of age of the Military Nursing Service itself.
Question: I understand you joined the Military Nursing Service as an officer in 1964 and looked after the troops during both 1965 and 1971 war. One of your duties during the 1971 war was to look after the prisoners in a special ward. How do you describe the experience during the wars? What uniform did you wear and were you allowed to display your rank?
Gen Sikdar: I joined the Military Nursing Service at 8 Air Force Hospital, Secunderabad in September 1964. During the 1965 war, the 8 Air Force Hospital, Secunderabad was converted to military hospital and overload of patients from other hospitals in the northern sector were shifted there. Even as a trainee in those days, I had the privilege of taking care of 1965 war casualties who were transferred to our hospital. I still remember the weight of responsibility I felt as I cared for those brave men. It was my first real experience with the realities of war, and it shaped me forever.
During the 1971 War I was posted at Military Hospital, Jodhpur which was converted into a field hospital and all wards became surgical units to handle war casualties. On the night of 3rd December 1971, the very first night of the Indo-Pak War, I walked into something that I will never forget. The entire hospital had gone into complete blackout to protect us from possible air attacks. All the patients had been hurriedly moved into trenches. The silence, the darkness, and the tension of war hung heavily in the air. Only a few critically ill patients remained inside. And then, in the middle of that frightening night, I had to conduct a delivery in a makeshift dark room, without any doctor being present. I was just a young Lieutenant, and my only support was a single female Sahaika by my side. Together, with nothing but faith, determination, and God’s grace, we brought a new life safely into the world. That moment—bringing a child into life during the first night of a war—is something that will stay with me forever. It was terrifying, overwhelming, and yet deeply beautiful. An experience I will always cherish. For the next 17 days, we worked round-the-clock in olive-green field uniforms, taking care of the injured without any rest.
Day and night, we tended to the injured, hearing their stories, easing their pain, and silently praying for their recovery. It was a very demanding, but honourable experience. The responsibility was immense, but so was the privilege—to serve the wounded heroes who had risked everything for the nation. After the war, a special ward was created for the injured Pakistani prisoners of war who had to be administered medicines, injections, and dressings. They were deeply grateful for the care they received from India. One POW had to keep his eyes closed during treatment so he couldn’t see who was treating him. It was an unforgettable experience. After the war, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited the hospital and appreciated our work. It was a proud moment for all of us.
Question: I believe that you were awarded the commendation card for work done by you and your team of nurses in the anti-terrorist operations in Kashmir. How was your experience?
Gen Sikdar: In 1992, I was posted at 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar. Terrorism was at its peak, and we received countless casualties. My team and I worked day and night for nearly three years. My efforts were recognized and appreciated by the Northern Command.In 1997–98, I was posted to Army Research and Referral Hospital (R&R) as a Brigadier when the Kargil War broke out in 1999. The hospital received a large influx of casualties. As Principal Matron, I had major responsibilities. We created two separate wards overnight and worked tirelessly to treat the wounded. It was another proud moment in my career. Looking back, I feel deeply privileged. Serving my country through multiple wars, caring for soldiers and even enemy POWs with humanity, has been the greatest honour of my life. Looking back, I feel nothing but gratitude. I served through three wars, cared for countless soldiers, and witnessed extraordinary courage—from both sides of the border. My life in uniform has been a journey of duty, compassion, and honour. And I carry those memories with pride.
Question: What kind of changes have you seen in the role of MNS since you joined the service?
Gen Sikdar: I’ve seen many changes since the day I joined MNS as a trainee in 1964. When I joined the Military Nursing Service, we were still living in the shadow of the colonial legacy. We had a few Anglo-Indian MNS officers at the top. Most of them were unmarried. In those days very few Indians preferred to join the nursing as a profession which was seen as something “good girls from decent families” should avoid. Not many decent Indian middle-class families willingly wanted to send their daughters to join the army as nursing officers. Only a few families, allowed their daughters to join the all-woman corps but their number was very less. It was still considered a low-status, almost stigmatized profession, despite the tremendous skill and sacrifice it demanded.
Then they made a branch of our corps called local MNS. They were given less salary and made to retire as lieutenant – just one rank. There were no postings. They were considered inferior and were given lesser accommodation and other facilities. Of course, now it has been abolished.
Over the years nursing itself became more professionalised, scientific and specialised. Our officers now hold advanced degrees and international-level competencies in critical care, oncology, cardiac surgery, and trauma. Second, the social perception changed. Today, parents proudly send their daughters to join the MNS because they see it as a career of honour, stability and service to the nation. And third, our role within the Armed Forces has changed: from being treated as “support staff in uniform” to being recognised, at least in principle, as commissioned officers who are integral to operational readiness, disaster response and peacekeeping. That journey is not complete, but the distance travelled from the days of British sisters to today’s confident Indian nursing officers is remarkable.
Question: Why were nurses from England brought to India?
Gen Sikdar: In those days there were separate wards for the Britishers and Indians. The nurses from England were mainly brought in to look after the British soldiers. But after independence, they stopped all this. During partition the MNS was split into two branches, one of which went to Pakistan, and one remained here.
Question: There was a time when MNS officers were officially ordered to remain single and leave the service in case they decided to get married?
Gen Sikdar: Yes, that phase did exist, and it is important for the younger generation to know that history. The officers who joined MNS in those days had to be single – either unmarried or divorced. The earlier rules, which many of our seniors suffered from, explicitly required nursing officers to resign if they wished to marry. Essentially, the system was saying: you can either serve your country or have a family – but not both. It was a deeply patriarchal mindset that assumed a woman could not be both a professional and a wife or mother.
By the time I came in, that rule was being reconsidered, but the attitude lingered. There was still a subtle message that marriage was a “distraction” and that serious officers should remain single as long as possible. Many brilliant nurses left the service because they wanted a normal personal life. The eventual abolition of the marriage bar was a huge step forward. It recognised that we are not “temporary caretakers” but career officers, and that the institution must adapt to women’s lives – not the other way round.
Question: What was the rationale behind this?
Gen Sikdar: The belief in those days was that if they were unmarried the nursing officers would wholeheartedly look after the patients and the hospital. They could stay in the mess and wouldn’t have liabilities like taking care of their husband, parents, or children. On the other hand, married women have several additional responsibilities towards their parents, in-laws, husbands and children after marriage.
Question: There was a time when there was no maternity leave and nursing officers had a tough time managing both their home and duty. How did this affect the MNS officers?
Gen Sikdar: I am an example of that. My first child is born without maternity leave. I was asked to carry on with the work till end. It’s very difficult. I had to leave my two months old child at home and join back on duty even after caesarean section. My husband who too was a service officer was posted somewhere else. How many girls can do that today?
For a long time, maternity was treated almost as a personal inconvenience rather than a natural part of a woman’s life. There was no structured maternity leave; many officers had to use whatever annual leave they had, sometimes even reporting back to duty when they were still recovering physically and emotionally from childbirth. Imagine working long, demanding shifts, lifting patients, managing emergencies – while you are barely a few weeks postpartum and not sleeping properly at night.
This had a huge impact. Some officers chose to leave the service altogether because they simply could not do justice to both roles. Others delayed having children until it was almost too late, at a great emotional cost. It also affected morale: we felt that our dedication to service was being taken for granted and our basic needs as women were invisible to the system. Over time, after many representations, we managed to secure more humane maternity leave provisions and better posting policies for young mothers.
Question: How did you meet your husband who too was a service officer? What kind of hardships did you face in your married life – especially when MNS officers were not allowed to get posting in the same station where their husband was posted?
Gen Sikdar: Like many service couples of that era, we met through the uniform. We first interacted during a professional setting – a combined mess function and later during some hospital–unit coordination work. What began as mutual professional respect slowly grew into friendship and then into a shared life. The romance sounds very nice in hindsight, but the reality of married life as a service couple was not easy. At one stage, there was almost an unwritten rule that MNS officers should not be posted in the same station as their husbands.
The logic was that “professionalism” might suffer, or that couples would seek special concessions. The result was that many of us spent years running two parallel lives – one as an officer in some remote station, and the other as a wife and mother trying to hold the family together across distances.
I have memories of rushing home during short leave to see my child, then taking an overnight train back to report for duty, often in emotionally and physically drained condition. My husband and I missed countless anniversaries, school events, even illnesses of our child. We learnt to treat a few days together as a festival. Those hardships made us stronger as a couple, but they also highlighted how insensitive some policies were to the reality of service families, especially when both spouses wore the uniform.
Question: I believe like you several MNS officers are married to army officers. What kind of situation crops up when the wife is promoted to a higher rank than her husband?
Gen Sikdar: This question reveals how deeply our society is conditioned to think of rank and gender. Yes, in quite a few cases, including my own, the wife’s rank has at times been senior to the husband’s. We both were lieutenants when we got married. We became captain at that time. After that, I became major, but my husband was still captain. He was posted at Srinagar, while I was at Dehradun. My elder son who was studying in class 7th in a boarding school wrote me a letter asking me “Mama, how come? Baba is still captain and you have become major. I replied that I was going to become lieutenant colonel very soon. So, he said, but what is the reason? My friends are asking, is your mom is senior than your father. How can it happen? It doesn’t happen. So, I wrote back saying that’s because he has not passed Part B exam. That’s why his promotion has got delayed. Once he passes the exam, he’ll get the promotion. So, he wrote a letter to his father asking him to get up early, study and do well – everything his father used to ask him, to do.
Question: Does this lead to friction in family life, or do they willingly salute their wives both at home and office – if the situation arises?
Gen Sikdar: In uniform, the answer is very simple: we follow the Army Act and the order of precedence. Salutes and protocols are not about ego; they are about respecting the rank and the institution.
At home, things are more nuanced. In a healthy marriage, you don’t carry your rank into the drawing room. You carry mutual respect. If a husband feels diminished because his wife has a star more on her shoulder, the problem is not the wife’s promotion, it is his own insecurity and the social conditioning that tells him he must “always be above” his spouse. I have seen many husbands who are genuinely proud of their wives’ achievements and even joke, “In office I salute her, at home I still get my tea on time,” and everyone laughs. But behind that joke is a very modern reality: more men in uniform have learned to accept and celebrate their wives as equal or even more accomplished professionals.
Question: Do you feel bad that the highest rank 5000-odd Military Nursing Service officers can expect to get promoted to is Major General or Additional Director General MNS (ADGMNS) and they can’t head their own service as a Lieutenant General?
Gen Sikdar: “Feel bad” is too mild a phrase. I would say it is a matter of deep disappointment and principled disagreement. We are a full-fledged commissioned officer cadre, we shoulder operational responsibilities in conflict zones, we manage tertiary-care hospitals, we lead large teams and train generations of nursing officers – yet structurally, we are capped at Major General. It sends a very clear message: you are good enough to serve, but not good enough to sit at the very top table.
This rank ceiling is not just about one individual getting a third star. It directly affects how seriously the system takes nursing as a profession and MNS as a corps. When decisions are taken at the highest levels about health infrastructure, manpower, postings and policy, the voice of the MNS is filtered through others. I firmly believe there should be a Lieutenant General–level head for the MNS, with an appropriate place in the Armed Forces Medical Services hierarchy. Until that happens, we will continue to serve with dedication – but we will also continue to say that the structure is unfair and needs reform.
Question: During your time as ADG MNS the uniforms of MNS officers was changed from olive green to a beige coloured safari suit. Why did this happen? Was it not a move to downgrade MNS officers and make them appear to be members of an auxiliary force – instead of regular commissioned Army officers?
Gen Sikdar: The official explanation we were given was that a lighter, neutral uniform would be more “patient-friendly”, more suitable for a hospital environment, and would distinguish nursing officers from combatant arms. On paper, it sounded like a functional, administrative decision. But uniforms are never just cloth; they carry pride, identity and status.
Wearing olive green signified that we belonged fully to the Army officer fraternity. When that was taken away and replaced with a safari-style beige uniform, many of us felt we were being visually separated and subtly downgraded. The timing and the way it were pushed through, without adequate consultation, reinforced that perception. We voiced our concerns and made it clear that while we would obey orders as disciplined officers, we did not agree with a change that symbolically pushed us towards a “paramilitary/auxiliary” look instead of a regular commissioned officer identity.
Even though our earlier uniform was white tunic, there was a field uniform with field ranks. They have abolished all that – so now we don’t have a field uniform or field ranks. So, I keep on asking them, supposing war breaks out, and we will be mistaken for Pakistan Army officers because the uniform colour is like that.
Question: But the formation sign you wear is from Indian Army….
Gen Sikdar: The formation sign is from India, but when the bombardment is happening from the top, you can’t wear stars from the shoulders. You must have the field ranks, which we wore in 1971 war.
Question: I believe you had a tough time during your visit to INHS Ashvini, Mumbai as ADG MNS. The then Commandant, Surgeon Rear Admiral V K Singh, who later went on to be Director General Armed Forces Medical Services (DGAFMS) was not only rude to you but also did not allow you to display the Star Plates and Flag on the official vehicle – befitting your rank and status during your official visit to the Naval Hospital. What exactly happened?
Gen Sikdar: Let me answer this carefully, because my intention is not to personalise or sensationalise, but to highlight a pattern. During one of my official visits to a naval hospital, there was indeed an incident where my protocol entitlements as a Major General–rank officer and as ADG MNS were questioned. I was told that the star plates and flag should not be displayed on the vehicle allotted to me, and the tone in which this was conveyed was, to put it mildly, discourteous.
In that moment, I had two choices: to react emotionally, or to respond as a professional. I chose the latter. I calmly reminded the concerned authorities that the ADG MNS is a serving Major General in the Indian Army, entitled to all the courtesies and symbols of that rank, irrespective of whether she is visiting an Army, Navy or Air Force establishment. I recorded my objection through proper channels and made sure that the issue was not brushed aside as a “small misunderstanding”.
For me, the hurt was not personal. I have faced far tougher situations in life. What disturbed me was what it represented – a mindset that still struggles to accept a woman nursing officer as a senior officer on par with other two-star generals. After that visit, I told my younger colleagues: don’t be discouraged by such incidents. Wear your rank with dignity, know your worth, and use proper institutional mechanisms to assert your rights. We are not asking for favours; we are asking for the respect the uniform demands.
