A Warm Welcome to Our Members and Fellows in India
We are delighted to share this special newsletter highlighting the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh’s growing activity in India, along with opportunities and news for our Indian membership.
We are proud of our longstanding relationship with India, and grateful for the ongoing support of our committed community of 2000 Members and Fellows who champion the College amongst their colleagues, students, and wider professional networks.
We deliver regular diets of MRCS each year in Chennai, Kolkata and Kerala, and we enjoy close working relationships with host universities, as well as with specialty organisations and the Association of Surgeons of India. We are also proud to work in partnership with a number of organisations and donors to provide our Members and Fellows with the very best support, from research funding to career development funding opportunities.
We hope you find the stories and information in this edition both useful and engaging. We warmly encourage you to stay connected and share your own news and achievements with us.
Examinations
See below for the list of upcoming diets in India for 2026.
For further information, please see our Exams Calendar.
Engagement Event
We look forward to welcoming students, trainees, and our Members and Fellows to an engagement event in Kolkata on 9 September 2026. Registrations will open within the next couple of months. In the meantime, please register your interest here.
Our History in India
The collaborative relationship between the College and India is longstanding, with the establishment of the College’s Indian Chapter in 1986 a key milestone in this partnership of surgical education and professional exchange.
Thousands of Indian surgeons have obtained RCSEd qualifications. From the late nineteenth century, many Indian doctors and medical students travelled to the UK to study medicine, with large numbers sitting examinations in Edinburgh to become College Licentiates or Fellows.
From 1886, the Scottish Royal Colleges became the first institutions in Scotland to qualify women in medicine and surgery through the Triple Qualification (TQ) examination, with Indian women among the early cohorts. Among them was Visakhapatnam-born Annie Wardlaw Jagannadham (LRCSEd 1890), the first female Indian doctor entered on the British Medical Register, and Kadambini Ganguly (LRCSEd 1893), one of the first female graduates of the University of Calcutta. Career opportunities for Scottish-trained female surgeons were limited, and India also became an important destination for our early female Fellows. Alice Headwards-Hunter (FRCSEd 1920), the first woman admitted to Fellowship, practised in India and received the Kaiser-I-Hind silver medal in 1945. Helen McMillan (FRCSEd 1921) spent most of her career in Ajmer, where she became renowned across Rajputana for her surgical skills.
To discover more about Library services for Members and Fellows, please visit www.library.rcsed.ac.uk or email library@rcsed.ac.uk.
RCSEd History in India Gallery
Funding & Awards Opportunities
The College proudly supports our international community through a number of funding opportunities, established to champion your continued education, training and career development, as well as supporting you in your research endeavours.
The portfolio of funding & awards opportunities has recently become even more accessible with a redesigned web portfolio which we hope will ensure that you can see and engage with all that is open to you.
We are proud to offer several funding and award opportunities to our Members and Fellows across India, including the Chennai Exam Prize, awarded annually to the top scoring candidate of the MRCS exam in the Chennai diet each year, and the Tamil Nadu Professional Development Grant, which provides up to £1000 to those working in or from the region to support professional activities.
We are also delighted to welcome applications for the Coronation Commonwealth Bursary once more, which provides up to £2000 to those from, and living in Commonwealth countries, to support attendance at an RCSEd course or exam.
The portfolio of funding and award opportunities also includes opportunities for research funding for those based outside of the UK, for example the James Weir Foundation Research Grants, Ophthalmology Pump Priming Grants and Pump Priming Cancer Research Grants.
We encourage you to explore the full portfolio, and direct any questions to fundingopportunities@rcsed.ac.uk.
Marking the Legacy of Sushruta
On Friday 19 June, the College welcomed medical professionals, academics, dignitaries and distinguished guests from across the UK and India for a special event celebrating surgical heritage, professional development and international collaboration.
Read here