Dr. Mehanlal (alias Madan Mohan) Atal, an Indian doctor in Spain

Dr. Madan Mohan Lal Atal (1888-1958) was an Indian medical doctor and freedom fighter. As an early antifascist, he rejected the Non Intervention policy adopted by the United Kingdom and decided to throw in his lot with the Republicans.

The efforts of the Congress party to develop a foreign policy independent of Great Britain had led to the formation of a goodwill medical mission organised by the London-based Spanish Aid Society. A Spain-India Committee was also formed in London through which medical supplies were sent to Spain. Dr. Atal was part of the Spanish Medical Committee, a British leftist organization. He went to Spain in 1937 and his reports in his country’s newspapers of his visits to Valencia and Barcelona describing the courage of the Spanish people were further eye openers for the Indian public. The one shown here is from the Sunday magazine of the Kolkata-based pro-independence Amrita Bazar Patrika. It quotes a letter Dr. Atal sent to a friend shortly after arriving in Spain in which he wrote “The Red Cross work is more absorbing when it is in connection with a struggle It also lends encouragement to feel that it is for a people who one considers are fighting and fighting under severe hardships for the idea held of freedom”. 

During his ten months in Spain, Dr. Atal worked in different hospitals with the International Red Cross and he also joined the International Brigades in Albacete. Josip Husinec (an International Brigadist from Montenegro) mentioned him in his memoir Through Franco’s Prisons. In a diary entry dated 10 February 1942 he wrote “So far I have received 47 pesetas, sent to me by my comrades from Miranda de Ebro via Atal {Dr. Mohammed Atal?}. Atal sent me this sum for Les. I gave 5 pesetas to the Swiss, 19 to Dima and 4 to Party, but they returned it to me the next day.”

After his return to India, Dr. Atal led the Indian medical mission sent to China by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1938 during the Second Sino Japanese War. He stayed in China until his death in 1958. Today Indians read his name in school history textbooks, but only his work in China is mentioned.

MS/AT