Ari Krishna Rama Chandra (b.1896)
Ari Krishna Rama Chandra [1921-UCD-013, sometimes written Ramachandra] was born 11th July 1896. He was from Singapore, but his family was Indian.
At some point, he travelled to Britain. On census day in 1921, he was in London, but was listed as an (unmarried) Edinburgh University student. Later that year, he matriculated at University College Dundee, to pursue an MB.ChB. medical degree.
As a student, he seems to have formed close ties to the local Indian community in Scotland. In 1923 he led an ‘Indian Service’ in Ross Street Unitarian Church in Glasgow, and in 1924 he gave a lecture in Dundee on ‘The Industrial and Political Situation in India’. In 1925 he was listed as President of the Dundee Hindu Association.
He studied for at least two years in Dundee/St Andrews. He passed zoology exams in 1922, but he does not appear to have graduated. However, in a Medical Directory from 1930, he is listed as having obtained, in 1928, an ‘L.M.S.S.A’, that is, a Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery of the Society of Apothecaries, in London. This may have been a quicker, easier or cheaper way for an overseas student to gain a medical qualification.
By 1930, Rama Chandra had gained a position as one of several assistant surgeons (many of them with the LMS qualification) attached to the colonial government’s hospital service in the Straits Settlement: he was posted to the Tan Tock Sen Hospital, Singapore. We currently know nothing about his later life or career.
This summary was researched and drafted in May 2026 by Libby Mullen, then a second-year student of History; with additional information by Matthew Jarron of University of Dundee Museums. Some of this material has also appeared on the ‘Woven Together Dundee‘ blog.