The British Prime Minister was only 17 years old when a retinal detachment caused by a rugby injury led to loss of sight in his left eye. Despite a series of operations, he was left totally blind in that eye and was also in danger of losing his second eye when he was referred to Chawla, then a senior consultant eye surgeon at an Edinburgh hospital.

“He faced total blindness and he knew it. He’s not stupid, he’s not without imagination, and he knew what had happened to his first eye,” recalls Chawla, now approaching 70.

Luckily for Brown, Chawla was a leader in his field and a brilliant surgeon with an outstanding record of success. “When he was playing, his head received shock waves caused by a football or a boot. The retina of one eye got detached. He had three operations which failed. He is blind in that eye. A few months later, he started to get similar symptoms in the other eye. I did one operation, it worked and he has perfect vision in that one eye,” says Chawla.

Thirty-eight years later, Brown has kept his sight. The doctor remains in touch with his patient. “I have been in touch and e-mailed him, but he’s so busy now. I have his personal e-mail, and a colleague of mine in Edinburgh is a friend of his, so that’s how we contact each other. I sent him a letter after he became PM,” he says.

The story of Chawla’s role in saving Brown’s sight has coincided with the surge of negative publicity about Indian doctors that followed the failed Glasgow airport attack on June 30. Chawla was visiting his daughter south of the border in England when the incident took place. He recalls the “terrible anger” of his own reaction on that day, but questions media speculation that the attack has resulted in public wariness about Indian doctors practising in the UK.

“I think the doubt about the Indian doctor relates to the jokes about Indian people speaking English, and the Peter Sellars accent. But if you speak the language with fluency — particularly if it’s coupled with a demonstrable skill — you will find the doubts evaporate,” says Chawla.

The doctor, who was born to a Scottish mother and an Indian father serving in the British army during World War II, adds, “I think the question is not so much Indians as muslims and, although the cruder members of society don’t distinguish between turbans and Islam, l think the feeling here is more Arabs than Indians. And it’s more definitely the mosque that took the brunt of the reprisal.”

His last thoughts on other Indian doctors is that at his own hospital in Edinburgh the senior surgeon is an English-born Indian and his immediate successor at Edinburgh’s famous Pavilion eye clinic is a Sikh from Bradford.