Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
He was a modern-day version of Plato’s idea of a philosopher king, though the office of President of India, which he adorned, did not carry with it the power of a monarch. The second President of the Indian Republic, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) was philosopher, statesman, and articulate interpreter of Hindu tradition to the West. Radhakrishnan was born at the temple town of Tiruttani, into an orthodox Brahmin family.
The second of two children, he was educated in Christian missionary institutions, where he was exposed to Western philosophy as well as criticism of Hindu traditions. Inspired by the eloquence of Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore, great Indians he came to admire, Radhakrishnan resolved to study Indian philosophy in depth.
Radhakrishnan did his B.A. in Philosophy, studied Sanskrit and Hindi and took a great interest in the languages of India. He was appointed teacher at Madras Presidency College in 1909. In 1926, he represented Calcutta University as a delegate to the Congress of the Universities of the British Empire and the International Congress of Philosophy at Harvard University. In the UK, he was approached by many universities and societies to deliver lectures. His famous Upton lectures at Manchester College, were subsequently published as The Hindu View of Life. In 1918, Radhakrishnan was appointed Professor of Philosophy in the University of Mysore.
Three years later, he was appointed to the most important philosophy chair in India, the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science in the University of Calcutta. In 1929, Radhakrishnan was invited to take the post vacated by Principal J. Estin Carpenter in Manchester College, Oxford. Referring to one of Radhakrishnan’s lectures, an Oxford daily said: “Though the Indian preacher had the marvellous power to weave a magic web of thought, imagination and language, the real greatness of his sermon resides in some indefinable spiritual quality which arrests attention, moves the heart and lifts us into an ampler air.”
During 1936-39, Radhakrishnan was the Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford University. In 1939, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy, the first Indian to be so honoured. He then became the Vice-Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University, which he served for the next nine years. Radhakrishnan’s accomplishments impressed Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru so
much that he persuaded him to accept leadership of the Indian delegation to UNESCO during 1946- 52. He was the President, General Conference of UNESCO during 1952- 54. In a more startling move, Nehru posted him as Ambassador of India to the U.S.S.R. during 1949-52, a mission he accomplished with great dignity, proactively befriending the Russian people under Stalin’s regime.
Radhakrishnan was Vice-President of India from 1952 to 1962, when he was elevated to the office of President of India. He retired as President in 1967. Radhakrishnan combined scholarship with a firm belief in the need for social change and reform. Towards this end, he reinterpreted Hindu religious forms and texts. His translation and interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita for instance is an attempt to move traditional institutions in the direction of “democratic” values. In much of his work, he stressed the more profound aspects of Hindu philosophy. His scholarly commentaries on Vedanta are also marked by a distinctive humanism imbued with mysticism.
Radhakrishnan’s master’s thesis, The Ethics of Vedanta (1908), served to clear Western misconceptions about Vedanta, but he found much in Western philosophy that was tangent to the Vedantic validation of mystical intuition and the spirituality of the universe. Radhakrishnan engaged in debates with Western theologians and philosophers who criticized Indian forms of spirituality. He developed his own distinctive philosophy of life. His work emphasises the relation of the self to the sacred force from which all phenomena spring, as well as the importance of the evolution of human spiritual consciousness.
He strove to dispel any notion that Hindu ascetic practices are an advocacy of withdrawal from reality, and interpreted the doctrine of Karma thus: “Man is not a detached spectator of a progress immanent in human history, but an active agent remoulding the world nearer to his ideals.” According to Radhakrishnan, the aim of yoga is to provide a disciplined framework which facilitates the fulfilment of worldly obligations while continually reinforcing the universal search for spiritual perfection. Yoga should make man more capable of action in the world and service to humanity. The contributions of Dr Radhakrishnan as academician, diplomat, and philosopher, have been unique.
His activities centered round the values of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. His voice was always raised in defence of the rights of man and the vindication of the principles, which can assure peace. In spite of his busy schedule as a teacher and an administrator, he wrote more than 150 books and numerous research papers in his lifetime.
Dr S Radhakrishnan’s major writings
Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan