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Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Official Portrait, 1962
2nd President of India
In office 13 May 1962 – 13 May 1967
Prime Minister	Jawaharlal Nehru Gulzarilal Nanda (Acting) Lal Bahadur Shastri Indira Gandhi
Vice President	Zakir Husain
Preceded by	Dr. Rajendra Prasad
Succeeded by	Zakir Husain
1st Vice President of India
In office 13 May 1952 – 12 May 1962
President	Rajendra Prasad
Prime Minister	Jawaharlal Nehru
Preceded by	(Position established)
Succeeded by	Zakir Husain
2nd Ambassador of India to Soviet Union
In office 12 July 1949 – 12 May 1952
Preceded by	Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
Succeeded by	K. P. S. Menon
4th Vice-Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University
In office 1939–1948
Preceded by	Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya
Succeeded by	Amarnath Jha
Personal details
Born	(1888-09-05)5 September 1888 Thiruttani, Madras Presidency, British India (present-day Tamil Nadu, India)
Died	17 April 1975(1975-04-17) (aged 86) Madras, Tamil Nadu, India (present-day Chennai)
Political party	Independent
Spouse	Sarvepalli Sivakamu ​ ​(m. 1903; died 1956)​
Children	6, including Gopal
Occupation	Politician professor vice-chancellor
Profession	Philosopher academic
Awards	See below
Known for	the Indian Philosophy: 2 volume set
Academic background
Alma mater	Voorhees College, Vellore Madras Christian College (BA, MA)
Academic work
Discipline	Philosophy Indology
Institutions	Madras Presidency College Maharaja's College, Mysore University of Calcutta Manchester College, Oxford Andhra University Banaras Hindu University
Main interests	Indian philosophy Indian religions

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Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (pronunciation; 5 September 1888 – 17 April 1975; natively Radhakrishna) was an Indian politician, philosopher and statesman who served as the second president of India from 1962 to 1967. He previously served as the first vice president of India from 1952 to 1962. He was the second ambassador of India to the Soviet Union from 1949 to 1952. He was also the fourth vice-chancellor of Banaras Hindu University from 1939 to 1948 and the second vice-chancellor of Andhra University from 1931 to 1936. Radhakrishnan is considered one of the most influential and distinguished 20th century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy, he held the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta from 1921 to 1932 and Spalding Chair of Eastern Religion and Ethics at University of Oxford from 1936 to 1952.

Radhakrishnan's philosophy was grounded in Advaita Vedanta, reinterpreting this tradition for a contemporary understanding. He defended Hinduism against what he called "uninformed Western criticism", contributing to the formation of contemporary Hindu identity. He has been influential in shaping the understanding of Hinduism, in both India and the west, and earned a reputation as a bridge-builder between India and the West.

Radhakrishnan was awarded several high awards during his life, including a knighthood in 1931, the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India, in 1954, and honorary membership of the British Royal Order of Merit in 1963. He was also one of the founders of Helpage India, a non profit organisation for elderly underprivileged in India. Radhakrishnan believed that "teachers should be the best minds in the country".

Early life and education

Radhakrishnan was born as Sarvepalli Radhakrishnayya in a Telugu Hindu family of Sarvepalli Veeraswami and Sithamma. He was the fourth born of six siblings (five brothers and one sister), in Tiruttani of North Arcot district in the erstwhile Madras Presidency (now in Tiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu).His family hails from Sarvepalli village in Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh. His early years were spent in Thiruttani and Tirupati. His father was a subordinate revenue official in the service of a local Zamindar (local landlord). His primary education was at K. V. High School at Thiruttani. In 1896 he moved to the Hermansburg Evangelical Lutheran Mission School in Tirupati and Government High Secondary School, Walajapet.

Education

Radhakrishnan was awarded scholarships throughout his academic life. He joined Voorhees College in Vellore for his high school education. After his F.A. (First of Arts) class, he joined the Madras Christian College (affiliated to the University of Madras) at the age of 16. He graduated from there in 1907, and also finished his Masters from the same college.

Radhakrishnan studied philosophy by chance rather than choice. He had wished to study mathematics. Being a financially constrained student, when a cousin who graduated from the same college passed on his philosophy textbooks to Radhakrishnan, it automatically decided his academics course.

Sarvepalli wrote his bachelor's degree thesis on "The Ethics of the Vedanta and its Metaphysical Presuppositions". It "was intended to be a reply to the charge that the Vedanta system had no room for ethics." Two of his professors, William Meston and Alfred George Hogg, commended Radhakrishnan's dissertation. Radhakrishnan's thesis was published when he was only twenty. According to Radhakrishnan himself, the criticism of Hogg and other Christian teachers of Indian culture "disturbed my faith and shook the traditional props on which I leaned." Radhakrishnan himself describes how, as a student,

The challenge of Christian critics impelled me to make a study of Hinduism and find out what is living and what is dead in it. My pride as a Hindu, roused by the enterprise and eloquence of Swami Vivekananda, was deeply hurt by the treatment accorded to Hinduism in missionary institutions.

This led him to his critical study of Indian philosophy and religion and a lifelong defence of Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism". At the same time, Radhakrishnan commended Professor Hogg as 'My distinguished teacher,' and as "one of the greatest Christian thinkers we had in India.' Besides, Professor William Skinner, who was acting Principal of the College, gave a testimonial saying "he is one of the best men we have had in the recent years", which enabled him to get the first job in Presidency College. In reciprocation, Radhakrishnan dedicated one of his early books to William Skinner.

The Spirit of Abheda

Radhakrishnan expresses his anguish, against the British critics, in The Ethics of the Vedanta. Here he wrote, "it has become philosophic fashion of the present day to consider the Vedanta system a non-ethical one." He quotes a German-born philologist and Orientalist, who lived and studied in Britain for most of his life, Max Muller as stating, "The Vedanta philosophy has not neglected the important sphere of ethics; but on the contrary, we find ethics in the beginning, ethics in the middle, and ethics in the end, to say nothing of the fact that minds, so engrossed with divine things as Vedanta philosophers, are not likely to fall victims to the ordinary temptations of the world, the flesh, and other powers."

Radhakrishnan then explains how this philosophy requires us (people) to look upon all creations as one. As non-different. This is where he introduces "The Spirit of Abheda". He quotes, "In morals, the individual is enjoined to cultivate a Spirit of Abheda, or non-difference." Thus he mentions how this "naturally leads to the ethics of love and brotherhood".

"Every other individual is to be regarded as your co-equal, and treated as an end, not a means."

"The Vedanta requires us to respect human dignity and demands the recognition of man as man."

Personal life

Radhakrishnan was married to Sivakamu (1893–1956) in May 1903, a distant cousin, at the age of 14, when she was aged 10. As per tradition the marriage was arranged by the family. The couple had five daughters named Padmavati, Rukmini, Sushila, Sundari and Shakuntala. They also had a son named Sarvepalli Gopal who went on to a notable career as a historian. Many of Radhakrishnan's family members including his grandchildren and great-grandchildren have pursued a wide range of careers in academia, public policy, medicine, law, banking, business, publishing and other fields across the world. Former India cricketer & NCA director VVS Laxman is his great-grandnephew. Sivakamu died on 26 November 1956. They were married for about 53 years.

Academic career

In April 1909, Radhakrishnan was appointed to the Department of Philosophy at the Madras Presidency College. Thereafter, in 1918, he was selected as Professor of Philosophy by the University of Mysore, where he taught at its Maharaja's College, Mysore. By that time he had written many articles for journals of repute like The Quest, Journal of Philosophy and the International Journal of Ethics. He also completed his first book, The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. He believed Tagore's philosophy to be the "genuine manifestation of the Indian spirit". His second book, The Reign of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy was published in 1920.

In 1921 he was appointed as a professor in philosophy to occupy the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta. He represented the University of Calcutta at the Congress of the Universities of the British Empire in June 1926 and the International Congress of Philosophy at Harvard University in September 1926. Another important academic event during this period was the invitation to deliver the Hibbert Lecture on the ideals of life which he delivered at Manchester College, Oxford in 1929 and which was subsequently published in book form as An Idealist View of Life.

In 1929 Radhakrishnan was invited to take the post vacated by Principal J. Estlin Carpenter at Manchester College. This gave him the opportunity to lecture to the students of the University of Oxford on Comparative Religion. For his services to education he was knighted by George V in the June 1931 Birthday Honours, and formally invested with his honour by the Governor-General of India, the Earl of Willingdon, in April 1932. However, he ceased to use the title after Indian independence, preferring instead his academic title of 'Doctor'.

He was the vice-chancellor of Andhra University from 1931 to 1936. During his first convocation address, he spoke about his native Andhra as,

We, the Andhras, are fortunately situated in some respects. I firmly believe that if any part of India is capable of developing an effective sense of unity it is in Andhra. The hold of conservatism is not strong. Our generosity of spirit and openness of mind are well -known. Our social instinct and suggestibility are still active. Our moral sense and sympathetic imagination are not much warped by dogma. Our women are relatively more free. Love of the mother-tongue binds us all.

In 1936 Radhakrishnan was named Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at the University of Oxford, and was elected a Fellow of All Souls College. That same year, and again in 1937, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, although this nomination process, as for all laureates, was not public at the time. Further nominations for the awards continued steadily throughout the 1960s. In 1939 Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya invited him to succeed him as the Vice-Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University (BHU). He served as its Vice-Chancellor till January 1948.

Political career

Radhakrishnan started his political career "rather late in life", after his successful academic career. His international authority preceded his political career. He was one of those stalwarts who attended Andhra Mahasabha in 1928 where he seconded the idea of renaming Ceded Districts division of Madras Presidency as Rayalaseema. In 1931 he was nominated to the League of Nations Committee for Intellectual Cooperation, where after "in Western eyes he was the recognized Hindu authority on Indian ideas and a persuasive interpreter of the role of Eastern institutions in contemporary society."

When India became independent in 1947, Radhakrishnan represented India at UNESCO (1946–52) and was later Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union, from 1949 to 1952. He was also elected to the Constituent Assembly of India. Radhakrishnan was elected as the first Vice President of India in 1952, and elected as the second President of India (1962–1967). Radhakrishnan did not have a background in the Congress Party, nor was he active in the Indian independence movement. He was the politician in shadow. His motivation lay in his pride of Hindu culture, and the defence of Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism". According to the historian Donald Mackenzie Brown,

He had always defended Hindu culture against uninformed Western criticism and had symbolized the pride of Indians in their own intellectual traditions.

Teacher's Day

When Radhakrishnan became the President of India, some of his students and friends requested him to allow them to celebrate his birthday, on 5 September. He replied,

Instead of celebrating my birthday, it would be my proud privilege if September 5th is observed as Teachers' Day.

His birthday has since been celebrated as Teacher's Day in India.

Charity

Along with G. D. Birla and some other social workers in the pre-independence era, Radhakrishnan formed the Krishnarpan Charity Trust.

Role in Constituent Assembly

He was against State institutions imparting denominational religious instruction as it was against the secular vision of the Indian State.

Global policy

Along with Albert Einstein, Radhakrishnan, the second president of India and the first vice president of India, was one of the sponsors of the Peoples' World Convention (PWC), also known as Peoples' World Constituent Assembly (PWCA), which took place in 1950-51 at Palais Electoral, Geneva, Switzerland.

Philosophy

Radhakrishnan tried to bridge eastern and western thought, defending Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism", but also incorporating Western philosophical and religious thought.

Advaita Vedanta

Radhakrishnan was one of the most prominent spokesmen of Neo-Vedanta. His metaphysics was grounded in Advaita Vedanta, but he reinterpreted Advaita Vedanta for a contemporary understanding. He acknowledged the reality and diversity of the world of experience, which he saw as grounded in and supported by the absolute or Brahman. Radhakrishnan also reinterpreted Shankara's notion of maya. According to Radhakrishnan, maya is not a strict absolute idealism, but "a subjective misperception of the world as ultimately real."

Intuition and religious experience

"Intuition", synonymously called "religious experience", has a central place in Radhakrishnan's philosophy as a source of knowledge which is not mediated by conscious thought. His specific interest in experience can be traced back to the works of William James (1842–1910), F. H. Bradley (1846–1924), Henri Bergson (1859–1941), and Friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925), and to Vivekananda (1863–1902), who had a strong influence on Sarvepalli's thought. According to Radhakrishnan, intuition is of a self-certifying character (svatassiddha), self-evidencing (svāsaṃvedya) and self-luminous (svayam-prakāsa). In his book An Idealist View of Life, he made a case for the importance of intuitive thinking as opposed to purely intellectual forms of thought. According to Radhakrishnan, intuition plays a specific role in all kinds of experience.

Radhakrishnan discernes eight sorts of experience:

1. Cognitive Experience:
2. Sense Experience
3. Discursive Reasoning
4. Intuitive Apprehension
5. Psychic Experience
6. Aesthetic Experience
7. Ethical Experience
8. Religious Experience

Classification of religions

For Radhakrishnan, theology and creeds are intellectual formulations, and symbols of religious experience or "religious intuitions". Radhakrishnan qualified the variety of religions hierarchically according to their apprehension of "religious experience", giving Advaita Vedanta the highest place:

1. The worshippers of the Absolute
2. The worshippers of the personal God
3. The worshippers of the incarnations like Rama, Kṛiṣhṇa, Buddha
4. Those who worship ancestors, deities and sages
5. The worshippers of the petty forces and spirits

Radhakrishnan saw Hinduism as a scientific religion based on facts, apprehended via intuition or religious experience. According to Radhakrishnan, "if philosophy of religion is to become scientific, it must become empirical and found itself on religious experience". He saw this empiricism exemplified in the Vedas:

The truths of the ṛṣis are not evolved as the result of logical reasoning or systematic philosophy but are the products of spiritual intuition, dṛṣti or vision. The ṛṣis are not so much the authors of the truths recorded in the Vedas as the seers who were able to discern the eternal truths by raising their life-spirit to the plane of universal spirit. They are the pioneer researchers in the realm of the spirit who saw more in the world than their followers. Their utterances are not based on transitory vision but on a continuous experience of resident life and power. When the Vedas are regarded as the highest authority, all that is meant is that the most exacting of all authorities is the authority of facts.

From his writings collected as The Hindu View of Life, Upton Lectures, Delivered at Manchester College, Oxford, 1926: "Hinduism insists on our working steadily upwards in improving our knowledge of God. The worshippers of the absolute are of the highest rank; second to them are the worshippers of the personal God; then come the worshippers of the incarnations of Rama, Krishna, Buddha; below them are those who worship deities, ancestors, and sages, and lowest of all are the worshippers of petty forces and spirits. The deities of some men are in water (i.e., bathing places), those of the most advanced are in the heavens, those of the children (in religion) are in the images of wood and stone, but the sage finds his God in his deeper self. The man of action finds his God in fire, the man of feeling in the heart, and the feeble minded in the idol, but the strong in spirit find God everywhere". The seers see the supreme in the self, and not the images."

To Radhakrishnan, Advaita Vedanta was the best representative of Hinduism, as being grounded in intuition, in contrast to the "intellectually mediated interpretations" of other religions. He objected against charges of "quietism" and "world denial", instead stressing the need and ethic of social service, giving a modern interpretation of classical terms as tat-tvam-asi. According to Radhakrishnan, Vedanta offers the most direct intuitive experience and inner realisation, which makes it the highest form of religion:

The Vedanta is not a religion, but religion itself in its most universal and deepest significance.

Radhakrishnan saw other religions, "including what Dr. S. Radhakrishnan understands as lower forms of Hinduism," as interpretations of Advaita Vedanta, thereby Hinduising all religions.

Although Radhakrishnan was well-acquainted with western culture and philosophy, he was also critical of them. He stated that Western philosophers, despite all claims to objectivity, were influenced by theological influences of their own culture.

Influence

Radhakrishnan was one of world's best and most influential twentieth-century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy.

Radhakrishnan's defence of the Hindu traditions has been highly influential, both in India and the western world. In India, Radhakrishnan's ideas contributed to the formation of India as a nation-state. Radhakrishnan's writings contributed to the hegemonic status of Vedanta as "the essential world view of Hinduism". In the western world, Radhakrishnan's interpretations of the Hindu tradition, and his emphasis on "spiritual experience", made Hinduism more readily accessible for a western audience, and contributed to the influence Hinduism has on modern spirituality:

In figures such as Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan we witness Vedanta traveling to the West, where it nourished the spiritual hunger of Europeans and Americans in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Appraisal

Radhakrishnan has been highly appraised. According to Paul Artur Schillp:

Nor would it be possible to find a more excellent example of a living "bridge" between the East and the West than Professor Radhakrishnan. Steeped, as Radhakrishnan has been since his childhood, in the life, traditions, and philosophical heritage of his native India, he has also struck deep roots in Western philosophy, which he has been studying tirelessly ever since his undergraduate college-days in Madras Christian College, and in which he is as thoroughly at home as any Western philosopher.

And according to Hawley:

Radhakrishnan's concern for experience and his extensive knowledge of the Western philosophical and literary traditions has earned him the reputation of being a bridge-builder between India and the West. He often appears to feel at home in the Indian as well as the Western philosophical contexts, and draws from both Western and Indian sources throughout his writing. Because of this, Radhakrishnan has been held up in academic circles as a representative of Hinduism to the West. His lengthy writing career and his many published works have been influential in shaping the West's understanding of Hinduism, India, and the East.

Criticism and context

Radhakrishnan's ideas have also received criticism and challenges, for their perennialist and universalist claims, and the use of an east–west dichotomy.

Perennialism

According to Radhakrishnan, there is not only an underlying "divine unity" from the seers of the Upanishads up to modern Hindus like Tagore and Gandhi, but also "an essential commonality between philosophical and religious traditions from widely disparate cultures." This is also a major theme in the works of Rene Guenon, the Theosophical Society, and the contemporary popularity of eastern religions in modern spirituality. Since the 1970s, the Perennialist position has been criticised for its essentialism. Social-constructionists give an alternative approach to religious experience, in which such "experiences" are seen as being determined and mediated by cultural determinants:

As Michaels notes:

Religions, too, rely not so much on individual experiences or on innate feelings – like a sensus numinosus (Rudolf Otto) – but rather on behavioral patterns acquired and learned in childhood.

Rinehart also points out that "perennialist claims notwithstanding, modern Hindu thought is a product of history", which "has been worked out and expressed in a variety of historical contexts over the preceding two hundreds years." This is also true for Radhakrishan, who was educated by missionaries and, like other neo-Vedantins, used the prevalent western understanding of India and its culture to present an alternative to the western critique.

Universalism, communalism and Hindu nationalism

According to Richard King, the elevation of Vedanta as the essence of Hinduism, and Advaita Vedanta as the "paradigmatic example of the mystical nature of the Hindu religion" by colonial Indologists but also neo-Vedantins served well for the Hindu nationalists, who further popularised this notion of Advaita Vedanta as the pinnacle of Indian religions. It

...provided an opportunity for the construction of a nationalist ideology that could unite Hindus in their struggle against colonial oppression.

This "opportunity" has been criticised. According to Sucheta Mazumdar and Vasant Kaiwar,

... Indian nationalist leaders continued to operate within the categorical field generated by politicized religion Extravagant claims were made on behalf of Oriental civilization. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's statement – "he Vedanta is not a religion but religion itself in its "most universal and deepest significance" – is fairly typical.

Rinehart also criticises the inclusivity of Radhakrishnan's approach, since it provides "a theological scheme for subsuming religious difference under the aegis of Vedantic truth." According to Rinehart, the consequence of this line of reasoning is communalism, the idea that "all people belonging to one religion have common economic, social and political interests and these interests are contrary to the interests of those belonging to another religion." Rinehart notes that Hindu religiosity plays an important role in the nationalist movement, and that "the neo-Hindu discourse is the unintended consequence of the initial moves made by thinkers like Rammohan Roy and Vivekananda." Yet Rinehart also points out that it is

...clear that there isn't a neat line of causation that leads from the philosophies of Rammohan Roy, Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan to the agenda of militant Hindus.

Post-colonialism

Colonialism left deep traces in the hearts and minds of the Indian people, influencing the way they understood and represented themselves. The influences of "colonialist forms of knowledge" can also be found in the works of Radhakrishnan. According to Hawley, Radhakrishnan's division between East and West, the East being spiritual and mystical, and the West being rationalist and logical in its forms of knowledge, was constructed during the 18th and 19th centuries. Arguably, these characterisations are "imagined" in the sense that they reflect the philosophical and religious realities of neither "East' nor West."

Since the 1990s, the colonial influences on the 'construction' and 'representation' of Hinduism have been the topic of debate among scholars of Hinduism. Western Indologists are trying to come to more neutral and better-informed representations of India and its culture, while Indian scholars are trying to establish forms of knowledge and understanding which are grounded in and informed by Indian traditions, instead of being dominated by western forms of knowledge and understanding.

Feud with The Modern Review

Radhakrishnan's appointment, as a southerner, to "the most important chair of philosophy in India" in the north, was resented by a number of people from the Bengali intellectual elite, and The Modern Review, which was critical of the appointment of non-Bengalis, became the main vehicle of criticism. Soon after his arrival in Calcutta in 1921, Radhakrishnan's writings were regularly criticised in The Modern Review. When Radhakrishnan published his Indian Philosophy in two volumes (1923 and 1927), The Modern Review questioned his use of sources, criticising the lack of references to Bengali scholars. Yet, in an editor's note, The Modern Review acknowledged that "As professor's Radhakrishnan's book has not been received for review in this Journal, The Modern Review is not in a position to form any opinion on it."

In the January 1929 issue of The Modern Review, the Bengali philosopher Jadunath Sinha made the claim that parts of his 1922 doctoral thesis, Indian Psychology of Perception, published in 1925, were copied by his teacher Radhakrishnan into the chapter on "The Yoga system of Patanjali" in his book Indian Philosophy II, published in 1927. Sinha and Radhakrishnan exchanged several letters in the Modern Review, in which Sinha compared parts of his thesis with Radhakrishnan's publication, presenting altogether 110 instances of "borrowings." Radhakrishnan felt compelled to respond, stating that Sinha and he had both used the same classical texts, that his translations were standard translations, and that similarities in translations were therefore unavoidable. He further argued that he was lecturing on the subject before publishing his book, and that his book was ready for publication in 1924, before Sinha's thesis was published.

Scholars such as Kuppuswami Sastri, Ganganath Jha, and Nalini Ganguli confirmed that Radhakrishnan was distributing the notes in question since 1922. Ramananda Chatterjee, the editor of The Modern Review, refused to publish a letter by Nalini Ganguli confirming this fact, while continuing publishing Sinha's letters. The General Editor of Radhakrishnan's publisher, professor Muirhead, further confirmed that the publication was delayed for three years, due to his stay in the United States.

In Summer 1929, the dispute escalated into a juristic fight. Responding to the alleged "systematic effort to destroy Radhakrishnan's reputation as a scholar and a public figure," Radhakrishnan filed a suit for defamation of character against Sinha and Chatterjee, demanding Rs. 100,000 for the damage done, and Sinha filed a case against Radhakrishnan for copyright infringement, demanding Rs. 20,000. The suits were settled in May 1933, the terms of the settlement were not disclosed, and "all the allegations made in the pleadings and in the columns of the Modern Review were withdrawn."

Awards and honours

National honours

•  India:
  • Bharat Ratna (1954)
•  British India:
  • Knight Bachelor (1931)

Foreign honours

•  Mexico:
  • Order of the Aztec Eagle, Sash First Class (1954)
•  West Germany:
  • Pour le Mérite, For Sciences and Arts (1954)
•  United Kingdom:
  • Order of Merit, Honorary Member (1963)

Other awards

• A portrait of Radhakrishnan adorns the Chamber of the Rajya Sabha.
• 1938: elected Fellow of the British Academy.
• 1947: election as Permanent Member of the Institut International de Philosophie.
• 1959: Goethe Plaque of the City of Frankfurt.
• 1961: the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
• 1962: Institution of Teacher's Day in India, yearly celebrated at 5 September, Radhakrishnan's birthday, in honour of Radhakrishnan's belief that "teachers should be the best minds in the country".
• 1968: Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, The highest honour conferred by the Sahitya Akademi on a writer (he is the first person to get this award)
• 1975: the Templeton Prize in 1975, a few months before his death, for advocating non-aggression and conveying "a universal reality of God that embraced love and wisdom for all people." He donated the entire amount of the Templeton Prize to Oxford University.
• 1989: institution of the Radhakrishnan Scholarships by Oxford University in the memory of Radhakrishnan. The scholarships were later renamed the "Radhakrishnan Chevening Scholarships".
• He was nominated sixteen times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and eleven times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Commemorative stamps released by India Post (by year) -

• 1967
• 1989

In popular culture

Sarvepalli Radhakrishna (1988) is a documentary film about Radhakrishnan, directed by N. S. Thapa, produced by the Government of India's Films Division.

Quotes

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• "It is not God that is worshipped but the authority that claims to speak in His name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority not violation of integrity."
• "Reading a book gives us the habit of solitary reflection and true enjoyment."
• "When we think we know, we cease to learn."
• "A literary genius, it is said, resembles all, though no one resembles him."
• "There is nothing wonderful in my saying that Jainism was in existence long before the Vedas were composed."
• "A life of joy and happiness is possible only on the basis of knowledge.
• "If he does not fight, it is not because he rejects all fighting as futile, but because he has finished his fights. He has overcome all dissensions between himself and the world and is now at rest... We shall have wars and soldiers so long as the brute in us is untamed."

Bibliography

Works by Radhakrishnan

• The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (1918), Macmillan, London, 276 pages
• Radhakrishnan, S. (October 1922). "The Hindu Dharma". International Journal of Ethics. 33 (1). Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1–22. doi:10.1086/intejethi.33.1.2377174. ISSN 1539-297X. JSTOR 2377174. S2CID 144844920.
• Indian Philosophy (1923) Vol. 1, 738 pages. (1927) Vol. 2, 807 pages. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1st edition).
• The Hindu View of Life (1927), London: Allen & Unwin. 92 pages
• Indian Religious Thought (2016), Orient Paperbacks, ISBN 978-81-222042-4-7
• Religion, Science and Culture (2010), Orient Paperbacks, ISBN 978-81-222001-2-6
• An Idealist View of Life (1929), 351 pages
• Kalki, or the Future of Civilization (1929), 96 pages
• Gautama the Buddha (London: Milford, 1938); 1st India ed., 1945.
• Eastern Religions and Western Thought (1939), Oxford University Press, 396 pages
• Religion and Society (1947), George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 242 pages
• The Bhagavadgītā: with an introductory essay, Sanskrit text, English translation and notes (1948), 388 pages
• The Dhammapada (1950), 194 pages, Oxford University Press
• The Principal Upanishads (1953), 958 pages, HarperCollins Publishers Limited
• Recovery of Faith (1956), 205 pages
• A Source Book in Indian Philosophy (1957), 683 pages, Princeton University Press, with Charles A. Moore as co-editor.
• The Brahma Sutra: The Philosophy of Spiritual Life. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1959, 606 pages.
• Religion, Science & Culture (1968), 121 pages

Biographies and monographs on Radhakrishnan

Several books have been published on Radhakrishnan:

• Murty, K. Satchidananda; Ashok Vohra (1990). Radhakrishnan: his life and ideas. SUNY Press. ISBN 9780791403440.
• Minor, Robert Neil (1987). Radhakrishnan: a religious biography. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-554-5.
• Gopal, Sarvepalli (1989). Radhakrishnan: a biography. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-562999-X.
• Pappu, S.S. Rama Rao (1995). New Essays in the Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Delhi: South Asia Books. ISBN 978-81-7030-461-6.
• Parthasarathi, G.; Chattopadhyaya, Debi Prasad, eds. (1989). Radhakrishnan: centenary volume. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

See also

• List of Indian writers
• List of members of the Order of Merit
• List of recipients of the Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts
• Indian philosophy
• Vedanta Society
• Postcolonialism
• Sarvepalli Gopal

Citations

Notes

1. Radhakrishnan's wife's name is spelled differently in different sources, perhaps because a common Telugu spelling is Sivamma. It is spelled Sivakamu by Sarvepalli Gopal (1989); Sivakamuamma by Mamta Anand (2006); and still differently by others.
2. Neo-Vedanta seems to be closer to Bhedabheda-Vedanta than to Shankara's Advaita Vedanta, with the acknowledgement of the reality of the world. Nicholas F. Gier: "Ramakrsna, Svami Vivekananda, and Aurobindo (I also include M.K. Gandhi) have been lvhfgvùhabeled "neo-Vedantists," a philosophy that rejects the Advaitins' claim that the world is illusory. Aurobindo, in his The Life Divine, declares that he has moved from Sankara's "universal illusionism" to his own "universal realism" (2005: 432), defined as metaphysical realism in the European philosophical sense of the term."
3. This qualification is not unique to Radhakrishnan. It was developed by nineteenth-century Indologists, and was highly influential in the understanding of Hinduism, both in the west and in India.Hinduism Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History
4. Anubhava is a central term in Shankara's writings. According to several modern interpretators, especially Radakrishnan, Shankara emphasises the role of personal experience (anubhava) in ascertaining the validity of knowledge. Yet, according to Rambacham himself, sruti, or textual authority, is the main source of knowledge for Shankara.
5. Sweetman: "he supposed quietist and conservative nature of Vedantic thought"
6. See, especially, Steven T. Katz:
   • Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (Oxford University Press, 1978)
   • Mysticism and Religious Traditions (Oxford University Press, 1983)
   • Mysticism and Language (Oxford University Press, 1992)
   • Mysticism and Sacred Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2000)
7. Rinehart: "Though neo-Hindu authors prefer the idiom of tolerance to that of inclusivism, it is clear that what is advocated is less a secular view of toleration than a theological scheme for subsuming religious difference under the aegis of Vedantic truth. Thus Radhakrishnan's view of experience as the core of religious truth effectively leads to harmony only when and if other religions are willing to assume a position under the umbrella of Vedanta. We might even say that the theme of neo-Hindu tolerance provided the Hindu not simply with a means to claiming the right to stand alongside the other world religions, but with a strategy for promoting Hinduism as the ultimate form of religion itself."
8. Neither is Radhakrishnan's "use" of religion in the defence of Asian culture and society against colonialism unique for his person, or India in general. The complexities of Asian nationalism are to be seen and understood in the context of colonialism, modernisation and nation-building. See, for example, Anagarika Dharmapala, for the role of Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lankese struggle for independence, and D.T. Suzuki, who conjuncted Zen to Japanese nationalism and militarism, in defence against both western hegemony and the pressure on Japanese Zen during the Meiji Restoration to conform to Shinbutsu Bunri.
9. Sweetman mentions:
   • Wilhelm Halbfass (1988), India and Europe
   • IXth European Conference on Modern Asian Studies in Heidelberg (1989), Hinduism Reconsidered
   • Ronald Inden, Imagining India
   • Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament
   • Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron, Representing Hinduism
   • S.N. Balagangadhara, The Heathen in his Blindness...
   • Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India
   • Richard King (1989), Orientalism and religion
   
   See also Postcolonialism and Mrinal Kaud, The "Pizza Effect" in Indian Philosophy
10. The timeline is not clear from these sources. According to Gopal, Radhakrishnan filed his lawsuit in the summer of 1929, to which Sinha filed a clounter-claim. According to Minor and Murty & Vohra, Sinha filed a lawsuit first, to which Radhakrishnan responded.
11. Ceased to use the pre-nominal of Sir in 1947, following the independence of India
12. "Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was President of India from 1962 to 1967. An Oxford Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics, he consistently advocated non-aggression in India's conflicts with neighbouring Pakistan. His accessible writings underscored his country's religious heritage and sought to convey a universal reality of God that embraced love and wisdom for all people."

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External links

• Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Works by or about Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan at the Internet Archive
• "Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan- The philosopher president", Press Information Bureau, Government of India
• "Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888—1975)" by Michael Hawley, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• S. Radhakrishnan materials in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)

Links to related articles

v t e Presidents of India List Presidents Rajendra Prasad Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Zakir Husain V. V. Giri Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Neelam Sanjiva Reddy Zail Singh Ramaswamy Venkataraman Shankar Dayal Sharma K. R. Narayanan A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Presidency Pratibha Patil Presidency Pranab Mukherjee Presidency Ram Nath Kovind Presidency Droupadi Murmu (Incumbent) Presidency Acting V. V. Giri Mohammad Hidayatullah B. D. Jatti Things named after presidents Residence Spouse Category v t e Vice presidents of India List Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Zakir Husain V. V. Giri Gopal Swarup Pathak B. D. Jatti Mohammad Hidayatullah Ramaswamy Venkataraman Shankar Dayal Sharma K. R. Narayanan Krishan Kant Bhairon Singh Shekhawat Mohammad Hamid Ansari Venkaiah Naidu Jagdeep Dhankhar (Incumbent) Residence Spouse v t e Recipients of Bharat Ratna Award 1954–1960 C. Rajagopalachari, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and C. V. Raman (1954) Bhagwan Das, M. Visvesvaraya, and Jawaharlal Nehru (1955) Govind Ballabh Pant (1957) Dhondo Keshav Karve (1958) 1961–1980 Bidhan Chandra Roy, and Purushottam Das Tandon (1961) Rajendra Prasad (1962) Zakir Husain, and Pandurang Vaman Kane (1963) Lal Bahadur Shastri (1966) Indira Gandhi (1971) V. V. Giri (1975) K. Kamaraj (1976) Mother Teresa (1980) 1981–2000 Vinoba Bhave (1983) Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987) M. G. Ramachandran (1988) B. R. Ambedkar, and Nelson Mandela (1990) Rajiv Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel, and Morarji Desai (1991) Abul Kalam Azad, J. R. D. Tata and Satyajit Ray (1992) Gulzarilal Nanda, Aruna Asaf Ali, and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (1997) M. S. Subbulakshmi, and C. Subramaniam (1998) Jayaprakash Narayan, Amartya Sen, Gopinath Bordoloi, and Ravi Shankar (1999) 2001–2020 Lata Mangeshkar, and Bismillah Khan (2001) Bhimsen Joshi (2008) C. N. R. Rao, and Sachin Tendulkar (2014) Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Madan Mohan Malaviya (2015) Nanaji Deshmukh, Bhupen Hazarika, and Pranab Mukherjee (2019) 2021–2040 Karpoori Thakur, Lal Krishna Advani, Charan Singh, P. V. Narasimha Rao, and M. S. Swaminathan (2024) v t e Templeton Prize laureates 1970s Mother Teresa (1973) Brother Roger (1974) Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1975) Leo Josef Suenens (1976) Chiara Lubich (1977) Thomas F. Torrance (1978) Nikkyō Niwano (1979) 1980s Ralph Wendell Burhoe (1980) Cicely Saunders (1981) Billy Graham (1982) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1983) Michael Bourdeaux (1984) Alister Hardy (1985) James I. McCord (1986) Stanley Jaki (1987) Inamullah Khan (1988) Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker & George MacLeod (1989) 1990s Baba Amte & Charles Birch (1990) Immanuel Jakobovits (1991) Kyung-Chik Han (1992) Charles Colson (1993) Michael Novak (1994) Paul Davies (1995) Bill Bright (1996) Pandurang Shastri Athavale (1997) Sigmund Sternberg (1998) Ian Barbour (1999) 2000s Freeman Dyson (2000) Arthur Peacocke (2001) John Polkinghorne (2002) Holmes Rolston III (2003) George F. R. Ellis (2004) Charles H. Townes (2005) John D. Barrow (2006) Charles Taylor (2007) Michał Heller (2008) Bernard d'Espagnat (2009) 2010s Francisco J. Ayala (2010) Martin Rees (2011) 14th Dalai Lama (2012) Desmond Tutu (2013) Tomáš Halík (2014) Jean Vanier (2015) Jonathan Sacks (2016) Alvin Plantinga (2017) Abdullah II of Jordan (2018) Marcelo Gleiser (2019) 2020s Francis Collins (2020) Jane Goodall (2021) Frank Wilczek (2022) Edna Adan Ismail (2023) v t e Modern Hindu writers (1848 to date) Hinduism Hinduism in the West Indian philosophy Indian religions Religious writers Mirra Alfassa (The Mother) Sri Anirvan Sri Aurobindo Ananda Coomaraswamy Dayananda Eknath Easwaran Satsvarupa dasa Goswami Mahendranath Gupta Jiddu Krishnamurti Nisargadatta Maharaj Ramana Maharshi A. G. Mohan Sister Nivedita Swami Prabhavananda A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada Krishna Prem Swami Rama Srivatsa Ramaswami Swami Ramdas Chinmayananda Saraswati Dayananda Saraswati (Arya Samaj) Krishnananda Saraswati Sivananda Saraswati Swami Satprakashananda Swami Shraddhanand Ram Swarup Swami Vivekananda Paramahansa Yogananda Political writers Mahatma Gandhi François Gautier Sita Ram Goel Ram Gopal Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Arun Shourie Bal Gangadhar Tilak Kartik Oraon Vinayak Damodar Savarkar Jaswant Singh Literary writers Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay Ramdhari Singh Dinkar C. Rajagopalachari K. D. Sethna Amish Tripathi Vinayak Damodar Savarkar Westerners influenced by Hinduism Annie Besant Helena Blavatsky Deepak Chopra Aleister Crowley Ram Dass Wayne Dyer T. S. Eliot R.W. Emerson Allen Ginsberg René Guénon George Harrison Aldous Huxley Christopher Isherwood David Lynch André Malraux Henry Miller Maria Montessori H.S. Olcott Oppenheimer Helena Roerich Romain Rolland Arthur Schopenhauer Erwin Schrödinger Thoreau Leo Tolstoy Voltaire Alan Watts Ken Wilber W. B. Yeats Scholars Alain Daniélou S. N. Balagangadhara Michel Danino Paul Deussen Dharampal Mircea Eliade Sister Gargi Georg Feuerstein Meenakshi Jain Klaus Klostermaier Hajime Nakamura Anantanand Rambachan Arvind Sharma Graham Schweig Lists List of modern Eastern religions writers List of writers on Hinduism Hinduism Portal India Portal v t e Sahitya Akademi Fellowship 1968–1980 Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1968) D. R. Bendre, Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, Sumitranandan Pant, C. Rajagopalachari (1969) Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, Viswanatha Satyanarayana (1970) Kaka Kalelkar, Gopinath Kaviraj, Gurbaksh Singh, Kalindi Charan Panigrahi (1971) Masti Venkatesha Iyengar, Mangharam Udharam Malkani, Nilmoni Phukan, Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi, Sukumar Sen, V. R. Trivedi (1973) T. P. Meenakshisundaram (1975) Atmaram Ravaji Deshpande, Jainendra Kumar, Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa 'Kuvempu', V. Raghavan, Mahadevi Varma (1979) 1981–2000 Umashankar Joshi, K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, K. Shivaram Karanth (1985) Mulk Raj Anand, Vinayaka Krishna Gokak, Laxmanshastri Balaji Joshi, Amritlal Nagar, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, Annada Shankar Ray (1989) Nagarjun, Balamani Amma, Ashapurna Devi, Qurratulain Hyder, Vishnu Bhikaji Kolte, Kanhu Charan Mohanty, P. T. Narasimhachar, R. K. Narayan, Harbhajan Singh (1994) Jayakanthan, Vinda Karandikar, Vidya Niwas Mishra, Subhash Mukhopadhyay, Raja Rao, Sachidananda Routray, Krishna Sobti (1996) Syed Abdul Malik, K. S. Narasimhaswamy, Gunturu Seshendra Sarma, Rajendra Shah, Ram Vilas Sharma, N. Khelchandra Singh (1999) Ramchandra Narayan Dandekar, Rehman Rahi (2000) 2001–present Ram Nath Shastri (2001) Kaifi Azmi, Govind Chandra Pande, Nilamani Phookan, Bhisham Sahni (2002) Kovilan, U. R. Ananthamurthy, Vijaydan Detha, Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Amrita Pritam, Shankha Ghosh, Nirmal Verma (2004) Manoj Das, Vishnu Prabhakar (2006) Anita Desai, Kartar Singh Duggal, Ravindra Kelekar (2007) Gopi Chand Narang, Ramakanta Rath (2009) Chandranath Mishra Amar, Kunwar Narayan, Bholabhai Patel, Kedarnath Singh, Khushwant Singh (2010) Raghuveer Chaudhari, Arjan Hasid, Sitakant Mahapatra, M. T. Vasudevan Nair, Asit Rai, Satya Vrat Shastri (2013) Santeshivara Lingannaiah Bhyrappa, C. Narayana Reddy (2014) Nirendranath Chakravarty, Gurdial Singh (2016) Honorary Fellows Léopold Sédar Senghor (1974) Edward C. Dimock, Jr., Daniel H. H. Ingalls Sr., Kamil Zvelebil, Ji Xianlin (1996) Vassilis Vitsaxis, Eugene Chelyshev (2002) Ronald E. Asher (2007) Abhimanyu Unnuth (2013) Premchand Fellowship Intizar Hussain (2005), Kishwar Naheed (2016) Ananda Coomaraswamy Fellowship Senake Bandaranayake, Chie Nakane, Azad N. Shamatov (1996) v t e Social philosophy Concepts Agency Anomie Convention Cosmopolitanism Customs Cultural heritage Culturalism Inter Mono Multi Culture Counter Familialism History Honour Human nature Identity Formation Ideology Institutions Invisible hand Loyalty Modernity Morality Public Mores National character Natural law Reification Ressentiment Rights Sittlichkeit Social alienation Social norms Spontaneous order Stewardship Traditions Values Family Volksgeist Worldview Schools Budapest School Catholic social teaching Distributism Communitarianism Confucianism Conservatism Social Frankfurt School Personalism Philosophers Ancient Augustine Cicero Confucius Lactantius Laozi Mencius Mozi Origen Philo Plato Polybius Tertullian Thucydides Xunzi Medieval Alpharabius Aquinas Avempace Bruni Dante Gelasius Ibn Khaldun Maimonides Muhammad Photios Plethon Ibn Tufayl Early modern Calvin Erasmus Guicciardini Locke Luther Milton Montaigne Müntzer 18th and 19th centuries Arnold Bentham Bonald Burke Carlyle Comte Condorcet Emerson Engels Fichte Fourier Franklin Hegel Helvétius Herder Hume Jefferson Kant Kierkegaard Le Bon Le Play Marx Mill Nietzsche Owen Renan Rousseau Royce Ruskin Smith Spencer de Staël Stirner Taine Thoreau Tocqueville Vico Vivekananda Voltaire 20th and 21st centuries Adorno Agamben Arendt Aron Badiou Baudrillard Bauman Benoist Berlin Butler Camus de Beauvoir Debord Deleuze Dewey Du Bois Durkheim Eco Evola Foucault Fromm Gandhi Gehlen Gentile Gramsci Guénon Habermas Han Heidegger Hoppe Irigaray Kirk Kołakowski Kropotkin Land Lasch MacIntyre Marcuse Maritain Negri Niebuhr Nussbaum Oakeshott Ortega Pareto Polanyi Radhakrishnan Röpke Santayana Scruton Shariati Simmel Skinner Sombart Sowell Spengler Taylor Voegelin Walzer Weber Weil Zinn Žižek Works De Officiis (44 BC) Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486) A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) Democracy in America (1835–1840) Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935) The Second Sex (1949) One-Dimensional Man (1964) The Society of the Spectacle (1967) The History of Sexuality (1976) The Culture of Narcissism (1979) A Conflict of Visions (1987) The Closing of the American Mind (1987) Gender Trouble (1990) The Malaise of Modernity (1991) Intellectuals and Society (2010) See also Agnotology Axiology Critical theory Cultural criticism Cultural pessimism Ethics Historism Historicism Humanities Philosophy of culture Philosophy of education Philosophy of history Political philosophy Social criticism Social science Social theory Sociology Category

• Biography
• India
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• Politics
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• Religion

• 1888 births
• 1975 deaths
• 20th-century Indian philosophers
• Advaitin philosophers
• Madras Christian College alumni
• Ambassadors of India to the Soviet Union
• Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford
• 20th-century Hindu philosophers and theologians
• Honorary members of the Order of Merit
• 20th-century Indian educational theorists
• Indian Hindus
• Indian Knights Bachelor
• Telugu people
• Neo-Advaita teachers
• Members of the Constituent Assembly of India
• Presidents of India
• Recipients of the Bharat Ratna
• Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)
• Templeton Prize laureates
• Vice presidents of India
• Vice Chancellors of Banaras Hindu University
• University of Calcutta alumni
• Academic staff of the University of Calcutta
• Academic staff of the University of Mysore
• Academic staff of Presidency College, Chennai
• Academic staff of Maharaja's College, Mysore
• Spalding Professors of Eastern Religion and Ethics
• University of Madras alumni
• People from Tiruvallur district
• Vice-chancellors of Andhra University
• Translators of the Bhagavad Gita
• People from Cuddalore district
• Honorary Fellows of the British Academy
• Andhra movement