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RADHAKRISHNAN
Leader Among Contemporary Philosophers

I had never the privilege of being directly a pupil of Dr. Radhakrishnan, but when I was a student at Calcutta University we used to be proud of the George V Professor of Philosophy–­which was Dr. Radhakrishnan’s designation � and would avidly attend his extra-mural lectures. I knew little of his earlier work on Tagore and on “The Reign of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy�, but I remember having been entranced by his “Hindu View of Life� which incorporated some of his lectures in the United States of America. Already in the late ’Twenties, he was filling brilliantly the role of India’s cultural ambassador abroad.

Though I was not then known personally to him, I owe it to Prof. Radhakrishnan, at least partially, that I was awarded a scholarship which enabled me to go to Oxford in 1929. There, it was my pleasure–and also I must add, pride–to listen to the lectures he gave at Manchester College. They were scintillating, spoken entirely without notes but with an extraordinary sparkle of expression and of thought. In the audience there would be some remarkable people � I distinctly remember how one evening, E. B. Havell, whom India can never forget, asked me why the Professor interpreted anandamas “Perfection�, while he thought it meant “happiness.� I cannot recollect what reply I could then muster, but I now know that in a country whose motto has been �Nalpev Sukhamasti�, the best synonym for anandais “Perfection.�

I can recall, as if it was yesterday, the sermon which Prof. Radhakrishnan gave at Manchester College–a Unitarian Foundation–one Sunday morning in May 1930. It was a lovely summer day, but our thoughts were overborne by happenings in India, where Gandhiji had launched the Civil Disobedience Movement. The Professor was somewhat indisposed, but his spirit outsoared its shadow. And he took as his text “And I say unto you! Overturn.� I write this in a remote place and cannot give the scriptural reference. But I can testify to the glow of spirit which Radhakrishnan’s words brought to at least one in his audience.

It was in Oxford that I got to know him at close quarters and to be, if I may say so, fond of him. When, years later, Prof. Radhakrishnan left Calcutta University, I spoke at a farewell party and said that he was the only great man I knew, to whom I can say anything to his face! I can add now another great man to this list of mine, however infelicitously. I might have put the position. But I am not writing here on my personal relations with Prof. Radhakrishnan.

I have to note, however, that he gave me my first job home, an appointment at Andhra University, even before I had left Europe. And at the Andhra University, I spent some delicious days, enjoying a sort of intellectual freedom and spiritual seeking which is, I fear, denied our academies generally. In those days Prof. Radhakrishnan used to represent India on the League of Nations Committee of Intellectual Co-operation, and often in his diplomatic bag, would come books for Andhra University Library which British-Indian customs would never let through, for they were deemed “subversive.� Some years after he and I had both left the university, I went to Waltair and discovered, alas, that a successor of his made them over to what is so peculiarly called the “authorities.�

It is difficult to pack into a few paragraphs what rushes into my mind as I write, but I am sure that in the history of the spoken word, few addresses have been so impressive as Radhakrishnan’s Hibbert Lectures in London, which drew super­lative praise from people, so stern in their intellectual judgement as Bertrand Russell. Some might think the late C. E. M. Joad, a tiresome, but it is necessary to recall his “Counter-attack from the East� to understand something of the impact Radhakrishnan made on the mind of the West in the late ’Thirties. After Tagore, indeed, Radhakrishnan was India’s finest spokesman abroad.

So many notable things have to be skipped, but the shining fact stands out that this man of thought, whose eminence the British Government had recognized with a Knighthood, did not hesitate, when the country called him to join the Constituent Assembly and later, when India was free, to be her diplomatic representative in the Soviet Union.

There we found evidence of the adage �Vidwan Sarvatra Poojyaley�(“The learned are honoured everywhere.�) for while Stalin habitually refused to meet most ambassadors, he showed his esteem for Radhakrishnan and for the country he represented by giving him a special interview. Radhakrishnan’s talents, however, could not be permitted to be employed only abroad, and with the promulgation of the Constitution and the formation of India’s first free Parliament, he became Vice-President, and later President of India.

His Hibbert lectures on The Idealist View of Life, his massive work on “Eastern Religions and Western Thought,� and the exposition of his attitudes in the volume devoted to him as a leader among contemporary philosophers, to mention only some of his more important works, testify to a remarkable intellect and a really opulent mind. One sometimes gets a feeling as if he was an artist who had strayed among the philosophers, who wanted to add a new dimension to thought but, for all the Strength and eloquence of his utterance, was beating his wings luminously but in vain.

For all the equanimity, his words suggested as they rush in a glowing torrent, there seemed at bottom an ache and a spiritual floundering into which the context of a contradictory world compelled him. Perhaps this accounts for the happy understanding that appeared to subsist between him and Jawaharlal Nehru. Perhaps this explains why Radhakrishnan was a restless person­–no artist could feel otherwise � and yet was determined to feel and to convey the stillness that there was in the heart of disquiet.

As President of India, Prof. Radhakrishnan embodied, with more grace and power than anybody else, the spirit of our hoary country, her natural dignity and the compassion that had ever informed her civilization.