Influential Thinkers: S. Radhakrishnan

Table of Contents

Life and Work

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was born of Telegu Brahmin parents in Tiruttani, Tiruvallur district, Tamil Nadu, on 5th September 1888. He had his education in Voorhees College, Vellore, and Madras Christian College, Tambaram. He took his M.A. Degree in Philosophy in 1909. Radhakrishnan was married to Sivakamu, a distant cousin, at the age of 16. As per tradition, the marriage was arranged by the family. The couple had five daughters and a son, Sarvepalli Gopal, who went on to a notable career as a historian. Sivakamu died in 1956. They were married for over 51 years.

From 1909-1917, he taught in the Presidency College, Madras. Then he was transferred to the Arts College, Rajahmundry. He was Professor of Philosophy in the University of Mysore from 1918-1921. He published two books during this time: The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore and The Reign of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy.

Radhakrishnan was Professor of Philosophy in Calcutta University from 1921-1931. During this period, he also occasionally taught at Oxford University. He was Professor of Comparative Religion at Manchester College, Oxford, and also Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford. For some time, he was Vice-Chancellor of the Andhra University at Vizag.

In 1929, Radhakrishnan was invited to take the post vacated by Principal J. Estlin Carpenter at Harris 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’.

In 1936, Radhakrishnan was named Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions 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 award would continue steadily into 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. From 1931-1939, Radhakrishnan served on the League of Nations Committee for Intellectual Co-operation.

In 1941, he was requested to occupy the Sir Sayaji Rao Chair of Indian Culture and Civilization. Thus, he was both Professor and Vice-Chancellor of Benaras Hindu University. Therefore, he had to give up his professorship at Calcutta University, which he held for 20 years.

Radhakrishnan started his political career rather late in life, after his successful academic career. His international authority preceded his political career. He was UNESCO Chairman from 1948-1949, Indian Ambassador to USSR from 1949-1952, Vice President of India from 1952-1962, and President of India from 1962-1967. He was also Chancellor of Delhi University from 1953-1962.

Radhakrishnan died on April 16th, 1975, in Madras. Radhakrishnan did not have a background in the Congress Party, nor was he active in the struggle against British rule. He was the politician in shadow. His motivation lay in his pride of Hindu culture and the defence of Hinduism against “uninformed Western criticism”. As a student, he himself said, “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.”

When he became the President of India, some of his students and friends requested him to allow them to celebrate his birthday on 5th 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 Teachers’ Day in India. Along with Ghanshyam Das Birla and some other social workers in the pre-independence era, Radhakrishnan formed the Krishnarpan Charity Trust.

Radhakrishnan’s Philosophy

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

a) 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.”

b) Intuition and Religious Experience

“Intuition”, or anubhava, 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), Francis Herbert Bradley (1846–1924), Henri Bergson (1859–1941), and Friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925), and to Vivekananda, who had a strong influence on Radhakrishnan’s thought. According to Radhakrishnan, intuition is of a self-certifying character (svatassiddha), self-evidencing (svāsaṃvedya), and self-luminous (svayamprakāsa). In his book An Idealist View of Life, he made a powerful 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 discerns five sorts of experience:

Cognitive Experience: Sense Experience
Discursive Reasoning
Intuitive Apprehension
Psychic Experience
Aesthetic Experience
Ethical Experience
Religious Experience

c) 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:

The worshippers of the Absolute
The worshippers of the personal God
The worshippers of the incarnations like Rama, Krishna, Buddha
Those who worship ancestors, deities, and sages
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, “[i]f 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 he himself understands as lower forms of Hinduism, as interpretations of Advaita Vedanta, thereby Hinduizing 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.

Suggestions for Improvements in Hindu Social Life

Radhakrishnan made several suggestions for the overall improvement in Hindu Social Life. Many of his suggestions were related to the many practices such as:

Animal sacrifices, which he suggested should be given up.
Abolition of the Devadasi system.
Caste system: Removal of innumerable castes and sub-castes, untouchability.
Marriage Laws: Adult marriages and widow remarriages are sanctioned by the Vedas. Divorce should be permitted only in exceptional cases. Monogamy should be established by law.

Evaluation and Criticism

Radhakrishnan was one of India’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 worldview 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.

However, Radhakrishnan’s philosophy has been criticised because of its perennialism. Perennial philosophy, also referred to as Perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a perspective in modern spirituality that views each of the world’s religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown. This is also true for Radhakrishnan, 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. 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.”

Furthermore, colonialism left a deep impact on the Indian people, and as a result, colonialist forms of knowledge can also be found in the works of Radhakrishnan. His division between East and West, the East being spiritual and mystical, and the West being rational and colonialist, was an effect of this post-colonialist thinking. This aspect of Radhakrishnan’s philosophy has also been criticized.

Moreover, Radhakrishnan was also accused of plagiarism by his student Jadunath Sinha, who accused him of copying from his doctoral thesis, Indian Psychology of Perception, published in 1925, in his book Indian Philosophy, published in 1927. Jadunath Sinha filed a case in the Calcutta High Court claiming damages for Rs 20,000. Radhakrishnan filed a counter-case for defamation of character, demanding Rs 100,000 from Sinha. However, the issue was settled out of court.

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