Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Subject: History

Context: The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has greeted the teaching fraternity on the occasion of Teachers’ Day. The Prime Minister has also paid tributes to former President Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan on his Jayanti.

Concept:

• Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, 5 September 1888 – 17 April 1975, was an Indian academic, professor, philosopher, and politician. who served as the first Vice President of India (1952–1962) and the second President of India (1962–1967).
• He was against State institutions imparting denominational religious instruction as it was against the secular vision of the Indian State, in the Constituent assembly
• He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, in 1954.He received a knighthood in 1931 and honorary membership of the British Royal Order of Merit in 1963.He was elected chairman of UNESCO’s executive board in 1948.
• He was one of the founders of Helpage India, a renowned NGO for elderly underprivileged in India.
• He had also formed the Krishnarpan Charity Trust along with Ghanshyam Das Birla and some other social workers in the pre-independence era.
• He was the first Indian to hold a chair at the University of Oxford – the Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics (1936-1952). In 1930, he was appointed Haskell lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University of Chicago.
• His book, ‘The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore’ attracted global attention to Indian philosophy.
• He defended Hinduism against “uninformed Western criticism” and played a major role in the formation of contemporary Hindu identity.
• His other works include Indian Philosophy, (1923-27), The Philosophy of the Upanishads (1924), An Idealist View of Life (1932), Eastern Religions and Western Thought (1939), and East and West: Some Reflections (1955).