664.Ram Chattopadhyay (1923-1986), 665. Ramchand Samanta(1888-1932), 666. Ram Parui

Ram Chattopadhyay was born in Chandannagar. His ancestors house was at Bongaon.He started his life as a gangman of Railway Authorities. He joined in freedom movement  and organised the young sections of trhe society. They fought against the French  regiment of Malabar and snatched away their rifles. During Quit India movement he disconnected the Railway Telegraph line and was arrested by the police. He joined in Forward bloc in 1948. Later he along Satypriya Banerjee formed "Marxist Forward Bloc". He was State minister in the dept  of Non-military affarairs in 1977.


Ramchand Samanta was born in Midnapore. While participating in Satyagraha movement in 1930, he died by police bullets at Masuria.


Ram Parui was born in Midnapore participated in Salt Satyagraha movement and died by police bullets.

662. Ramkrishna Biswas , 663. Ramkrishna Roy

Ramkrishna Biswas was born in Chittagong.He was a member of secret revolutionary organisation.He was a follower of Masterda and became wounded seriously while preparing bombs. At the instruction of Masterda he and Kali Chakrabarty went to Chandpur station on 1.12.1930 to assassinate inspector general Crage but by mistake they killed police officer Tarini Mukherjee. They were arrested at a distance of 22 miles from the spot. They were hanged till death.



Ramkrishna Roy was born in Midnapore. He was a member of Secret revolutionary organisation. He participated in assassinating District Magistrate of Midnapore, Mr. Burge on 2.9.1933. He was arrested and ordered to be hanged till death in Midnapore jail.

659. Ramkrishna, 660. Ramkrishna Chakrabarty , 661. Ramkrishna Das

Ramakrishna was a member of Gadar revolutionary team of South -East Asia. He was arrested for attempting revolutionary ideas among the soldiers posted in Singapore. He was sent to Andaman in 1915.The jail authority tried to snatch away his sacred thread. To protest this attitude of the authority he resorted to hunger strike in 1919 and died after three months.

Ramkrishna Chakrabarty was born in Dhalghat, Chittagong. He was an active member of revolutionary organisation. He jailed as a rigorous prisoners in 1932 for giving shelter to two revolutionaries of Surya Sen. While he was in Midnapore jail he was tied with chains in his hand and feet.He died in that jail due to attack of TB disease. His mother Shanti Devi was in the same jail for same reason. But she was not allowed to see her dieing son by the authority.


Ramkrishna Das was born in Midnapore. He participated in salt Satyagraha and was wounded by police bullets and died on the very day.

658. Radhabinode Pal, Dr. (1898-1967)

Radha-Binod Pal
Monument honouring Radha Binod Pal, atTokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, Japan
Born	27 January 1886
Died	10 January 1967 (aged 80)
Occupation	Jurist
Nationality	Indian
Alma mater	Presidency College, Calcutta (now Kolkata), and the Law College of the University of Calcutta
Children	Prashanto Pal

Justice Radha Binod Pal (27 January 1886 – 10 January 1967) was an Indian jurist. He was the Indian member appointed to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East's trials of Japanese war crimescommitted during the second World War. Among all the judges of the tribunal, he was the only one who submitted a judgment which insisted all defendants were not guilty. The Yasukuni Shrine and the Kyoto Ryozen Gokoku Shrine has monuments specially dedicated to Justice Pal.

Justice Radhabinod Pal was born in 1886 in a small village called 'Salimpur' under 'Taragunia' union of 'Daulatpur' Upazilla of Kushtia District of East Bengal in British India (present day Bangladesh).

He studied mathematics and constitutional law at Presidency College, Calcutta (now Kolkata), and the Law College of the University of Calcutta. He worked as professor at the Law College of the University of Calcutta from 1923 till 1936. He became a judge of Calcutta High Court in 1941 and Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta in 1944. The Indian government installed him as a legal adviser in 1927 and dispatched him to the Tokyo Trials in 1946. He delivered one of the three dissenting opinions of the Tribunal. He found all the defendants not guilty of Class A war crimes, even though he condemned the Japanese war-time conduct as "devilish and fiendish". He was highly critical of conspiracy and he was unable to apply such a new crime as waging aggressive wars and committing crimes against peace and humanity—Class A war crimes created by the Allies after the war—ex post facto. His reasoning influenced the dissenting opinions of the judges for the Netherlands and France.

Following the war-crimes trials, he was elected to the United Nations' International Law Commission, where he served from 1952 to 1966.

He is the father of renowned barrister, late Pranab Kumar Pal and the father-in-law of renowned lawyer Dr. Debi Prasad Pal.

War Crimes Trial Dissent

While finding that 'the evidence is still overwhelming that atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population of some of the territories occupied by them as also against the prisoners of war', he produced a judgment questioning the legitimacy of the tribunaland its rulings. He held the view that the legitimacy of the tribunal was suspect and questionable, because the spirit of retribution, and not impartial justice, was the underlying criterion for passing the judgment.

He concluded:

"I would hold that every one of the accused must be found not guilty of every one of the charges in the indictment and should be acquitted on all those charges."

Pal never intended to offer a juridical argument on whether a sentence of not guilty would have been a correct one. However, he argued that the United States had clearly provoked the war with Japan and expected Japan to act. .

Pal believed that the Tokyo Trial was incapable of passing a just sentence. He considered the trial to be unjust and unreasonable, contributing nothing to lasting peace. According to his view, the trial was the judgment of the vanquished by the victors; such proceedings, even if clothed in the garb of law, resulted in nothing but the satisfaction of the desire for vengeance. In his lone dissent, he refers to the trial as a "sham employment of legal process for the satisfaction of a thirst for revenge." According to Norimitsu Onishi, while he fully acknowledged Japan’s war atrocities — including the Nanjing massacre — he said they were covered in the Class B and Class C trials.

Furthermore, he believed that the exclusion of Western colonialism and the use of the atom bomb by the United States from the list of crimes, and judges from the vanquished nations on the bench, signified the "failure of the Tribunal to provide anything other than the opportunity for the victors to retaliate."  In this he was not alone among Indian jurists of the time, one prominent Calcutta barrister writing that the Tribunal was little more than "a sword in a wig". Fear of American nuclear power was an international phenomenon following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Judge Pal's typewritten book-length opposition to the decision was formally prohibited from publication by the Occupation forces and was released in 1952 after the occupation ended and a treaty recognizing the legitimacy of the Tokyo Trials was signed by Japan. Pal's publication had also been prohibited in Great Britain, and it remained unpublished in the United States as well. However, a portion of his "original" judgment and copies of the original text in modern editions are available for sale online.

The American occupation of Japan ended in 1952, after Tokyo signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty and accepted the Tokyo trials' verdict. The end of the occupation also lifted a ban on the publication of Judge Pal’s 1,235-page dissent, which Japanese nationalists used as the basis of their argument that the Tokyo trials were biased.

Political background

Pal's lone dissenting opinion, that the Japanese soldiers were only following orders and that the acts committed by them weren't illegal in an indictable sense, was dismissed by the West as a biased judgement by another Asian judge. Pal wrote that the Tokyo Trials were an exercise in victor's justice and that the Allies were equally culpable in acts such as strategic bombings of civilian targets. In 1966, Pal visited Japan and said that he had admired Japan from an early age for being the only Asian nation that "stood up against the West". In spite of his personal opinions about Japan, he deemed it appropriate to dissent from the judgement of his "learned brothers" to embody his love for absolute truth and justice.

Significance in Indo-Japanese relations

Monument of Radha Binod Pal atKyoto Ryozen Gokoku Shrine.

In 1966, the Emperor of Japan conferred upon Pal the First Class of the Order of the Sacred Treasure. Pal is revered by Japanese nationalists and a monument dedicated to him stands on the grounds of the Yasukuni Shrine. The monument was erected after Pal's death.

Judge Pal's dissent is frequently mentioned by Indian diplomats and political leaders in the context of Indo-Japanese friendship and solidarity. For example, on 29 April 2005 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh referred to it as follows, in his remarks at a banquet in New Delhi in honor of the visiting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi:

"It is a noteworthy fact that though we have gone through various phases in our relationship, in times of difficulty, we have stood by each other. It is important to recall that India refused to attend the San Francisco Peace Conference in 1951 and signed a separate Peace Treaty with Japan in 1952". This, Pandit Nehru felt, gave to Japan a proper position of honour and equality among the community of free nations. In that Peace Treaty, India waived all reparation claims against Japan. The dissenting judgement of Justice Radhabinod Pal is well-known to the Japanese people and will always symbolize the affection and regard our people have for your country."

On December 14, 2006, Singh, made a speech in the Japanese Diet. He stated:

"The principled judgment of Justice Radhabinod Pal after the War is remembered even today in Japan. Ladies and Gentlemen, these events reflect the depth of our friendship and the fact that we have stood by each other at critical moments in our history."

On August 23, 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with Pal's son, Prasanta, in Kolkata, during his day long visit to the city. Prasanta Pal, now an octogenarian, presented prime minister Abe with four photographs of his father, of which two photographs were of Radhabinod Pal with Nobusuke Kishi. They chatted for half an hour at a city hotel.

656. Radhacharan Pal (1892-1914) 657. Radhcharan Pramanik (1885-1917)

Radhacharan Pal was born in Faridpur. He was a member of Rasvolutionary Party.He was arrested  in connection with Shialdah Dacoity Case. He died in Alipore Central jail.

Radhcharan Pramanik, in his student his instruc life, came under the influence of Purna Das in 1911 and joined in the organisation of Bagha Jatin at his instruction. He was arrested on 12.2.1915 along with a pistol and several rounds of bullet.He was also convicted with Gardenreach Dacoity Case.The main convicts  Manabendra Roy, Prikshiy Mukhopadhyay, Hiralal das, and Saroj bhushan Das in this case was also arrested. To save them he, under the instruction of Purna Das and Bagha Jatin confessed his guilt that he had done this.As a result the main culprits  were released and he was jailed for 7 years. He died in the jailied without any medical aid.

655. RadhaKrishnan, Sarbapalli (1888-1975)

2nd President of India
In office 13 May 1962 – 13 May 1967
Prime  Minister	Jawaharlal Nehru Gulzarilal Nanda (Acting) Lal Bahadur Shastri Gulzarilal Nanda (Acting) Indira Gandhi
Vice President	Zakir Hussain
Preceded by	Rajendra Prasad
Succeeded by	Zakir Hussain
Vice President of India
In office 13 May 1952 – 12 May 1962
President	Rajendra Prasad
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Zakir Hussain
Personal details
Born	5 September 1888 Thiruttani, Madras Presidency, British India (now in Tamil Nadu, India)
Died	17 April 1975 (aged 86) Madras, Tamil Nadu, India (now Chennai)
Nationality	Indian
Political party	Independent
Spouse(s)	Sivakamu, Lady Radhakrishnan
Children	Five daughters One son
Alma mater	Voorhees College University of Madras
Profession	Philosopher Professor

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan ( 5 September 1888 – 17 April 1975) was an Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President of India (1952–1962) and the second President of India from 1962 to 1967.

One of India's best and most influential twentieth-century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy, his academic appointments included the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta (1921–1932) and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics atUniversity of Oxford (1936–1952).

His philosophy was grounded in Advaita Vedanta, reinterpreting this tradition for a contemporary understanding. He defended Hinduism against "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 the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India, in 1954, and honorary membership of the British Royal Order of Merit in 1963. Radhakrishnan believed that "teachers should be the best minds in the country". Since 1962, his birthday is celebrated in India as Teachers' Day on 5 September.

Early life and education

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was born  at a village near Thiruttani India, about 60 km south of Tirupathi city, near the border of Andhra Pradesh andTamil Nadu states. His father's name was Sarvepalli Veeraswami and his mother's was Sitamma. His early years were spent in Tiruttani and Tirupati. His father was a subordinate revenue official in the service of a local zamindar (landlord). His primary education was at Primary Board High School at Tiruttani. In 1896 he moved to the Hermansburg Evangelical Lutheral Mission School in Tirupati.

Education

Radhakrishnan was awarded scholarships throughout his academic life. He joined Voorhees College in Vellore but switched to the Madras Christian Collegeat the age of 17. He graduated from there in 1906 with a Master's degree in Philosophy, being one of its most distinguished alumni.

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

Radhakrishnan wrote his thesis for the M.A. degree 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." He was afraid that this M.A. thesis would offend his philosophy professor, Dr. Alfred George Hogg. Instead, Hogg commended Radhakrishnan on having done most excellent work. Radhakrishnan's thesis was published when he was only 20. 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 defense of Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism".

Marriage

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. Sarvepalli Gopal went on to a notable career as a historian. Sivakamu died in 1956. They were married for over 51 years.

Academic career

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan drawn by Bujjai and signed by Radhakrishnan in Telugu as "Radhakrishnaiah".

In April 1909, Sarvepalli 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 Harris 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 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'.

He was the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University from 1931 to 1936. 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. 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. In 1931 he was nominated to the League of Nations Committee for International Cooperation, whereafter "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 struggle against British rule. His motivation lay in his pride of Hindu culture, and the defence of Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism". According to 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 he became President, some of his students and friends requested him to allow them to celebrate his birthday, 5 September. He replied,

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

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

Charity

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

As President of India, Radhakrishnan made 11 state visits including visits to both the USA and the USSR.

Philosophy

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

Advaita Vedanta

Radhakrishnan was one of the most prominent spokesman 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", 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 Radhakrisnan'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 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 discernes five sorts of experience:

1. Cognitive Experience:
   1. Sense Experience
   2. Discursive Reasoning
   3. Intuitive Apprehension
2. Psychic Experience
3. Aesthetic Experience
4. Ethical Experience
5. 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, Kṛṣṇa, 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, "[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.

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 realization, 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 Radhakrishnan understands as lower forms of Hinduism," as interpretations of Advaita Vedanta, thereby Hindusizing 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 India's best and most influential twentieth-century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy,

Radhakrishnan's defense 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:

In figures such as Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan we witness Vedanta traveling to the West, were 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^[20][38] 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 determants: 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 - "[t]he Vedanta is not a religion but religion itself in its "most universal and deepest significance" - is fairly typical.

Rinehart also criticises the inclusivism 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 discource 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, Radhakirshnan's division between East and West, the East being spiritual and mystical, and the West being rational and dogmatical,

...accept and perpetuate orientalist and colonialist forms of knowledge constructed during the 18th and 19th centuries. Arguably, these characterizations 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.

Awards and honours

• 1931: appointed a knight bachelor in 1931, although he ceased to use the title "sir" after India attained independence.
• 1938: elected fellow of the British Academy.
• 1954: The Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India.
• 1954: German "Order pour le Merite for Arts and Science"
• 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 believe that "teachers should be the best minds in the country".
• 1963: the British Royal Order of Merit, awarded by Queen Elizabeth II.
• 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".

Quotes

• "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."

Bibliography

Works by Radhakrishnan

• Indian Philosophy (1923) Vol.1, 738 pages. Vol 2, 807 pages. Oxford University Press.
• The Hindu View of Life (1926), 92 pages
• An Idealist View of Life (1929), 351 pages
• 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