Sir S. Radhakrishnan

Sir S. Radhakrishnan has stormed the world with his dazzling speech and shot into an international reputation with meteoric speed. His lean, lanky figure, all bone and no muscle, is phy­sically of inconspicuous proportions, hut by decking it with long coat and grand truban, he has evolved an effect of quiet pro­fessorial dignity. With all the aid drawn from consummate ha'biliments, he is rather scaTecrowish in appearance, but intelligence beams from the face. It is extraordinarily keen and fresh, and the years have made very little difference to it. A head of white hair is the only sign of age that he carries. But it seems some­what of an incongruity, as though it were a wig set up there, for otherwise he is the same today as he was years ago. Time has been very kind to him. It has not aged him, but made him more boyish and buoyant. He has risen to fame as an expounder of Indian philosophy, but that too is an incongruity. To the Western mind, the function of philosophy is the intellectual postu­lation of the principles deducible as underlying the scheme of creation. But intellect plays no part in Indian philosophy. Phi­losophy in India is the descriptive revelation of an actually felt­-experience of a choice few who, through some discipline of the spirit, attained a higher consciousness which somehow unravelled to them supreme knowledge of the ultimate mystery of all existence. A Yogi when he turned teacher became a philosopher, and Indian philosophy is the codified experience of Yogis put into words for the guidance of aspirants. True instructions in Indian philosophy can come only out of the depth of Yogic experience; but Sir Radhakrishnan is no Yogi. In this disability is summed up the tragedy of his vocation as an interpreter of Indian philo­sophy in the West. In the very nature of the case, Indian philo­sophy is not a marketable article of knowledge. Teaching is a profession, but the teaching of philosophy is not intended to be a profession. It comes without reference to university chairs from out of the fullness of love and knowledge of great souls that have realised, through spiritual insight and aptitude, the truth about the cosmic functioning of the entire universe. Those will not need to go out expounding their knowledge. Seekers will go to them. Can the teaching of truth be made a subject of a curriculum? If the universities are wise, they will cease endowing chairs for the teaching of Indian philosophy, and leave it to the Yogis, who have their own methods of conveying instruction, since indeed there are no other competent teachers of the subject. But Sir S. Radhakrishnan’s job has been that of interpreting with the intellect a kind of knowledge that can be reached only when the intellect is transcended and left behind.

On the intellectual plane, however, his performances have been truly sensational. When he speaks, his eloquence is torrential. He takes listeners off their feet in dazed amazement at so much speed. They are overwhelmed, as it were, by a rush of words that stampedes them into admiration. Amongst our other great speakers, C.R. and Mr. Sastri hold a very high rank, but there is more art and less velocity in their speeches. They give time to people to think and follow them. Pauses to recover breath and emphasise a point are not infrequent occurrences in their expositions. Their accents, too, tend to vary with the emphasis intended. But Sir S. Radhakrishnan, when confronted with an audience, is a regular tornado of unceasing words at high pitch, and the words tumble out in breathless rapidity with hardly a comma or full-stop in between. The rate at which he speaks imposes a magnetic spell on all that hear, and had he less of the faculty of intellectual analysis, it would have landed both him and them in utter mental confusion. But he has a first-rate brain unsurpassed in its capacity for clear analytical understanding. His critical acumen is uncanny. As a teacher he used to give “notes”, and if you read them well you had no need to read anything else from any book on the subject they dealt with; for in the art of extracting substance from chaff from out of the pages of the most voluminous of books, and condensing it into the smallest imaginable compass, he is an adept without a peer. It may be questioned whether “notes” fulfil a right function in teaching, and it is quite possible that like predigested foods, they tend to spoil the efficiency of normal appetites. But unlike several professors Whose staple of teaching was contained in a huge notebook (of folio size) which they cherished as a precious heirloom, and went on reading year after year before successive batches of students, his “notes” bore no stereotyped form, and they came out unrecorded from mind and memory, with skilful up-to-date improvisations that made them look refreshingly original each time. He created a feeling of awe with the same ease and thoroughness with which he mastered even the most complicated problems of logic and theory of knowledge, and the most ruffianly spirits of the class-room, incorrigibly bent on mischief at other times, were quelled and subdued by it and reduced to their best behaviour. He enforced discipline like a martinet, but spoke no harsh word.

Of late Sir S. Radhakrishnan has been dallying a little with politics and public life, and he would undoubtedly make an ex­cellent politician. In politics, it is easier to work from the top than from the bottom, and what with the credit he enjoys for immense influence with important personages in many lands the setting is ready for his assuming a place of prestige in the top ranks of political leadership. He has all the attributes needed for a resplendent political career: economic independence, alert­ness of mind, an eye for the main chance, capacity for intrigue, intellectual brilliance, masterful powers of exposition, and more than all else, the glamour of a vast international reputation. What ice, with all these assets, he would cut in the politics of our time is an entrancing theme for speculation. It seems a pity – but such is the case – that while political subjection lasts, many splendid gifts that might have made singularly successful administrators, must be consigned indefinitely to cold storage. The ending of subjection must crowd out all other political objectives in the present state, and to this end the grit of the revolutionary and not the polish of the scholar, is of greater account now as a qualification for leadership. Brilliant men that have sharpened their wits to secure power and position are under our very eyes being shoved into the ground while men of action score over them even though intellectually they may be inferior. The natural transition in India is from surfeited action and enjoyment to philosophy. A career in the reverse direction, beginning with the teaching of philosophy and now involving a leap into the rough and tumble of politics, is an interesting phenomenon to watch.

(January 1946)