The philosopher-king - Radhakrishnan As The Prophet Of Spiritual Regeneration

Susanta Kumar Gangopadhyay
The Statesman, 26 October

Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan belonged to a select band of great individuals with a comprehensive world-view at the close of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

A “philosophical bilinguist” to use the words of Prof JH Muirhead, he looked at truth and reality from the accumulated wisdom of the East and West. A profound critic of all forms of exclusiveness, one-sided perspective, dogmatic fanaticism and intolerance, he stressed the need for a casteless and classless society. Therefore, invocation to his teachings has become imperative and are more relevant than ever before considering the present politico-socio-religious scenario.

Long before the concept of fusion music and fusion cuisine, the rage of our contemporary society, Radhakrishnan evolved a fusion philosophy or a syncretistic one, in philosophical parlance, for the continued survival and lasting peace of mankind.

Absolute idealism

Though the essence of his philosophy is absolute idealism, he has defended the reality of the empirical world with all its richness and variety. His was a synthesising genius. True to Indian tradition he avoided all extremes. Thus Radhakrishnan reconciled the traditional oppositions between the absolute and the non-absolute, God and the world, appearance and reality, intuition and reason, philosophy and religion and philosophy and life. He even resolved the contradictions among the various religious and philosophical systems. In short, his philosophy was a journey from here to eternity. But regrettably enough, we have dumped it to the dustbin of history in our headlong rush towards stupid materialism.

Radhakrishnan remains a mere academic abstraction and his books are of value only to those interested in the higher pursuits of mind and the problems of human culture and living.

It is the business of a philosopher to see life and the world steadily and to see it as a whole; not as consecrated by time, but to see it beyond time and fashion his interpretation accordingly. He is a man who loves wisdom and lives wisely. But many philosophers discuss problems like a wise man withou following his philosophy in life. Nietzsche wrote about superman, but he was over-indulgent in his food habits. Kant was indifferent to others' sickness and death. He claimed infallibility about his system of philosophy and was averse to new thinking. Hegel was also childish and an egotist.

Unlike them, Radhakrishnan lived his philosophy. The better part of his life was spent as an academic; but he was an academician with a human involvement. His teaching career which started as professorship of philosophy in Mysore and Calcutta Univesity culminated with his appointment as the Spalding professor of Ethics at Oxford. His Hindu View of Life and Idealist View of Life were the outcome of his Oxford lectures. When he gave his lectures at Oxford, there was hardly any parking space left in the campus. A riveting orator as he was, his lucid style was perfectly in tune with the clarity of vision and understanding. CEM Joad lavished fulsome praise on this aspect in his book Counter-attack from the East.

Dr Radhakrishnan, in conformity with his philosophical outlook, was very much a man of this world, deft in handling human affairs. His short stint as the Indian ambassador to the former Soviet Union was eminently successful. Here again the philosopher in him triumphed over the politician. Despite his firm political beliefs he was able to charm the iron man, Josef Stalin, who remarked that he was the first person to treat him as a human being and not as a monster.

It bears recall that his tenure as Vice-President (1952-62) and President of India (1962-67) is a watershed in the history of independent India. His election to the Presidency was hailed by his contemporary, Bertrand Russell, as an honour to India, a tribute to philosophy. He was no Machiavellian prince, not the magnanimous man of Greece or the valiant Knight of medieval Europe, but the free man of spirit who attained insight into the universal source by sheer discipline and practice of disinterested virtues. He was able to free himself from the prejudices of time and place. He may aptly be described as the philosopher-king, an ideal as Plato would like us believe. Radhakrishnan tried to combine in himself the consciousness of light and awareness of worldly duty which helped him attain a super-personal, super-social level.

We have traversed a long way since Radhakrishnan's time and the world today is afflicted by formidable evils. Of late we have seen much of the material devastation and our spiritual possessions are in imminent peril. The world has not remained the same especially after the mindless attacks on 9/11 and 7/7 in the USA and the UK. The deeper question of our survival on this planet and the existential angst keeps nagging our minds.

We are once again convinced that a deep-seated spiritual vulgarity lies at the heart of our civilisation. How can we rise above the present vision of the world with its anarchic individualism, primacy of the “economic man” concept fuelled further by the forces of globalisation much to the exclusion of other values of mind and heart and occasional bouts of collective insanity? Why is it that we have stooped so low while aiming at the best? Why is our mind so confused and the thinking process spasmodic? Why have we been reduced to a bundle of exciting and explosive nerves, a system of incompatible desires and impulses without any guiding spirit? Why are we stripped of soul, of inner life?

The problem with the world is that we are much too overwhelmed by maya. As Radhakrishnan says, “This world of maya has thrown our consciousness out of focus. We must shift the focus of consciousness and see better and more. The way to growth lies through an increasing impersonality, through the unifying of the self with a greater than the self.”

Spiritual values

The present crisis in human affairs stems from a crisis in human consciousness failing to reach an organic wholeness of life. It lacks a balance between the instinctive and the intellectual which attain their fruition in a spiritual personality. Every side of human nature should be so developed that no single part can tyrannise over the rest. But modern man has a tendency to overlook the spiritual and exalt the intellectual. The decline of the Greek civilisation may be traced back to this dangerous trend. What matters most today is the reintegration of human nature or as the modern idiom has it, psychic wholeness and health. This can only provide the meaning of salvation. Otherwise, the result can be spiritual despair or physical annihilation.

Radhakrishnan even envisaged that the coming struggle will be not so much between the liberal democracies of the West and other forms of authoritarian or totalitarian government, but between the empires of material values backed by organised religions and economic nationalism and the supremacy of spiritual ideals. So in preparation for the struggle we must rearm ourselves with the new mantra of living faith in spiritual values. As Radhakrishnan wrote in Eastern Religions and Western Thought, “What we need is a religion of freedom, which stimulates faith not fear, spontaneity not formalism, abundant life not the monotony of the mechanical ... When one is in contact with the universal source of life, one is filled with vitality and freedom from fear. When we discover the secret seed of spirit which lies concealed within the coatings of our nature and live by it, life becomes a pure flame full of light and happiness.”

The author is a freelance writer