Happy Teachers Day

Cheers to the SuperPowered Teachers,as their profession is the only profession that can teach all the other professions.Happy Teacher's Day!

Like any other day, we begin our day after a night of good sleep invariably thinking about the people who have made an impact in our lives. Impact may be too a strong a word. Let me rephrase it. Pedestrians who must have made walked on the footpath of our life.

Today is a special day. Why? It's Teacher's Day. It is the day we celebrate the people who have transformed our lives for the better through the medium of education. The people who significantly contributed in promising a life of education, erudition and learning. It's our teacher. The custodian of learning who thought us the facts of learning and existence.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. That's exactly what a teacher has done for us and we celebrate this joyous occasion in remembrance of the greatest teachers of India on his birthday - Dr. S. Radhakrishnan.

Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan was born on 5 September, 1888 in Tirutani, a well-known religious center in the Madras State. He was the second son of Veera Samayya, a tehsildar in a Zamindari hailing from a middle-class, respectable Hindu Brahmin family.

Radhakrishnan was married in 1906, at the tender age of 18 and while still a student, to Sivakamamma, and spent a happy married life with her for fifty years before she died in 1956.

Bright and precocious, with a scholarly disposition and a serene demeanor, from the very beginning, Radhakrishnan spent the first eight years of his life happily and fruitfully in his home town with his parents. The tranquil and challenging atmosphere of that famous and well-loved place, as well as the benign influence of his parents who, as was common in the South, were intensely religious in the traditional sense, went far in molding his character and sowing a lively seed of religiousness in him.

The significant fact that Radhakrishnan's parents, though orthodox, thought it fit to send their beloved son to Christian Missionary schools and colleges: Lutheran Mission School, Tirupathi (1896-1900), Vellore College, Vellore (1900-1904), Madras Christian College (1904-1908).

  The far-sightedness and broad-mindedness of his revered parents, which enabled them, in those days of blind prejudices and equally blind social taboos, to send their son to well-disciplined Christian educational institutions -held him in good stead throughout, making it possible for him to acquire specially Occidental vices like a sense of duty, punctuality, discipline and the like, together with specially Oriental qualities of religiosity, calmness, patience, faith in God and men.

Radhakrishnan's choice of Philosophy as his main or Honours subject in his B.A. degree course was due to a very fortunate accident. At that time, he was really rather baffled as to what particular Honours subject to choose from amongst the possible five, viz., Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Philosophy and History. Then, purely accidentally, and out of a mere boyish curiosity, he read three well-known works on Philosophy, passed on to him by one of his cousins who had that year obtained the B.A. degree with Philosophy Honours; and that definitely decided his higher course of studies.

He studied Sanskrit and Hindi also and garnered a good deal of interest in the traditional languages of India. He also read the Vedas and the Upanishads with great care and reverence.

In fact, Radhakrishnan was, and is, still today, a reader in the true sense of the word. For, what he read - and he read widely and lovingly all kinds of good books - did not remain an external acquisition, an ornamental decoration, with him; but blossomed forth in him in fullest glory and grandeur.

It is not always that in this strange world of ours inner worth is accompanied by outer success. But Radhakrishnan is a glorious exception in this regard. For, all throughout his brilliant career, honor after honor was showered on him. The following are some of the main posts held by him most fittingly and efficiently: Lecturer in Philosophy, Presidency College, Madras, in the Madras Provincial Educational Service, after graduation; Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the same College for five years; Professor of Philosophy, Mysore University (1918-1921); King George V Professor of Philosophy, Calcutta University (1921-1931) and again (1937-1944); Vice-Chancellor of the Andhra University (1931); Spaulding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics, Oxford University (1932-1953) - first Indian to be so appointed; and Vice-Chancellor of the Banaras Hindu University (1942). Among the cultural posts held by him may be mentioned: Leader of the Indian Delegation to UNESCO many times (1946-1950); Chairman of the University Education Commission (1948) appointed by the Government of India; Chairman of the Executive Board of UNESCO (1948); President of UNESCO (1952); Delegate to the P.E.N. Congress (1959); Vice President of International P.E.N.; Honorary Fellow of the British Academy (1962); Representative of the Calcutta University at the Congress of Philosophy, Harvard University, U.S.A. (May 1962).

Among the most esteemed political posts held by him some of them are: Ambassador-Extraordinary and Minister-Plenipotentiary to the U.S.S.R. (1949-1952), First Vice-President of India (1952-1956) and Second President of India (1962-1966). He became the Vice-President for the second time from the year 1957-1962.

Among the Lectureships held may be noted: Upton Lecturer, Manchester College, Oxford; Harwell Lecturer in Comparative Religion, University of Chicago; Hibbert Lecturer, University College, London and Manchester (1929).

Among the Honorary degrees and distinctions achieved were: Knighthood (1931); Honorary D. Ph. (Teheran University, 1963); Honorary D.Litt. (Tribhuvan University, Nepal, 1963); Honorary Doctor of Law (Pennsylvania University, 1963); Honorary Ph.D. (Moscow University, 1964); Honorary Doctor of Law (National University of Ireland, 1964); over one hundred Honorary degrees including those from Oxford, Cambridge and Rome Universities; Honorary Member of the Order of Merit, Buckingham Palace (12 June, 1963). He also made Goodwill tours to Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and China (September-October 1956); to Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Hungary and Bulgaria, African countries like East and Central Africa (June-July 1956); to Indo-China States, China, Mongolia and Hong Kong (September, 1957). He also paid State visits to Great Britain (June 1963), to Nepal (November 1963) and to U.S.S.R. and Ireland (September 1964).

Radhakrishnan was, and still is, one of the most celebrated writers of the present generation. His works are many and varied on philosophical, theological, ethical, educational, social and cultural subjects. He contributed also numerous articles to different well-known journals, which too, will prove to be of immense value to generations to come.

But what is most felt after reading any of his valuable works or articles is its wonderful liveliness. Truly, his articles are not merely outer expressions of his inner thoughts, but, what is more, infinitely more, emblems and embodiments of his very life - life that merrily dances forth in the fortuitous, zig-zag way of the world, removing all its obstacles in its own inner irresistible urge and boundless boldness. Hence, it is that his works, written in an incredibly simple, sublime, soft and serene way, are so very enchanting, enlivening, exhilarating to all. As a matter of fact, as is well known, it is very difficult to express very abstract and abstruse philosophical thoughts in easily intelligible and enchantingly sweet language. But Dr. Radhakrishnan, like the great and revered Rabindranath, is one of the few who could accomplish this apparently impossible feat. That is why his philosophical writings are not ordinary scholarly dissertations, but also melodious poetical perfections of great and permanent value.

His first book, 'The Ethics of the Vedanta and Its Material Presupposition', being his thesis for the M.A. degree examination of the Madras University, published in 1908, at the tender age of twenty only, at once established his fame as a great philosophical writer of undoubted ability. All his later works are landmarks in their respective fields, like 'The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore' (1918), 'Idealistic View of Life' (1932), 'Eastern Religions and Western Thought', 'Reign of Philosophy in Contemporary Thought', Kalki or The Future of Civilization', 'Indian Philosophy (2 vols.), etc.

Dynamic in personality, quiet in demeanor, austere in habits, unostentatious in behaviour, just in decision, prompt in action, simple in his dress, sympathetic in his dealings - such is our revered Dr. Radhakrishnan. He is a living, loving symbol and lovely emblem of our age-old Indian culture and civilization. Nothing much need be said here regarding his ideas and attitude towards different issues. For, the central refrain of his Life's Music reverberates through every walk of his blessed life. That is why he is a Monist in Philosophy, believing in one Reality, viz., Spirit; a Monotheist in Religion, believing in one God; an Eudemonist or Perfectionist in Ethics, believing in inner perfection as the summum bonum or the highest end of life; a Socialist in Politics, believing in mass or universal uplift. His whole glorious life proves anew the eternal truth of that well-known Platonic maxim, viz., "Those States only flourish where kings are philosophers, philosophers, kings" (Plato's Republic).

Radhakrishnan is considered as the greatest living philosopher of India, and one of the greatest living philosophers of the world. In 1952 the Library of Living Philosophers, an institute of world-wide repute, brought out a massive volume on 'The Philosophy of Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, devoted wholly to a critical appreciation of his philosophical doctrines. This proves beyond doubt that he is universally considered to be one amongst the most notable of modern philosophical luminaries, like G.F. Moore, Bertrand Russell and Karl Jaspers, about whose works also the above Library published separate volumes.

According to our Indian view, the highest aim of human life is to be, step by step, a 'Brahmachari' (or one who lives and moves about and believes in Brahman), a 'Brahmajnani' (or one who knows Brahman or the Absolute) and finally, a 'Brahmavadin' (or one who speaks or writes about Brahman or the Absolute). Here, we find Knowing, Doing and Speaking or Writing all go together; or, are intimately, intrinsically, indissolubly connected. Thus, Theory must end and fructify in Practice, Knowledge in Action, Philosophy in Ethics - in short, the root in the fruit. Dr. Radhakrishnan - himself a real 'Brahmachari', a real 'Brahmajnani' - subscribed to this theory all along. In his very first work, 'The Ethics of the Vedanta and Its Material Presupposition', published as early as 1908, he clearly and forcefully asserts this. Compare - "Philosophy in India is not an abstract study, remote from the life of man.... The Civilisation of India is an effort to embody philosophical wisdom in social life".

Dr. Radhakrishnan is, indeed, a versatile genius - a great scholar, philosopher,seer, writer,orator,statesman,administrator and above all, a great man.