Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan- A Personal Memoir
Apr 28 2008 | Views 644 |
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Tags: radhakrishnan presidency college humble origins Pinnacle of respect and fame
Tags: radhakrishnan presidency college humble origins Pinnacle of respect and fame
My first memories of Radhakrishnan, (I will not start by giving him titles, as he is now a figure of history, deserving to be called, just by his last name), were when we arrived in Madras in 1948, soon after Gandhiji's assassination. We , my parents with their three sons ( I was the youngest at eight), had newly arrived in Madras. My father had decided to obtain a transfer to Madras province after nineteen years in the UP ICS. He was a freshly minted Collector of Madras. Before he could move into a house, which we ultimately did, in Wadell's Road, we stayed for some time with the Radhakrishnans. Lady Radhakrishnan(as she was called at that time) ran the household. Radhakrishnan had returned after a stint at Oxford where he was the Spaldings Professor of Comparative Religion and Fellow of All Souls. He was busy representing India, at the UNESCO and was working to start up what was later called the University Grants Commission.
The reason why we were staying at the Radhakrishnan's at their Edward Elliots Road(now called Radahakrishnan Salai) home, was because we were old family friends. My paternal grandfather and Radhakrishnan had been Junior Assistant Professors, at Presidency College, Madras in the early teens of the last century and while they were there, they shared a small house in Triplicane, because neither could afford to have a house of his own. Thus, in the first years of my father's life, he shared a home with the Radhakrishnan children. I was told that in fact, they shared a common kitchen for some time. This period was one of great privation for Radhakrishnan as it was for my grandfather, but such friendships that are formed in the crucible of hard times, are the ones that last, because they are built, without the expectation of personal gain. This friendship between Radhakrishnan and my grandfather did last a lifetime, until my grandfather died in the early sixties.
I shall not dwell on the relationship that my forebears had with Radhakrishnan, as the subject of this story is my relationship with the man. I only knew him fleetingly at that early time, as a guest in his house. But as time passed and I acquired a persona of my own, the relationship became better defined. I started visiting Radhakrishnan along with my grandfather and later my father in Delhi and during his visits to Madras. I remember him sitting in his drawing room in his perfectly starched full sleeves white shirt and Pancha Kacham Veshti (Dhoti), holding court. It was literally that, as people hung on to his every word. There was much wisdom in the man, but he was practical and down to earth. He talked politics and about his relationships in Delhi and elsewhere: his talk was not much about philosophy and religion, his main subjects of professional choice.
When we went to visit him in Delhi. It was generally just our family with him and his son Sarvepalli Gopal. In one of these visits he asked me what I was doing at Loyola, I told him I was doing the Intermediate in Commerce, with my main subjects, being mathematics, logic and commerce. I knew that as a lecturer in philosophy he had taught logic in his early years, and he said with a smile, that despite his familiarity with education for the past fifty odd years he had not seen such an interesting combination of subjects. At another time I went to see him with a bush shirt that had colorful scenes of activity, imprinted: Here a footballer scoring a goal, there a boxer doing the upper cut, etc. He asked me to come nearer, took a careful look, asked me to turn around, to see the imprints in the back and smilingly but quite gently told me, that he really admired the shirt. But due to his habit of long standing, of wearing just white shirts, he would be unable to buy a fine shirt like mine. There was a twinkle in his eye as there always was when he spoke to people. I never saw him without a gentle smile playing on his lips.
Radhakrishnan was not beyond dropping names in his talks. In one of them, when he was Vice President, he told his audience, which included me sitting in a corner of his drawing room in Edward Elliots Road, that he had met Louis St Laurent, the Prime Minister of Canada, who had offered him the Governor Generalship of Canada. This came as a real surprise, as in the mid fifties, when this offer was apparently made(according to Radhakrishnan), an Indian was not allowed easy immigration into countries such as Canada and the USA because of an invisible color bar: and to be offered the position of first citizen and representative of the Queen in Canada, was a great honor indeed. He drily said that he had turned down the offer. Somebody remarked that it was a good thing as we wanted him as President of India. He just smiled in reply. He did not become President until 1962, because of a recalciterant Rajendra Prasad, who would not give up his position as President.
On another occasion the talk was on the partition of India in 1947, which we all knew Radhakrishnan had been against. He told us that at the time of the division of India, he had gone to visit Gandhi at Noakhali in 1947 and asked him why he had not objected more strenuously against partition. Gandhi answered, according to Radhakrishnan, that he could not do much as "Patel and Nehru agreed to it".
One incident however is permanently etched in my memory because of the peculiar circumstances. I was sixteen years old and had gone to an Air Wing NCC camp in New Delhi. These were NCC squadrons from all over India and at the end of the camp we had been told that Vice President Radhakrishnan will take the salute. We were all standing in formation and though I knew Radhakrishnan, no one in that parade, to my knowledge knew of my connection and neither could Radhakrishnan know, I thought, of my presence in the parade. I was soon disabused of my assumptions. An aide came running to the head of the parade and whispered something. He was handed over to a senior officer who passed on to our particular formation talked to the squadron commander, who addressed our company, thusly" Cadet Girdhar Gopal please fall out and follow this officer". I thought I was in real trouble to be so identified. I was also a little disppointed that I would not be a party to this parade that would pay homage to the man, I had known for a long time. I was taken to the dais and handed to an aide de camp in colorful livery and taken to reviewing stand where the cheerful presence of Radhakrishnan could be seen looking down at me." Enna Girdhar, eppidi Irekke?" Hello, Girdhar, how are you ?" said the personage and directed me to sit by his side. I was in a daze. I had Radhakrishnan on one side and the late Air Marshall Mukherjea ,then Chief of Air Staff on the other. And sitting there I watched the parade go by in something that could be described only as an out of body experience, with Radhakrishnan taking the salute. It transpired that my grandfather had written in passing that I would be in Delhi with the NCC and Radhakrishnan had done the rest.
We, my wife and I, went to visit Radhakrishnan at his home in Madras, in 1963 to get his blessings for our marriage. He was then the President, he asked his daughter in law to bring his book on the Bhagwat Gita, signed his inscription and gave it to us. He advised us to treat our lives henceforth as "one long honeymoon". His wish, despite ups and downs in health and fortune, has, for the last 45 years, come to pass. We did our Shashtanga Namaskar and left and that was the last time I saw Radhakrishnan.
My wife saw him once in London in the mid sixties, when she had visited him in hospital along with my parents and our then infant son, I was unavailable at work. Radhakrishnan was recovering from an illness and was cheerfully telling them that Queen Elizabeth had visited him at the hospital: he was his usual self. The man of humble origins from Tirutanni in what is now Tamil Nadu, always remained, in a state of wonder, at the turn of fortune that had made him a kind of philosopher king, respected by all mankind. His Gita, since not a little moth eaten, by whatever eats up books in Madras, is still with me, in my Chappaqua, NY home, and the book with its inscription ,is the only momento I possess of the man. But, the memories of his cheerful presence remain evergreen and permanent in my mind's eye and this is an attempt to leave them to posterity.
I know I have another momento, not a personal momento, it is rather, a family momento, It is a group photo that was taken in Waltair. It has Radhakrishnan with his family with Rabindranath Tagore and some members of Andhra University,where Radhakrishnan was Vice Chancellor. It also has my grandparents, their two younger children who were to die tragically within a few years and my mother. The year was 1933. My grandparents were taking my mother, their daughter in law, to UP to join her husband who was in service. My mother was all of nineteen years old. This was a good seven years before I was born. I shall rummage amongst my old photographs and if I can find it, shall place it with this blog.
The reason why we were staying at the Radhakrishnan's at their Edward Elliots Road(now called Radahakrishnan Salai) home, was because we were old family friends. My paternal grandfather and Radhakrishnan had been Junior Assistant Professors, at Presidency College, Madras in the early teens of the last century and while they were there, they shared a small house in Triplicane, because neither could afford to have a house of his own. Thus, in the first years of my father's life, he shared a home with the Radhakrishnan children. I was told that in fact, they shared a common kitchen for some time. This period was one of great privation for Radhakrishnan as it was for my grandfather, but such friendships that are formed in the crucible of hard times, are the ones that last, because they are built, without the expectation of personal gain. This friendship between Radhakrishnan and my grandfather did last a lifetime, until my grandfather died in the early sixties.
I shall not dwell on the relationship that my forebears had with Radhakrishnan, as the subject of this story is my relationship with the man. I only knew him fleetingly at that early time, as a guest in his house. But as time passed and I acquired a persona of my own, the relationship became better defined. I started visiting Radhakrishnan along with my grandfather and later my father in Delhi and during his visits to Madras. I remember him sitting in his drawing room in his perfectly starched full sleeves white shirt and Pancha Kacham Veshti (Dhoti), holding court. It was literally that, as people hung on to his every word. There was much wisdom in the man, but he was practical and down to earth. He talked politics and about his relationships in Delhi and elsewhere: his talk was not much about philosophy and religion, his main subjects of professional choice.
When we went to visit him in Delhi. It was generally just our family with him and his son Sarvepalli Gopal. In one of these visits he asked me what I was doing at Loyola, I told him I was doing the Intermediate in Commerce, with my main subjects, being mathematics, logic and commerce. I knew that as a lecturer in philosophy he had taught logic in his early years, and he said with a smile, that despite his familiarity with education for the past fifty odd years he had not seen such an interesting combination of subjects. At another time I went to see him with a bush shirt that had colorful scenes of activity, imprinted: Here a footballer scoring a goal, there a boxer doing the upper cut, etc. He asked me to come nearer, took a careful look, asked me to turn around, to see the imprints in the back and smilingly but quite gently told me, that he really admired the shirt. But due to his habit of long standing, of wearing just white shirts, he would be unable to buy a fine shirt like mine. There was a twinkle in his eye as there always was when he spoke to people. I never saw him without a gentle smile playing on his lips.
Radhakrishnan was not beyond dropping names in his talks. In one of them, when he was Vice President, he told his audience, which included me sitting in a corner of his drawing room in Edward Elliots Road, that he had met Louis St Laurent, the Prime Minister of Canada, who had offered him the Governor Generalship of Canada. This came as a real surprise, as in the mid fifties, when this offer was apparently made(according to Radhakrishnan), an Indian was not allowed easy immigration into countries such as Canada and the USA because of an invisible color bar: and to be offered the position of first citizen and representative of the Queen in Canada, was a great honor indeed. He drily said that he had turned down the offer. Somebody remarked that it was a good thing as we wanted him as President of India. He just smiled in reply. He did not become President until 1962, because of a recalciterant Rajendra Prasad, who would not give up his position as President.
On another occasion the talk was on the partition of India in 1947, which we all knew Radhakrishnan had been against. He told us that at the time of the division of India, he had gone to visit Gandhi at Noakhali in 1947 and asked him why he had not objected more strenuously against partition. Gandhi answered, according to Radhakrishnan, that he could not do much as "Patel and Nehru agreed to it".
One incident however is permanently etched in my memory because of the peculiar circumstances. I was sixteen years old and had gone to an Air Wing NCC camp in New Delhi. These were NCC squadrons from all over India and at the end of the camp we had been told that Vice President Radhakrishnan will take the salute. We were all standing in formation and though I knew Radhakrishnan, no one in that parade, to my knowledge knew of my connection and neither could Radhakrishnan know, I thought, of my presence in the parade. I was soon disabused of my assumptions. An aide came running to the head of the parade and whispered something. He was handed over to a senior officer who passed on to our particular formation talked to the squadron commander, who addressed our company, thusly" Cadet Girdhar Gopal please fall out and follow this officer". I thought I was in real trouble to be so identified. I was also a little disppointed that I would not be a party to this parade that would pay homage to the man, I had known for a long time. I was taken to the dais and handed to an aide de camp in colorful livery and taken to reviewing stand where the cheerful presence of Radhakrishnan could be seen looking down at me." Enna Girdhar, eppidi Irekke?" Hello, Girdhar, how are you ?" said the personage and directed me to sit by his side. I was in a daze. I had Radhakrishnan on one side and the late Air Marshall Mukherjea ,then Chief of Air Staff on the other. And sitting there I watched the parade go by in something that could be described only as an out of body experience, with Radhakrishnan taking the salute. It transpired that my grandfather had written in passing that I would be in Delhi with the NCC and Radhakrishnan had done the rest.
We, my wife and I, went to visit Radhakrishnan at his home in Madras, in 1963 to get his blessings for our marriage. He was then the President, he asked his daughter in law to bring his book on the Bhagwat Gita, signed his inscription and gave it to us. He advised us to treat our lives henceforth as "one long honeymoon". His wish, despite ups and downs in health and fortune, has, for the last 45 years, come to pass. We did our Shashtanga Namaskar and left and that was the last time I saw Radhakrishnan.
My wife saw him once in London in the mid sixties, when she had visited him in hospital along with my parents and our then infant son, I was unavailable at work. Radhakrishnan was recovering from an illness and was cheerfully telling them that Queen Elizabeth had visited him at the hospital: he was his usual self. The man of humble origins from Tirutanni in what is now Tamil Nadu, always remained, in a state of wonder, at the turn of fortune that had made him a kind of philosopher king, respected by all mankind. His Gita, since not a little moth eaten, by whatever eats up books in Madras, is still with me, in my Chappaqua, NY home, and the book with its inscription ,is the only momento I possess of the man. But, the memories of his cheerful presence remain evergreen and permanent in my mind's eye and this is an attempt to leave them to posterity.
I know I have another momento, not a personal momento, it is rather, a family momento, It is a group photo that was taken in Waltair. It has Radhakrishnan with his family with Rabindranath Tagore and some members of Andhra University,where Radhakrishnan was Vice Chancellor. It also has my grandparents, their two younger children who were to die tragically within a few years and my mother. The year was 1933. My grandparents were taking my mother, their daughter in law, to UP to join her husband who was in service. My mother was all of nineteen years old. This was a good seven years before I was born. I shall rummage amongst my old photographs and if I can find it, shall place it with this blog.
© Girdhar Gopal., all rights reserved.
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