Among the significant events during Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s presidency was the decision to observe September 5 as Teachers’ Day. Academic and philosopher P. Nagaraja Rao writes in his 1994 publication, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, that the National Federation of Teachers made the request and that “Nehru was responsible for it.” Official accounts, however, record that Radhakrishnan himself expressed a wish that his 75th birthday be observed as Teachers’ Day rather than celebrated as a personal occasion.
Interestingly, even the date of Radhakrishnan’s birth has been a matter of debate. While official records give September 5, 1888, Radhakrishnan himself is said to have believed that he was born on September 20, 1887. Yet his academic career, his public identity as a teacher and philosopher, and his close association with Jawaharlal Nehru have all cement Radhakrishnan’s association with September 5.
A philosopher in the making
Radhakrishnan was born to a Brahmin family in Tiruttani, a temple town north-west of Madras City. He received his early education there until the age of eight, before moving to Vellore. He graduated from Madras Christian College in 1907 and completed his M.A. in Philosophy there in 1909.
His teaching career began at Madras Presidency College in 1909. After teacher training at Saidapet, he returned to the college in 1911, where he taught philosophy and psychology before moving to the University of Mysore in 1918. Rao notes, “He read a lot and wrote a lot. He contributed several articles to the foreign journals and contemporary European thinkers— Bergson, Russel, William James and others…” In his 1989 work, Radhakrishnan, a Biography, Sarvepalli Gopal also details Radhakrishnan’s growing interest in Swami Vivekananda and V.D. Savarkar.
He was soon invited to occupy the George V Chair of Philosophy at the University of Calcutta, where his career gained further prominence. “He wrote his two volumes of Indian Philosophy and visited America and England for his lectures,” Rao writes. His growing reputation earned him a knighthood, and he was later appointed Spalding Professor at Oxford.
Between 1948 and 1949, Radhakrishnan also served as chairman of the University Education Commission.
His rendezvous with Parliament
Besides philosophy and education, Radhakrishnan was also drawn to the freedom struggle. His first meeting with Gandhi in Madras, however, was reportedly unsuccessful. Though he would later come to regard Gandhi highly, the encounter initially left a negative impression. It was with Nehru that Radhakrishnan would form a closer bond.
Between 1949 and 1952, he served as Ambassador to Moscow, succeeding Pandit Nehru’s sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. He was comfortable in Moscow and sought to strengthen friendly relations between India and the Soviet Union. Troubled by inequality, he often cited a passage from the Bhagavata: “One who takes more than what is necessary for his life from the public stock is a thief.” His diplomatic role, however, offered him limited scope for action.
His next major political assignment was as Vice-President of India, a post he held for two terms, from 1952 to 1962. “It is here in Delhi that he developed the friendship with Nehru. Nehru took to Radhakrishnan very kindly and was appreciative of his talent and ability,” notes Rao.
Gopal writes that Nehru provided Radhakrishnan with the status and amenities needed to exercise influence on the domestic scene. “State governments were informed that the vice-president should be treated on a par with the prime minister when he travelled outside Delhi and he was given the same right as the president and the prime minister to utilize the VIP squadron of the Indian Air Force.”
Nehru believed Radhakrishnan could advance policies aligned with his own views. Radhakrishnan, in turn, supported planned and controlled parenthood. “He also argued against Gandhian and Roman Catholic views that abstinence from sex is also a form of interference with nature. Hence there should be no objection to scientific methods of planning population. In this the Professor embodies the spirit of New India,” Rao notes.
When the Sahitya Akademi, the National Academy of Letters, was established in 1954, Nehru became its first chairman but left its decisions to Radhakrishnan, who served as vice-chairman.
A professor becomes President
After 10 years as Vice-President, Radhakrishnan was chosen as the Congress candidate for the office of President, serving from 1962 to 1967. Gopal recalls, “Nearly thirty years earlier, at a farewell function in Madras in 1936 on the eve of Radhakrishnan’s departure for Oxford, Richard Littlehailes, the vice-chancellor of Madras University, indulging in what then seemed an absurd flight of the imagination, had suggested that Radhakrishnan might attain such high office.”
When the first case came before him for the exercise of the prerogative of mercy, Radhakrishnan proposed the abolition of capital punishment. Nehru was also inclined towards abolition, retaining the death sentence only for treason or the brutal murder of children, and asked the Home Minister to consult the state governments.
“His next step,” notes Gopal, “which appealed to the community of scholars to which he belonged, was to transfer the vast pile of buildings which had been constructed by the British as the viceroy’s residence in Simla and had hardly been used since Mountbatten’s departure, to the ministry of education to house an Institute of Advanced Study, which Radhakrishnan fondly hoped would develop on the lines of Princeton or All Souls.”
Radhakrishnan’s 75th birthday on September 5, 1962, came weeks after he became President. Felicitations poured in from India and abroad. The President, however, did not want the day to be remembered simply as his birthday. He suggested that September 5 instead be observed as Teachers’ Day, honouring the profession to which he had devoted his career. Thus, a date whose own history was contested became permanently associated with the teacher and philosopher who occupied the highest office in the country.
The British Academy, of which he had been a Fellow since 1939, also elected him an Honorary Fellow.
Gopal records that Radhakrishnan initiated the opening of the President’s Palace in Delhi twice a week to anyone wishing to submit petitions or voice grievances. “For Radhakrishnan, who as vice-president had been thought to be the most accessible person in Delhi, this was a natural step to take,” adds Gopal. The final years of the professor’s life, however, were marked by a withdrawal from public life.
Indira Gandhi and Dr Radhakrishnan and Jawaharlal Nehru. (Express Archive) 
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