Three prose writers
Anjali rathod's blog
(1) Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
(present-day Chennai)
Radhakrishnan was awarded scholarships throughout his academic life. He joined Voorhees College in Vellore for his high school education. After his F.A. (First of Arts) class, he joined the Madras Christian College (affiliated to the University of Madras) at the age of 16. He graduated from there in 1907, and also finished his Masters from the same college.
Radhakrishnan studied philosophy by chance rather than choice. Being a financially constrained student, when a cousin who graduated from the same college passed on his philosophy textbooks to Radhakrishnan, it automatically decided his academics course.
Sarvepalli wrote his bachelor's degree thesis on "The Ethics of the Vedanta and its Metaphysical Presuppositions". It "was intended to be a reply to the charge that the Vedanta system had no room for ethics." Two of his professors, Rev. William Meston and Dr. Alfred George Hogg, commended Radhakrishnan's dissertation. Radhakrishnan's thesis was published when he was only twenty. According to Radhakrishnan himself, the criticism of Hogg and other Christian teachers of Indian culture "disturbed my faith and shook the traditional props on which I leaned."
This led him to his critical study of Indian philosophy and religion and a lifelong defence of Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism". At the same time, Radhakrishnan commended Professor Hogg as 'My distinguished teacher,' and as "one of the greatest Christian thinkers we had in India.' Besides, Professor William Skinner, who was acting Principal of the College, gave a testimonial saying "he is one of the best men we have had in the recent years", which enabled him to get the first job in Presidency College. In reciprocation, Radhakrishnan dedicated one of his early books to William Skinner.
Academic career:
In April 1909, Radhakrishnan was appointed to the Department of Philosophy at the Madras Presidency College. Thereafter, in 1918, he was selected as Professor of Philosophy by the University of Mysore, where he taught at its Maharaja's College, Mysore. By that time he had written many articles for journals of repute like The Quest, Journal of Philosophy and the International Journal of Ethics. He also completed his first book, The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. He believed Tagore's philosophy to be the "genuine manifestation of the Indian spirit". His second book, The Reign of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy was published in 1920.
In 1921 he was appointed as a professor in philosophy to occupy the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta. He represented the University of Calcutta at the Congress of the Universities of the British Empire in June 1926 and the International Congress of Philosophy at Harvard University in September 1926. Another important academic event during this period was the invitation to deliver the Hibbert Lecture on the ideals of life which he delivered at Manchester College, Oxford in 1929 and which was subsequently published in book form as An Idealist View of Life.
In 1929 Radhakrishnan was invited to take the post vacated by Principal J. Estlin Carpenter at Manchester College. This gave him the opportunity to lecture to the students of the University of Oxford on Comparative Religion. For his services to education he was knighted by George V in the June 1931 Birthday Honours, and formally invested with his honour by the Governor-General of India, the Earl of Willingdon, in April 1932. However, he ceased to use the title after Indian independence, preferring instead his academic title of 'Doctor'.
In 1936 Radhakrishnan was named Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at the University of Oxford, and was elected a Fellow of All Souls College. That same year, and again in 1937, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, although this nomination process, as for all laureates, was not public at the time. Further nominations for the award would continue steadily into the 1960s. In 1939 Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya invited him to succeed him as the Vice-Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University (BHU). He served as its Vice-Chancellor till January 1948.
Political career:
Radhakrishnan started his political career "rather late in life", after his successful academic career. His international authority preceded his political career. He was one of those stalwarts who attended Andhra Mahasabha in 1928 where he seconded the idea of renaming Ceded Districts division of Madras Presidency as Rayalaseema. In 1931 he was nominated to the League of Nations Committee for Intellectual Cooperation, where after "in Western eyes he was the recognized Hindu authority on Indian ideas and a persuasive interpreter of the role of Eastern institutions in contemporary society."
When India became independent in 1947, Radhakrishnan represented India at UNESCO (1946–52) and was later Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union, from 1949 to 1952. He was also elected to the Constituent Assembly of India. Radhakrishnan was elected as the first Vice-President of India in 1952, and elected as the second President of India (1962–1967). Radhakrishnan did not have a background in the Congress Party, nor was he active in the Indian independence movement. He was the politician in shadow. His motivation lay in his pride of Hindu culture, and the defence of Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism". According to the historian Donald Mackenzie Brown,
He had always defended Hindu culture against uninformed Western criticism and had symbolized the pride of Indians in their own intellectual traditions.
Teacher's day
When Radhakrishnan became the President of India, some of his students and friends requested him to allow them to celebrate his birthday, on 5 September. He replied,
Instead of celebrating my birthday, it would be my proud privilege if September 5th is observed as Teachers' Day.
His birthday has since been celebrated as Teacher's Day in India.
Charity
Along with G. D. Birla and some other social workers in the pre-independence era, Radhakrishnan formed the Krishnarpan Charity Trust.
Other achievements
- A portrait of Radhakrishnan adorns the Chamber of the Rajya Sabha.
- 1938: elected Fellow of the British Academy.
- 1947: election as Permanent Member of the Instutut international de philosophie.
- 1959: Goethe Plaque of the City of Frankfurt.
- 1961: the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
- 1962: Institution of Teacher's Day in India, yearly celebrated at 5 September, Radhakrishnan's birthday, in honour of Radhakrishnan's belief that "teachers should be the best minds in the country".
- 1968: Sahitya Akademi fellowship, The highest honour conferred by the Sahitya Akademi on a writer (he is the first person to get this award)
- 1975: the Templeton Prize in 1975, a few months before his death, for advocating non-aggression and conveying "a universal reality of God that embraced love and wisdom for all people." He donated the entire amount of the Templeton Prize to Oxford University.
- 1989: institution of the Radhakrishnan Scholarships by Oxford University in the memory of Radhakrishnan. The scholarships were later renamed the "Radhakrishnan Chevening Scholarships".
- He was nominated sixteen times for the Nobel prize in literature, and eleven times for the Nobel Peace prize.
(2) Nirad Chaudhari
Born: 23 November 1897Kishoreganj, Bengal presidency,British IndiaDied: 1 August 1999 (aged 101)Lathbury Road, Oxford, EnglandPen name: Balahak Nandi, Sonibarer Cithi, Outsider, NowOccupation: writer and commentator on cultureAlma mater: University of CalcuttaChaudhuri was born in Kishoregunj, Mymensingh, East Bengal, British India (now Bangladesh), the second of eight children of Upendra Narayan Chaudhuri, a lawyer, and of Sushila Sundarani Chaudhurani. His parents were liberal middle-class Hindus who belonged to the Brahmo Samaj movement.After passing the FA examination, he was admitted to Ripon College (now Surendranath College) in Calcutta along with eminent Bengali writer, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. After that, Neerad got admission in history department in Scottish Church College in Calcutta. As a student of Scottish Church College under Calcutta University in 1918, he graduated with honors in history and earned his place in the merit list. He participated in the Scottish Church College seminar with renowned Indian personality and historian Professor Kalidas Nager. After obtaining his bachelor's degree, he was admitted to Calcutta University for his master's degree. But he could not get the postgraduate degree because he did not appear in the examination. This is where his formal education ended. Meanwhile, in 1917, he wrote a theoretical article titled Objective Methods in History.Chaudhuri was a prolific writer even in the last years of his life, publishing his last work at the age of 99. His wife Amiya Chaudhuri died in 1994 in Oxford, England. He too died in Oxford, three months short of his 102nd birthday, in 1999. He lived at 20 Lathbury Road from 1982 until his death and a blue plaque was installed by the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board in 2008.Dr. Sumantra Maitra named him the forgotten visionary of British India, in a review essay for The Spectator.Major works:
His masterpiece, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, published in 1951, put him on the long list of great Indian writers. Chaudhari had said that The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is 'more of an exercise in descriptive ethnology than autobiography'. He is concerned with describing the conditions in which an Indian grew to manhood in the early decades of the century, and as he feels that the basic principle of book is that environment shall have precedence over its product; he describes in affectionate and sensuous detail the three places that had the greatest influence on him: Kishoreganj, the country town in which he lived till he was twelve; Bangram; his ancestral village; and Kalikutch, his mother's village. A fourth chapter is devoted to England, which occupied a large place in his imagination. Later in the book he talks about Calcutta, the Bengali Renaissance, the beginnings of the nationalist movement, and his experience of the Englishmen in India as opposed to the idyllic pictures of a civilization he considered perhaps the greatest in the world. These themes remains preoccupations in most of Chaudhari's work, as does his deterministic view of culture and politics.It is sometimes stated that 'Chaudhuri was hounded out of government service, deprived of his pension, blacklisted as a writer in India and forced to live a life of penury'. However, as sociologist Edward Shils, who helped Chaudhuri immigrate to the UK, stated in his article 'Citizen of the World' (American Scholar, 1988), Chaudhuri retired at the compulsory age of 55 but was not eligible for a pension because he had not completed sufficient years of service. It is also stated that - 'Furthermore, he had to give up his job as a political commentator on All India Radio as the Government of India promulgated a law that prohibited employees from publishing memoirs.' This is not the case. There was a pre-existing rule that employees must get clearance before publishing anything. Chadhuri was refused an extension of service. He was not asked to prepare any more talks on a free-lance basis because of severe criticism directed at him by senior figures - like Krishna Menon. However, he did publish in non-Government magazines. Chaudhuri argued that his critics were not careful-enough readers; "the dedication was really a condemnation of the British rulers for not treating us as equals", he wrote in a 1997 special edition of Granta. Typically, to demonstrate his perceptions he drew on a parallel with Ancient Rome. The book's dedication, Chaudhuri observed, "was an imitation of what Cicero said about the conduct of Verres, a Roman proconsul of Sicily who oppressed Sicilian Roman citizens, who in their desperation cried out: "Civis romanus sum".At the age of 57, in 1955 for the first time Chaudhuri went abroad. After coming back he wrote A Passage to England (1959). In this book he talked about his visit of five weeks to England, and more briefly about his two weeks in Paris and one week in Rome. During this time away from his home in Delhi, he visited museums, galleries, cathedrals, country houses, and attended plays and concerts. Chaudhuri reflects on his experiences from the perspective of a man who had grown up in the British Empire and was now the citizen of an independent India.
His later works include personal essays, biographies and historical studies.
Honours:
- Duff Cooper Memorial Award in 1967
- Ananda Purashkar in 1988
- DLitt from Oxford University in 1990.
- Vidyasagar Purashkar in 1997 by the Govt. of West Bengal
- Desikottama in 1997 by Viswabharati
Books:
- The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951)
- A Passage to England (1959)
- The Continent of Circe (1965)
- The Intellectual in India (1967)
- To Live or Not to Live (1971)
- Scholar Extraordinary, The Life of Professor the Right Honourable Friedrich Max Muller, P.C. (1974)
- Culture in the Vanity Bag (1976)
- Clive of India (1975)
- Hinduism: A Religion to Live by (1979)
- Thy Hand, Great Anarch! (1987)
- Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse (1997)
- The East is East and West is West (collection of pre-published essays)
- From the Archives of a Centenarian (collection of pre-published essays)
- Why I Mourn for England (collection of pre-published essays)
(3) Raghunathan
K.Raghunathan is a Malayalam novelist, journalist and short story writer from Kerala, India. He is best known for his novels Pathiravankara and Ajnathanama. Raghunathan won the Kerala Sahithya Academy award for best novel in 2007 for Pathira Vankara. He also won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Biography in 2020 for Mukathakandam VKN.Raghunathan was born in 1957 Cheroor, Thrissur district, Kerala. After his education he joined Mathrubhumi daily in 1980 , from where he started writing seriously.His major works include Bhoomiyude Pokkil, Sabdayamanam, Samadhanathinu Vendiyulla Yudhangal, Karinkodi, Pakaram, Athusaheb, Ellum Poovum Chandanavum, P Krishna Pillaiye Kadicha Pambu, Raghunathante Novellakal, Saddam Hussainum Sahithya Charchayum and Columbia.Thanks you.
