Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Biography

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was the first Vice-President of India and continued in the position for ten years. He was an Indian philosopher and statesman and served as the second President of India from 1962 to 1967. He is a great scholar of comparative religion and philosophy. He served as a professor at the University of Calcutta and Oxford University. He received many honors including Knighthood in 1931 and Bharat Ratna in 1954 and Order of Merit in 1963. His birthday is celebrated as the Teachers Day in India.

He was born on 5^th September 1888 at Tiruttani in a poor Telugu Brahmin family. His mother was Sitamma and he spent his early years in Tirutani and Tirupati. He studied at Primary Board School at Tirutani and then at Hermansburg Evangelical Lutheral Mission School in Tirupati.

He joined Madras Christian College when he was 17 and got Masters Degree in Philosophy in 1906. He presented the thesis ‘The Ethics of Vedanta’ for his M.A. and this was published when he was just 20. He studied philosophy and felt deep interest in this subject and wrote many works on philosophy. He married Sivakami in 1904 at his age of 16 and had five daughters and one son, Sarvepalli Gopal who is a notable historian.

He was appointed at the Department of Philosophy at the Madras Presidency College in April 1909. In 1918, he was appointed as the Professor of Philosophy by the University of Mysore. His first book was The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. His second book was The Reign of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy published in 1920. He was appointed in 1921 as the professor of philosophy in the position of King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta. He was invited to deliver the Hibbert lecture on the ideals of life at Harris Manchester College, Oxford in 1929.

In 1929 he was made the Principal in Manchester College, Oxford. He served as the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University from 1931 to 1936 and Vice-Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University from 1930 to 1948. After the independence of India, he served as the Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union from 1949 to 1952 and he was also elected to the Constituent Assembly of India. He was elected as the Vice President of India in 1952. He died on 17^th April 1975.

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Updated: September 26, 2017