From HT Archives: A nation mourns the demise of its former President
Thousands bid farewell to Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan in Madras. Former President cremated with State honors after passing away at 86.
Madras Thousands of people from different walks of life paid a tearful farewell to Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan as the former President was cremated with State honours.
The philosopher-statesman died in Madras late on April 16, 1975 after a protracted illness. He was 86.
Often described as the philosopher-king of Plato’s dream and a bridge-builder between the East and the West, Dr Radhakrishnan entered a private nursing home on August 20 last for treatment of cerebral haemorrhage.
He suffered a cardiac attack in the morning and lost consciousness. He was revived by medication. But the condition was critical. His son and two daughters were at his side when the end came at 01.04am.
His body lay in state in the main hall of Dr Radhakrishnan’s Mylapore residence, Girija, from 9am to 3.15pm for mourners to pay their respects. The funeral procession started at 4.35pm. The body, draped in the Tricolour, was placed in a flower-bedecked gun carriage. The former President’s son S Gopal, relatives, and G Parthasarathy, chairman of the external affairs ministry’s policy planning committee, were seated on the carriage.
Men, women and children lined both sides of the one-kilometer route to the crematorium to have a last glimpse of the departed statesman and to pay homage to him. A wreath on behalf of British Queen Elizabeth was placed on the body by a representative of the British Deputy High Commission. Wreaths were also placed on the body on behalf of President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Among the earliest to pay their respects to the departed philosopher statesman were chief minister M Karunanidhi and his cabinet colleague, KR Nedunchezhian. Former President VV Giri was also among the early callers at Girija.
A large number of schoolchildren flied past the body, paying homage to a man who had held the cause of education dear to his heart throughout his life.
The final rites at the Mylapore crematorium were completed in just 10 minutes and were marked by solemnity.
Dr Radhakrishnan was born in the Saivite pilgrim centre of Tiruttani, Chittoor, in 1888. His family was orthodox and inevitably Dr Radhakrishnan became a deeply religious man.
From Tiruttani he migrated to Vellore and then Madras where he had a brilliant academic career at the Christian College. Here he became familiar with the New Testament and the criticisms levelled by the missionaries against Hindu beliefs and practices.
He was barely 21, when his writings in The Monist and The Quest gave ample evidence of the man who has since then been variously described as a savant and The Great Metropolitan of India.
Subsequently, the editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica asked him to contribute an article on Indian philosophy.
He later served with distinction on the League of Nations Committee on Intellectual Co-operation. He was a visiting Professor of Oxford University where he delivered many lectures on Indian philosophy. His inaugural lectures on his appointment as Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics on The World’s Unborn Soul are characterised by deep study and acute insight.
He was chosen to lead the Indian Delegation to Unesco at Paris on several occasions. On the first occasion he hit the headlines by his masterly speech, which won high praise from JB Priestley who said: “For the explanation of the aims and ideals of Unesco, the palm should be given to the Indian delegation.” Speaking at the occasion, Radhakrishnan said: “No false word should escape our lips; no wrong thought should enter the mind. I am concerned that we in this body should stand above politics and for universal values.”
Although never politically committed to a specific party, Dr Radhakrishnan was all along fearlessly patriotic and outspoken. During World War II he wrote and surprisingly had published in the Asiatic Review of Britain an article in which he bluntly stated that the Indian people could not really be inspired by the war effort unless freedom was assured - a line that Mahatma Gandhi adopted in 1939. The second instalment was seized by the censors.
During the later part of the freedom struggle, though then a Knight of the British Empire, he firmly resisted attempts to shut down Banaras University -- one of the major centres of the 1942 movement. In one of his addresses at a convocation presided over by a particularly strong Governor, Sir Maurice Hallett, Dr Radhakrishnan eulogised Gandhi -- “one of the immortal voices of the human race in all that relates to the highest effort of man.”
During the last five decades of his working life he had to change roles frequently -- scholar to parliamentarian to diplomat in the cold Moscow of Stalin’s day; then Vice President and ex-officio Chairman of the Upper House of Parliament (1952 to 1962) and finally President of the Republic.
His election as President in 1962 was widely hailed the world over as an experiment of Plato’s concept of the philosopher kings. During the decade-and-a-half between Independence and his election as President he had shown himself an able administrator as well as an astute diplomat and a foresighted statesman.
His tenure as President was singularly eventful -- twice the country was faced with a war situation and twice with the death of a Prime Minister. It called for a tremendous capacity for adjustment with new personalities at the helm of affairs and a readjustment of roles.