Amid war, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan reimagined India-China ties through philosophy

When a Chinese educational mission came to India in April 1943, it met many distinguished scholars, but one academic in particular left a lasting impression on its members: Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

Then the vice chancellor of Benares Hindu University, Radhakrishnan spoke to the Chinese visitors at length about Hinduism and Buddhism, and about the ancient links between Asia’s great civilisations. The conversations must have been truly compelling, for the government of war-torn China issued a formal invitation for Radhakrishnan to visit the country for five weeks and deliver lectures in and around Chongqing, then its capital.

While the scholar, who would go on to become India’s president in 1962, agreed to spend no more than three weeks in China, his visit eventually lasted just 15 days. During that time, Radhakrishnan travelled mainly to universities, academic societies and Buddhist shrines.

His stay in May 1944 coincided with a major Chinese counter-offensive against Japan, which still occupied large parts of the country. Some of his well-wishers had advised him against visiting China under such precarious conditions. But he disagreed. He felt a sense of shame, he later wrote, that he had travelled to Europe nearly a dozen times but had never once been to East Asia. It troubled him, too, that Indians knew far more about Western languages, literature, religion and scientific thought than they did about Asia.

“The unsettled conditions of China were perhaps the right time for a friendly visit,” Radhakrishnan wrote in his book titled India and China: Lectures delivered in China in May 1944. “Besides, political distress in China has liberated radiant spiritual power. Everywhere were signs of a creative ardour. The clashing of different forces, eastern and western, traditional and revolutionary, has produced an awakening of the human consciousness of which the future is uncertain.”

Among the students Radhakrishnan addressed were those who had fled territories occupied by Japan. These students, he said, had been “torn loose from the roots that held them and turned out of their historic buildings”, yet continued to display a “wonderful spirit” despite immense hardship.

“There are no palatial buildings, no well-equipped laboratories, no good libraries,” he wrote. “The classes are held in improvised huts built of bamboo and clay, and tables and chairs are made of dead wood.”

He described the very existence of such universities as a “great achievement”, saying they ensured that “the spirit of China is kept alive”. It was in these makeshift campuses that Radhakrishnan spoke about the affinities between Chinese philosophical traditions, particularly Confucianism and Taoism, and Indian religious thought, including Hinduism and Buddhism.

Confucian beliefs

In a lecture in Chongqing, Radhakrishnan spoke of how India and China had been linked by learning and culture long before the Christian era. “Our civilizations which are of great antiquity and of unbroken continuity possess a common cultural and spiritual background,” he said. “They have similar ideals of human life and fellowship.”

Discussing Confucius, Radhakrishnan observed that while the sage displayed qualities normally associated with a religious figure, he maintained silence on explicitly religious questions. Confucius, he said, demanded not a new religion but a new social outlook.

Yet Radhakrishnan believed that spirituality was essential to the practice of Confucianism. “Confucius tells us that the things that make him sad are ‘that virtue is not cultivated, that knowledge is not made clear, that people hear of duty and do not practise it, that people have evil in themselves and do nothing to improve,’” he said. Human beings, he added, often recognised what was noble and excellent but chose instead what was poor and mean.

“When Hindu thought requires us to develop ‘jnana’ or wisdom, when the Buddha asks us to acquire bodhi or enlightenment, they demand a spiritual effort, they call upon us to acquire the wisdom which humbles the learned no less than the simple,” Radhakrishnan said, while calling for a “violent inward change” to evolve.

“The strict observance of ethical rules that Confucius lays down is possible only with the regeneration brought about by religion,” Radhakrishnan said. By practising dharma, people could fulfil their social duties and create the harmony and mutual confidence sought by the Chinese sage, he added.

“Confucius puts before us the ideal of a sage king, one who combines within himself the conscientiousness and equanimity of a sage and the executive accomplishments of a ruler, the yoga of Krishna and the dhanus of Arjuna,” the Indian scholar said. “There is a deeper consistency in his thought and a spiritual background to it, but as he did not develop it, he left it to his followers to provide the spiritual background and give his social code stability and direction.”

Radhakrishnan was well acquainted with the teachings of Mencius, the fourth-century BCE Confucian thinker often referred to as the “Second Sage”. Mencius, he said, developed a form of “mystical idealism” while remaining firmly rooted in Confucian ethics and social values.

“Mencius distinguishes two kinds of knowledge,” Radhakrishnan explained, “one which is the result of mental activity and the other which is the illumination of spirit produced by the stilling of mental activities.” This, he said, was akin to the para vidya of the Upanishads. “Mencius asks us to recapture the intuitive powers, which, in the stress of life, do not get a chance of development. By means of breath regulation, mental concentration, and moral discipline, we rise to the spiritual level.”

Taoism and Upanishads

Radhakrishnan was equally familiar with Taoism and with Lao Tzu, the author of Tao Te Ching, one of the foundational texts of Taoism. He saw striking parallels between Taoist philosophy and Advaita Vedanta.

“It is very probable that during the period of the sixth to the fourth century B.C., when Taoism was in a formative condition, the mystic doctrines of the Upanishads and the technique of yoga, including breath-control and spiritual ecstasy were conveyed to China,” Radhakrishnan said. “But we are not in a position to establish that this was so.”

The central ideas of Taoism, he believed, closely resembled those of the Upanishads. “The contingency of the world and the reality of an Absolute are common to both,” he said. Neither tradition, he noted, believed in a personal God endowed with attributes such as knowledge, active love and mercy. “The conception of Tao in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu is, as we have seen, on the same lines as the idea of Brahman in the Upanishads. Before time, for all time, and above all time, there was a self-existent being, eternal, infinite, complete and omnipresent. It is impossible to name it or define it, for human terms are applicable only to empirical objects.”

He described Chuang Tzu, who wrote another foundational text of Taoism, as a practitioner of a discipline comparable to yoga. “Chuang Tzu adopts the method of yoga by which the soul travels back from the outward activities, appetites and emotions, through successive layers of consciousness, until it arrives at pure consciousness, ‘the mind within the mind,’” Radhakrishnan said. “Postures (asanas) and breath-control (pranayama) of the yoga system are advised.”

Quoting Chuang Tzu – “Throw open the gates, put self aside, bide in silence and the radiance of the spirit shall come in” – Radhakrishnan concluded that other great teachers of Taoism also practised yoga.

Summing up the basic teachings of Tao Te Ching, he said, “Every creature in the world, human or animal has a certain way of behaving, which is natural to him or it, and so long as we act according to it, we act in the way of the Tao or the way of virtue. Every one has his way, man or woman, prince or peasant. Each one should develop his own nature, his svadharma as the Bhagavadgita would put it.”

Radhakrishnan’s lectures were warmly received in China, where they helped generate renewed interest in Indian philosophical traditions. During his brief visit, the Indian scholar developed a deep fondness for the Chinese people and took careful note of their attitudes toward spirituality.

“The Chinese have a certain delicacy of feeling,” he wrote, “which makes them unwilling to dispute or discuss about spiritual things.” Rather than argue, they adopted a detached but respectful attitude toward religious belief, he added.

Radhakrishnan admired how Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism coexisted in China without rivalry. They are not regarded as “competitive,” he observed, “but as complementary,” together meeting the social, ethical and mystical needs of society.

Radhakrishnan was openly sympathetic to China’s war of resistance against Imperial Japan. In one lecture, he reminded students: “You were the first to stand up and fight against the aggressors in this war and for four and a half years, until the attack on Pearl Harbor brought America and Britain to your side; you fought alone and single-handed against a formidable foe with a toughness that has silenced the sceptics about the future of China.”

Despite the devastation around him, he remained optimistic about China’s future. “China after the war will have a great opportunity to rebuild her bombed cities and her universities will demonstrate to the world that she still has the imagination and the will-power which built the ancient miracles of art and architecture.”

In 1957, Radhakrishnan returned to China, this time as vice president of India, and was warmly received by the country’s top leadership, an affirmation of the intellectual and spiritual bridge he had helped strengthen more than a decade earlier.

Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.