Three Prose Writers

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       This Blog is an Assignment of paper no.: 202 -Indian English Literature -Post- Independence  In this assignment I am discussing Three Prose Writers.

Personal Information 

Name:- Mansi B. Gujadiya

Roll Number:-12

Enrollment Number:-4069206420220013

Batch:-M.A SEM -3( 2022-23 )

Email ID:- mansigajjar10131@gmail.com

Paper Number:-202

Paper Code:-22407

Paper Name:- Indian English Literature -Post- Independence 

Submitted to:- English department MKBU

Topic:- Three Prose Writers 

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, (5 September 1888 – 17 April 1975) was an Indian philosopher and statesman who served as the second president of India from 1962 to 1967. 

One of the most distinguished twentieth-century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy, Radhakrishnan held the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta from 1921 to 1932 and Spalding Chair of Eastern Religion and Ethics at University of Oxford from 1936 to 1952.

Radhakrishnan's philosophy was grounded in Advaita Vedanta, reinterpreting this tradition for a contemporary understanding. He defended Hinduism against what he called "uninformed Western criticism", contributing to the formation of contemporary Hindu identity. He has been influential in shaping the understanding of Hinduism, in both India and the west, and earned a reputation as a bridge-builder between India and the West.

Radhakrishnan was awarded several high awards during his life, including a knighthood in 1931, the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India, in 1954, and honorary membership of the British Royal Order of Merit in 1963. He was also one of the founders of Helpage India, a non profit organisation for elderly underprivileged in India. Radhakrishnan believed that "teachers should be the best minds in the country". Since 1962, his birthday has been celebrated in India as Teachers' Day on 5 September every year.

Radhakrishnan did not have a background in the Congress Party, nor was he active in the struggle against British rules. He was a 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 symbolised 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.

Works by Radhakrishnan

•  The philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (1918), Macmillan, London, 294 pages
• Indian Philosophy (1923) Vol.1, 738 pages. (1927) Vol 2, 807 pages. Oxford University Press.
• The Hindu View of Life (1926), 92 pages
• Indian Religious Thought (2016), Orient Paperbacks, ISBN 978-81-222042-4-7
• Religion, Science and Culture (2010), Orient Paperbacks, ISBN 978-81-222001-2-6
• An Idealist View of Life (1929), 351 pages
• Kalki, or the Future of Civilization (1929), 96 pages
• Eastern Religions and Western Thought (1939), Oxford University Press, 396 pages
• Religion and Society (1947), George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 242 pages
• The Bhagavadgītā: with an introductory essay, Sanskrit text, English translation and notes (1948), 388 pages
• The Dhammapada (1950), 194 pages, Oxford University Press
• The Principal Upanishads (1953), 958 pages, HarperCollins Publishers Limited
• Recovery of Faith (1956), 205 pages
• A Source Book in Indian Philosophy (1957), 683 pages, Princeton University Press, with Charles A. Moore as co-editor.
• The Brahma Sutra: The Philosophy of Spiritual Life. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1959, 606 pages. 
• Religion, Science & Culture (1968), 121 pages

Philosophy

Radhakrishnan tried to bridge eastern and western thought, defending Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism", but also incorporating Western philosophical and religious thought.

Advaita Vedanta 

Radhakrishnan was one of the most prominent spokesmen of Neo-Vedanta. His metaphysics was grounded in Advaita Vedanta, but he reinterpreted Advaita Vedanta for a contemporary understanding. He acknowledged the reality and diversity of the world of experience, which he saw as grounded in and supported by the absolute or Brahman. Radhakrishnan also reinterpreted Shankara's notion of maya. According to Radhakrishnan, maya is not a strict absolute idealism, but "a subjective misperception of the world as ultimately real."

Intuition and religious experience 

"Intuition", synonymously called "religious experience", has a central place in Radhakrishnan's philosophy as a source of knowledge which is not mediated by conscious thought. His specific interest in experience can be traced back to the works of William James (1842–1910), F. H. Bradley (1846–1924), Henri Bergson (1859–1941), and Friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925),[34] and to Vivekananda (1863–1902),[39] who had a strong influence on Sarvepalli's thought. According to Radhakrishnan, intuition is of a self-certifying character (swatahsiddha), self-evidencing (svāsaṃvedya), and self-luminous (svayam-prakāsa). In his book An Idealist View of Life, he made a powerful case for the importance of intuitive thinking as opposed to purely intellectual forms of thought. According to Radhakrishnan, intuition plays a specific role in all kinds of experience.

Radhakrishnan discernes five sorts of experience:

1. Cognitive Experience:

• Sense Experience
• Discursive Reasoning
•  Intuitive Apprehension

2. Psychic Experience

3. Aesthetic Experience

4. Ethical Experience

5. Religious Experience

Classification of religions

For Radhakrishnan, theology and creeds are intellectual formulations, and symbols of religious experience or "religious intuitions". Radhakrishnan qualified the variety of religions hierarchically according to their apprehension of "religious experience", giving Advaita Vedanta the highest place:

• The worshippers of the Absolute
• The worshippers of the personal God
• The worshippers of the incarnations like Rama, Kṛiṣhṇa, Buddha
• Those who worship ancestors, deities and sages
• The worshippers of the petty forces and spirits

Radhakrishnan saw Hinduism as a scientific religion based on facts, apprehended via intuition or religious experience. According to Radhakrishnan, "if philosophy of religion is to become scientific, it must become empirical and find itself based on religious experience". He saw this empiricism exemplified in the Vedas:

The truths of the ṛṣis are not evolved as the result of logical reasoning or systematic philosophy but are the products of spiritual intuition, dṛṣti or vision. The ṛṣis are not so much the authors of the truths recorded in the Vedas as the seers who were able to discern the eternal truths by raising their life-spirit to the plane of universal spirit. They are the pioneer researchers in the realm of the spirit who saw more in the world than their followers. Their utterances are not based on transitory vision but on a continuous experience of resident life and power. When the Vedas are regarded as the highest authority, all that is meant is that the most exacting of all authorities is the authority of facts.

From his writings collected as The Hindu View of Life, Upton Lectures, Delivered at Manchester College, Oxford, 1926: "Hinduism insists on our working steadily upwards in improving our knowledge of God. The worshippers of the absolute are of the highest rank; second to them are the worshippers of the personal God; then come the worshippers of the incarnations of Rama, Krishna, Buddha; below them are those who worship deities, ancestors, and sages, and lowest of all are the worshippers of petty forces and spirits. The deities of some men are in water (i.e., bathing places), those of the most advanced are in the heavens, those of the children (in religion) are in the images of wood and stone, but the sage finds his God in his deeper self. The man of action finds his God in fire, the man of feeling in the heart, and the feeble minded in the idol, but the strong in spirit find God everywhere". The seers see the supreme in the self, and not the images."

To Radhakrishnan, Advaita Vedanta was the best representative of Hinduism, as being grounded in intuition, in contrast to the "intellectually mediated interpretations" of other religions. He objected charges of "quietism" and "world denial", instead stressing the need and ethic of social service, giving a modern interpretation of classical terms as tat-tvam-asi. According to Radhakrishnan, Vedanta offers the most direct intuitive experience and inner realisation, which makes it the highest form of religion:

The Vedanta is not a religion, but religion itself in its most universal and deepest significance."

Radhakrishnan saw other religions, "including what Dr. S. Radhakrishnan understands as lower forms of Hinduism," as interpretations of Advaita Vedanta, thereby Hinduising all religions.

Although Radhakrishnan was well-acquainted with western culture and philosophy, he was also critical of them. He stated that Western philosophers, despite all claims to objectivity, were influenced by theological influences of their own culture.

Awards and honours 

Civilian honours 

National 

India:

• Bharat Ratna Ribbon.svg Recipient of the Bharat Ratna (1954)

 British India:

• Knight Bachelor Ribbon.png Knight Bachelor (1931), ceased to use the pre-nominal of Sir in 1947 following India's independence.

Foreign 

 Germany:

• D-PRU Pour le Merite 1 BAR.svg Recipient of the Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts (1954)

Mexico:

• MEX Order of the Aztec Eagle 1 Class BAR.png Sash First Class of the Order of the Aztec Eagle (1954)

United Kingdom:

• Order of Merit (Commonwealth realms) ribbon.png Member of the Order of Merit (1963)

Other achievements 

• A portrait of Radhakrishnan adorns the Chamber of the Rajya Sabha.
• 1933–37: Nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 1938: elected Fellow of the British Academy.
• 1961: the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
• 1962: Institution of Teacher's Day in India, yearly celebrated on 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.

 Radhakrishnan on a 1989 stamp of India

N. RAGHUNATHAN 

The little known story teller of The Hindu

The 'edit writer of The Hindu’ for 31 years. N. Raghunathan, who died in 1982, was also a brilliant writer of short stories and plays, capturing in authentic Thanjavur Tamil.

The world of journalism knew him as the ‘edit writer of The Hindu’ for 31 years. N. Raghunathan, who died in 1982, was also a brilliant writer of short stories and plays, capturing in authentic Thanjavur Tamil the disintegration of feudalism and social structure constructed in the face of modernism in the beginning of the 20th century.

The natural storyteller in Raghunathan transcends life in agraharam and he could describe the entire society with a unique style, punctuated with rich imagery, possible only for a keen observer of his surroundings.

He uses the phrase “cactus milk” to describe the density of the Thanjavur degree coffee, likens the face of an embarrassed character to “ pontha kalayam ” (mud pot with holes) and colour of a river in spate as “ kaaka’ colour, the colour of a crow. But his description of the patterns inside the Thespesia flower ( Poovarasu ) to the emergence of the lotus from the navel of Lord Vishnu will elevate the status of the odourless flower to a new level.

His in-depth knowledge of both ancient Tamil literature and western classics, including his favourite writer Dostoevsky, finds expression in all the 18 stories he wrote under the pen name “ Raskian ” in Bharatha Mani , a magazine run by his friend K.C. Venkatramani between 1938 and 1948.

He published his short story collection in 1962, and in 2006 Tamizhini released Rasikan Kathaikal which included his four plays and one of Sotto Voce articles in English by him under the name Vigneswara.

“I used to write articles for Bharatha Mani . I wrote short stories on his insistence,” Raghuanthan had said in the preface to the short story collection. He also worked for the Daily Express , and in 1926, joined The Hindu.

“He was the most brilliant editor of Indian journalism and not just of The Hindu ,” said N. Ram, Chairman of the Kasturi and Sons Ltd.

A. Sathish, a Tamil professor and editor of Rasikan Kathaikal, had said Ragunathan stood out among his contemporaries with his technique of literary and oral tradition.

“He probably is the first Brahmin to write about envy, perversion, violence and glee lurking in the subconscious human mind. That could be the reason for him not getting his place in Tamil literature while he was celebrated as a great writer in English,” he said.

Raghunathan had a clear idea about fiction. “A fiction writer will succeed only if he empathises with his character. But he cannot affect the individuality of his characters,” he had remarked.

“You feel like entering into a world destroyed long ago. Even though he used manipravalam (a mix of Tamil and Sanskrit) it never hindered the flow of his language,” said writer Yuvan Chandrasekar, in his foreword to the republished short story collection.

Works

• in English and held by 12 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
• The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki by Vālmīki( Recording )
• in English and held by 7 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
• This Ramayana production combines the inner bliss of Vedic literature with the outer richness of delightfully profound story telling
• The Avadi socialists by N Raghunathan( Book )
• 2 editions published in 1964 in English and held by 7 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
• Our new rulers by N Raghunathan( Book )
• 2 editions published in 1961 in English and held by 6 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
• The concept of dharma in the Itihāsas and the Purānas by N Raghunathan( Book )
• 5 editions published between 1954 and 1956 in English and held by 6 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri 

Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri CBE (23 November 1897 – 1 August 1999) was an Indian writer.

In 1990, Oxford University awarded Chaudhuri, by then a long-time resident of the city of Oxford, an Honorary Degree in Letters. In 1992, he was made an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Books by Nirad Chaudhary

• 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)

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