New Delhi: Former President Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's birthday on September 5 is celebrated every year as Teacher's Day.
He was born in a poor Brahmin family in South India in 1888. He rose to become one of India's great philosophers.
As Indian ambassador to the Soviet Union, he had once patted the cheek of Soviet dictator Joseph D. Stalin. Dr Radhakrishnan became India's first vice president and in 1962 he became India's second president.
Here are some interesting facts to know about this great guru:
His father did not want him to learn English or go to school. Instead he wanted him to become a priest. Later his father agreed to send him to a school in Tiruttani itself.
He was a brilliant student and went through most of his education on scholarships.
In April 1909, he was appointed to the Department of Philosophy at the Madras Presidency College. From then on, he was engaged in the serious study of Indian philosophy and religion, and was a teacher of Philosophy.
He was so popular among his students that when he was leaving to join as a professor in Calcutta he was taken all the way from the Mysore University to the Railway Station in a flower decked carriage pulled by his students!
When Radhakrishnan's appointment was welcomed by Bertrand Russell, one of the world's greatest philosophers.
He said "It is an honour to philosophy that Dr. Radhakrishnan should be President of India and I, as a philosopher, take special pleasure in this.
Plato aspired for philosophers to become kings and it is a tribute to India that she should make a philosopher her President".
H. N. Spalding, who had also listened to Dr Radhakrishnan's lectures in London, was so fascinated by their content and his personality that he decided to found a chair at Oxford for Eastern Religions and Ethics.
The Chair, established in 1936 was offered to Radhakrishnan.
In 1918, he was appointed Professor of Philosophy in the University of Mysore. Three years later, he was appointed to the most important philosophy chair in India, King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science in the University of Calcutta.
In 1929, Radhakrishnan was invited to take the post vacated by Principal J. Estin Carpenter in Manchester College, Oxford.
For his services to education, he was knighted by the British Government in 1931, but did not use the title in personal life preferring instead his academic title 'Doctor'.
He was the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University from 1931 to 1936. From 1936-39, Radhakrishnan was the Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford University. In 1939, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy.
