My Search for Truth: Radhakrishnan's early life and the making of a philosopher

1. The text

My Search for Truth is Radhakrishnan’s short autobiographical essay, first published in Vergilius Ferm’s collection Religion in Transition (1937) and later issued on its own. It is listed in the syllabus as an excerpt; the prescribed reference is the Radhakrishnan Reader: An Anthology. In it he looks back on how a boy from a conventional Hindu home came to devote his life to the study of philosophy and religion, and sets out his mature views on religion, God and the purpose of philosophy (the second note).

The author: Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975), philosopher, teacher and statesman. He taught at Presidency College Madras, Mysore and Calcutta, was Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford (1936), Vice-President of India (1952–62) and President (1962–67). He received the Bharat Ratna in 1954. His birthday, 5 September, is observed as Teachers’ Day.

2. Early life

• Birth and family. Born on 5 September 1888 at Tiruttani, near Madras, the second child of conventional Hindu parents of modest means. His father, Sarvepalli Veeraswami, was a subordinate revenue official.
• The pilgrimage towns. He spent the first twelve years of his life in Tiruttani and Tirupati, both famous pilgrimage centres. He writes that he has always had a firm belief in an unseen reality behind the world of appearances, a reality grasped by the mind rather than the senses, and traces it to this early religious atmosphere.
• Temperament. He describes himself as shy and solitary by nature, with books as his constant companions, though others took him to be sociable. He credits his success less to his own effort than to good fortune and a sense of being under the special care of providence.
• Marriage. As was usual then, he was married young, at about sixteen, to Sivakamu.

3. Education in Christian institutions

All his schooling was in Christian missionary institutions:

1. the Lutheran (German) Mission High School, Tirupati, 1896–1900;
2. Voorhees College, Vellore, 1901–04;
3. Madras Christian College, 1905–09, where he took his B.A. and M.A. in philosophy.

Two things came to him from these years. He learned the teachings of the New Testament and came to respect them. At the same time he heard the missionaries’ criticism of Hindu beliefs and practices, and it hurt his pride as a Hindu. He was also stirred by the example of Swami Vivekananda, whose speeches had given Hindus fresh self-respect.

4. Why he took up Hindu philosophy

This is the second recurring question (“Why did Dr. Radhakrishnan take up the study of Hindu philosophy?”, October 2023). The answer has three steps.

1. The challenge. The Christian critics claimed that Hinduism was a creed of superstition and that Vedanta, by treating the world as illusion, left no room for ethics. He could not simply accept or reject this.
2. The inquiry. The challenge drove him to study Hinduism closely, to find out what in it was living and what was dead. He did not set out to defend it blindly but to sift it.
3. The result. His M.A. thesis, The Ethics of the Vedanta and its Metaphysical Presuppositions (1908), answered the charge that the Vedanta system had no place for ethics. His teacher Professor A. G. Hogg praised it. Radhakrishnan later looked back on it as an immature work, but it settled the direction of his life. From 1909 he taught philosophy at Presidency College, Madras, and wrote in Western journals such as the International Journal of Ethics, the Monist and the Quest to show the ethical character of Hindu thought.

He adds, with characteristic modesty, that he took up philosophy almost by chance: a cousin who had finished the same course passed his philosophy textbooks on to him, and that decided his subject. This is a minor detail; the examiner is looking for the missionary challenge.

5. Model answer: the factors that shaped his character (10 marks)

Introduction. In My Search for Truth Dr. S. Radhakrishnan traces his development from a shy boy in a pilgrimage town to a philosopher of world standing. Several factors shaped him.

1. A religious home and surroundings. Born at Tiruttani in 1888 to orthodox Hindu parents and brought up there and at Tirupati, he grew up among temples and pilgrims. This gave him a lifelong belief in an unseen spiritual reality behind the visible world.
2. His temperament. He was shy and solitary and lived with books. This made him reflective and turned him to study.
3. Missionary education. Twelve years in Christian institutions at Tirupati, Vellore and Madras taught him the New Testament and the habit of critical inquiry, and gave him respect for other faiths.
4. The challenge of the critics. The missionaries’ attacks on Hinduism wounded his pride and drove him to examine his own religion honestly, separating what was alive from what was dead.
5. Vivekananda. The swami’s example gave him confidence in the worth of Indian thought.
6. Teachers and study. Under Professor A. G. Hogg he wrote his thesis on the ethics of the Vedanta, which fixed philosophy as his life’s work.
7. Faith in providence. He believed that a higher care guided his life, which made him humble about his own achievements.

Conclusion. Tradition gave him faith, missionary schooling gave him a critical mind, and the clash between the two made him a seeker after truth who could interpret Indian philosophy to the West without contempt for other religions.

How this is examined

Section A of the 80-mark paper (any four of seven, 10 marks each) and Part A of the 100-mark paper (16 marks) both carry two Radhakrishnan questions every session. From this half of the essay: “Explain the early life of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan” (January and June 2025), “What are the factors that shaped the character of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan?” (January 2026), “Trace the impact of his childhood on his personality” (June 2025, 100 marks) and “Why did he take up the study of Hindu philosophy?” (October 2023). The same material answers all four; change only the emphasis. Write about a page and a half, in numbered points under a short introduction.