The man whose birthday marks Teacher’s day has a tricky legacy. On the one hand, he is revered as among India’s greatest academics and philosophers of modern times, bringing Hindu thought and ideas to challenge the implied superiority of Western ones.
As an ambassador, he fostered warm India-USSR relations, helping build a friendship that would later prove invaluable. He served as India’s first Vice-President for two terms before becoming the President, where he called for unity and fellowship at a time when the Cold War was sparking crisis after crisis worldwide.
On the other hand, advocation of Advaita-Vedantic thought has been linked to nationalist movements, that interpreted it to mean that an all-inclusive Hindu religion should subsume and be above other religions. By including all of the worlds under a perennial ambit, he depicts Hinduism as the upper level in a hierarchy of global religions.
His legacy as the eponymous teacher behind Teacher’s Day also holds a sad mirror to the state of Indian academia today. Accused of plagiarism by a student of his at Calcutta University, his story reflects the rampant ‘cut and paste’ culture that is rampant today.
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