Dr. Radhakrishnan And A Case Of Plagiarism

Subject: Dr. Radhakrishnan And A Case Of Plagiarism

Written By: Yogesh Gogwekar

Address : Mahim, Mumbai

5^th September 2022 is the birth anniversary of Second President of India and a distinguished Philosopher Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan which is always being celebrated as a Teacher’s Day. He was also a Vice Chancellor of Andhra University and Banaras Hindu University. He tried to teach Indian Philosophy to the world; but it was dismissed as theology with the contempt of Western Philosophers. He also wanted to separate the Indian Philosophical tradition from Western philosophical Tradition. For that he built up alternative Philosophy based on metaphysics and ethics of Advaita Vedanta.  

Nowadays, on every teacher’s day, we get posts or videos on social media about a case of plagiarism against Dr. Radhakrishnan. Such posts or videos are not giving us full information about the case of plagiarism and such things are polarizing the Indian Society in a dangerous way by giving half-truth. In this year, one video was posted on social media which was telling us totally wrong information about Dr. Radhakrishnan. An Anker in the video is claiming that Dr. Radhakrishnan became the President of India because of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as Nehru wanted a communist person to please Russia. This is not at all correct.

Ramanand Chatterjee, a respected journalist, was an editor of Modern Review of English Monthly magazine. During this time, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee was the Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University and Chatterjee and Mukherjee could not get on. Ramanand Chatterjee was continuously criticizing non-Bengalis appointments to senior positions in Calcutta University.  Unwanted remarks have been passed on the appointment of personalities like Bhandarkar, C V Raman and also on Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Due to his great work done in Philosophy; Dr. Radhakrishnan became one of the most influential philosophers and held the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at University of Calcutta. This gave Ramanand Chatterjee a special cause of dislike. One more reason for disliking was a wide publicity of monthly magazine New Era and Dr. Radhakrishnan was his main supporter and also responsible for its success.  Ramanand Chatterjee thought that this would be the great threat to his monthly magazine Modern Review. This was the fertile ground for all the opponents of Dr. Radhakrishnan to come together against him.

Dr. Radhakrishnan was the most controversial academician throughout his career.  Ramanand Chatterjee had played very dirty politics along with Surendranath Dasgupta who was the rival of Dr. Radhakrishnan. Even historian Jadunath Sarkar joined with Ramanand Chatterjee against Dr. Radhakrishnan.  They used Jadunath Sinha as an instrument to plot a case of plagiarism against Dr. Radhakrishnan. In 1927, his second volume of Indian Philosophy was published and charges of plagiarism were labelled against him by a young philosopher Mr. Jadunath Sinha who was teaching at Meerut College at that time.  Jadunath Sinha, a young postgraduate scholar working on Indian systems of psychology, claimed that he had submitted a thesis which Radhakrishnan had examined for the doctorate degree and the same has been published in the second volume of Indian Philosophy.  He did this by writing a letter in Modern Review and citing passages from his thesis and also from the book of Indian Philosophy Volume 2 written by Dr. Radhakrishnan.  Due to this, his honour and integrity were impugned. For this, Dr. Radhakrishnan replied that he had been studying Sanskrit texts and lecturing on them for many years and also helping many students to do the translation of these Sanskrit Texts.  He also pointed out that the manuscript of the Indian Philosophy of second volume had been sent to the publishers seven years back even though it was published in 1927.

Calcutta Review had published the letter of Nalin Ganguly who was one of the students of Dr. Radhakrishnan. Through this letter, one can easily make out that manuscript of Indian Philosophy volume 2 was available before 1922, but Ramanand Chatterjee continued to publish letters of Mr. Jadunath Sinha reiterating his charges.  Ramanand Chatterjee further allowed publishing Mr. Jadunath Sinha’s letters in other newspapers especially in Madras to destroy the reputation as a scholar and public figure of Dr. Radhakrishnan.  Thus, Dr. Radhakrishnan was not having any option to file the case for defamation against Ramanand Chatterjee and Mr. Jadunath Sinha in 1929. Mr. Jadunath Sinha, based on the advice of Ramanand Chatterjee filed a counter –claim case against Dr. Radhakrishnan.  The case was finally taken up after four years i.e. in 1933.

During this case, N. N. Sirkar, advocate general of Bengal who later became the law member of Government of India has shown his respects by saying,  ``You are the guest of Bengal and have brought honour to this province; it is our duty to look after you”.  When this case came up in the court, the court received strong evidence in support of Radhakrishnan through two eminent scholars of Sanskrit, Ganganatha Jha and Kuppuswami Shastri.  During the proceeding, it became clear that Mr. Jadunath Sinha was going to lose the case. At this stage, Mr. Jadunath Sinha was advised by his friends to settle the case out of the court. Mr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee who was Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University at that time played an important role in this settlement.  Dr. Radhakrishnan, despite being in a strong position, was generous enough to compromise the case by forgetting all his troubles.  

This is the full story of the case. Today, we are getting very wrong information in social media and most of the people without doing any study believe in it blindly. This is very dangerous.  

Thank You

Yogesh Gogwekar