- Lived:
- 1888–1975 · Tiruttani, Madras, Mysore, Calcutta, Oxford, Moscow, New Delhi
- Tradition:
- Modern Vedānta; comparative philosophy — East and West argued as one conversation
- The Big Idea:
- Religion at its core is not dogma but experience — the direct human contact with a Reality that every tradition reads in its own idiom — and Indian philosophy belongs at the world's table as an equal, not an exhibit.
- In their words:
- "The challenge of Christian critics impelled me to make a study of Hinduism."
- If you remember one thing:
- The boy educated by missionaries to doubt his own tradition spent a lifetime defending it in the language of its critics — and ended up president of India, the closest thing history has offered to Plato's philosopher-king.