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Glimpses of Gurudev R.D, Ranade 2

Radhakrishnan were putting up with Justice M.B. Niyogi of the Nagpur High Court. On reaching Nagpur the first thing I did was to call upon Prof. Ranade at Justice Niyogi's residence. I sat with Prof. Ranade for an hour or so, talking over many things at random. Then [had to leave him, as not much time was left for the inauguration ceremony of the Congress, where Prof. Ranade had to deliver his Presidential address. I attended the Inaugural function. The Congress was inaugurated by Sir Hyde Gowan, the then Governor of the present day Madhya Pradesh. After Sir Hyde Gowan's inaugural speech, Sir Hari Singh Gaur, the then Vice-Chancellor of the Nagpur University, gave the welcome speech. Then came the wonder of wonders - an absolutely extempore Presidential Address by Dr. Prof. Ranade, no slipshod address, but a very substantial address which sought to press into service the latest researches in Physics, Biology and Neurology for the cause of spiritual philosophy. A substance of this address, as prepared by Dr. C.D. Deshmukh of Morris College, Nagpur, was later published in the Review of Philosophy and Religion (Vol. VIL, No. 2, Dec. 1938). In the course of his welcome address Sir Hari Singh Gaur had castigated philosophy as full of difficulties and obscurantisms to which Prof. Ranade gave a prompt and fitting reply in these words, "It is only too true, as Sir Hari Singh Gaur has just now told us, that philosophy is beset with difficulties, subtleties, obscurantisms and so on. I do not deny that these things exist. But I beg to submit that the kernel of philosophy is not the difficulties or the obscurantisms, but a metaphysical and moral pith which constitutes the essence ofall philosophy whatsoever."

The next evening I again went to Justice Niyogi's residence where I met both Prof. Ranade and Dr. Radhakrishnan sitting in the same room. Prof. Ranade

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