On 18 September 1957, Vice President S. Radhakrishnan arrived in the Chinese capital. He was received by all the top Chinese leaders, including President Liu Shaoqi, Prime Minister Chou En-lai, Soong Chingling and the Mayor of Beijing, Peng Chen. Even Chairman Mao returned to Beijing a day early from a trip to receive the Vice President. Radhakrishnan called on Mao. His hand was bandaged as he had hurt his finger while getting into a car at Phnom Penh. After shaking hands, he patted Mao on the left cheek. Mao, as well as the other Chinese officials present, were taken aback by this unusual familiarity. However, the philosopher quickly diffused the situation by saying, ‘Mr Chairman, don’t be alarmed, I did the same thing to Stalin and the Pope.’ The Mao-Radhakrishnan talks went off smoothly.

Radhakrishnan observed that ‘if India and China stood together the world would take note of it’. To this, Mao replied that if India and China stood together for twenty years, no one would be able to make them go on different paths. At the banquet Mao gave for Radhakrishnan, he picked a piece of meat with his chopsticks and put it in the plate of his vegetarian guest. This was the ultimate act of expressing deep friendship. I watched with horror, but the Vice President dealt with this culinary outrage with extreme tact. He did not touch the meat but helped himself to a dozen vegetarian dishes.

Chou En-lai accepted Nehru’s invitation to come to New Delhi for talks to resolve the Sino-Indian border dispute, arriving on 20 April 1960, accompanied by the outspoken Foreign Minister, Marshal Chen Yi.

Nehru told the Chinese PM that some of his senior Cabinet ministers would call on him. Being the shrewd man that he was, Chou insisted that he would call on them instead. Chou when met Vice President S. Radhakrishnan, Home Minister Gobind Ballabh Pant and Finance Minister Morarji Desai. Though not one of them was familiar with the complexities of the Sino-Indian border, they chose to go into the specifics. The Vice President began by saying that the Sino-Indian border problem should be settled during Prime Minister Nehru’s lifetime. The Chinese leaders found this incomprehensible. The Vice President said that the two countries had no conflict in two thousand years and war would be no solution. To this the Foreign Minister of China, Marshal Chen Yi, replied that China did not want war. The Vice President then asked what 400 square miles of territory was compared to the friendship of 400 million Indians. Premier Chou En-lai replied what were a few thousand acres of land compared to the friendship of 600 million Chinese. The Vice President was no match for Chou En-lai.

President S. Radhakrishnan’s five-year term was to end in May 1967. He had been openly critical of the Prime Minister’s style of functioning and, in his broadcast to the nation of 25 January 1967, on the eve of Republic Day, he overstepped the bounds of constitutional propriety when he said, ‘Even after making allowance for all the difficulties we cannot forgive widespread incompetence and gross mismanagement of our resources.’ Indira Gandhi was upset and annoyed by this and decided not to give Radhakrishnan a second term—the eminent philosopher paid the price for patronizing a powerful politician. I was sitting next to her when she said, ‘I am not giving him a second term.’ Dr Zakir Hussain was elected the next President.