Rabindranath Tagore - Wikipedia

Rabindranath
Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore FRAS (Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকু র, /rəˈbɪndrənɑːt tæˈɡɔːr/ ( listen); 7 May
1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright,
composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter.[1][2][3] He reshaped Bengali literature and
music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali,[4] he became in 1913
the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.[5] Tagore's poetic
songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry"
remain largely unknown outside Bengal.[6] He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Referred
to as "the Bard of Bengal",[7][2][3] Tagore was known by sobriquets: Gurudev, Kobiguru,
Biswakobi.[a]
Rabindranath Tagore
FRAS
Rabindranath Tagore, c. 1925
Born Rabindranath Thakur
7 May 1861, 25th of Baishakh, 1268 (Bengali

calendar)
Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India (now

Kolkata, West Bengal, India)
Died 7 August 1941 (aged 80)
Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India (now

Kolkata, West Bengal, India)
Resting place Ashes scattered in the Ganges
Pen name Bhanusingha
Occupation Poet • novelist • dramatist • essayist •

story-writer • composer • painter •
philosopher • social reformer • educationist •
linguist • grammarian
Language Bengali
Period Bengali Renaissance
Literary movement Contextual Modernism
Notable works Gitanjali • Ghare-Baire • Gora •
Jana Gana Mana • Rabindra Sangeet •
Amar Shonar Bangla • (other works)
Notable awards Nobel Prize in Literature
1913
Spouse Mrinalini Devi

(m. 1883; wid. 1902)
Children 5, including Rathindranath Tagore
Relatives Tagore family
Signature
A Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Burdwan district[9] and Jessore,
Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old.[10] At the age of sixteen, he released his first
substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by
literary authorities as long-lost classics.[11] By 1877 he graduated to his first short stories and
dramas, published under his real name. As a humanist, universalist, internationalist, and ardent
critic of nationalism,[12] he denounced the British Raj and advocated independence from Britain.
As an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprised paintings,
sketches and doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs; his legacy also
endures in his founding of Visva-Bharati University.[13][14]
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic
strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and
personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World)
are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—
for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were
chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's "Jana Gana Mana" and Bangladesh's "Amar
Shonar Bangla". The Sri Lankan national anthem was inspired by his work.[15]
Family history
The name Tagore is the anglicised transliteration of Thakur.[16] The original surname of the
Tagores was Kushari. They were Rarhi Brahmins and originally belonged to a village named Kush
in the district named Burdwan in West Bengal. The biographer of Rabindranath Tagore, Prabhat
Kumar Mukhopadhyaya wrote in the first volume of his book Rabindrajibani O Rabindra Sahitya
Prabeshak that
The Kusharis were the descendants of Deen Kushari, the son of Bhatta
Narayana; Deen was granted a village named Kush (in Burdwan zilla)
by Maharaja Kshitisura, he became its chief and came to be known as
Kushari.[9]
Life and events
Early life: 1861–1878

Young Tagore in London, 1879
The youngest of 13 surviving children, Tagore (nicknamed The last two days a storm
"Rabi") was born on 7 May 1861 in the Jorasanko mansion in has been raging, similar to
Calcutta,[18] the son of Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and the description in my song—
Sarada Devi (1830–1875).[b] Jhauro jhauro borishe
baridhara [... amidst it] a
hapless, homeless man
drenched from top to toe
standing on the roof of his
steamer [...] the last two days
I have been singing this song
over and over [...] as a result
the pelting sound of the
intense rain, the wail of the
wind, the sound of the
heaving Gorai River, [...] have
assumed a fresh life and
found a new language and I
have felt like a major actor in
this new musical drama
Tagore and his wife Mrinalini Devi, 1883 unfolding before me.
— Letter to Indira Devi.[17]
Tagore was raised mostly by servants; his mother had died in his early childhood and his father
travelled widely.[24] The Tagore family was at the forefront of the Bengal renaissance. They
hosted the publication of literary magazines; theatre and recitals of Bengali and Western
classical music featured there regularly. Tagore's father invited several professional Dhrupad
musicians to stay in the house and teach Indian classical music to the children.[25] Tagore's
oldest brother Dwijendranath was a philosopher and poet. Another brother, Satyendranath, was
the first Indian appointed to the elite and formerly all-European Indian Civil Service. Yet another
brother, Jyotirindranath, was a musician, composer, and playwright.[26] His sister Swarnakumari
became a novelist.[27] Jyotirindranath's wife Kadambari Devi, slightly older than Tagore, was a
dear friend and powerful influence. Her abrupt suicide in 1884, soon after he married, left him
profoundly distraught for years.[28]
Tagore largely avoided classroom schooling and preferred to roam the manor or nearby Bolpur
and Panihati, which the family visited.[29][30] His brother Hemendranath tutored and physically
conditioned him—by having him swim the Ganges or trek through hills, by gymnastics, and by
practising judo and wrestling. He learned drawing, anatomy, geography and history, literature,
mathematics, Sanskrit, and English—his least favourite subject.[31] Tagore loathed formal
education—his scholarly travails at the local Presidency College spanned a single day. Years
later he held that proper teaching does not explain things; proper teaching stokes curiosity:[32]
After his upanayan (coming-of-age rite) at age eleven, Tagore and his father left Calcutta in
February 1873 to tour India for several months, visiting his father's Santiniketan estate and
Amritsar before reaching the Himalayan hill station of Dalhousie. There Tagore read biographies,
studied history, astronomy, modern science, and Sanskrit, and examined the classical poetry of
Kālidāsa.[33][34] During his 1-month stay at Amritsar in 1873 he was greatly influenced by
melodious gurbani and nanak bani being sung at Golden Temple for which both father and son
were regular visitors. He mentions about this in his My Reminiscences (1912)
The golden temple of Amritsar comes back to me like a dream. Many a

morning have I accompanied my father to this Gurudarbar of the Sikhs
in the middle of the lake. There the sacred chanting resounds
continually. My father, seated amidst the throng of worshippers, would
sometimes add his voice to the hymn of praise, and finding a stranger
joining in their devotions they would wax enthusiastically cordial, and
we would return loaded with the sanctified offerings of sugar crystals
and other sweets.[35]
He wrote 6 poems relating to Sikhism and a number of articles in Bengali children's magazine
about Sikhism.[36] Tagore returned to Jorosanko and completed a set of major works by 1877,
one of them a long poem in the Maithili style of Vidyapati. As a joke, he claimed that these were
the lost works of newly discovered 17th-century Vaiṣṇava poet Bhānusiṃha.[37] Regional experts
accepted them as the lost works of the fictitious poet.[38] He debuted in the short-story genre in
Bengali with "Bhikharini" ("The Beggar Woman").[39][40] Published in the same year, Sandhya
Sangit (1882) includes the poem "Nirjharer Swapnabhanga" ("The Rousing of the Waterfall").
Shelaidaha: 1878–1901
Tagore's house in Shilaidaha, Bangladesh
Because Debendranath wanted his son to become a barrister, Tagore enrolled at a public school
in Brighton, East Sussex, England in 1878.[17] He stayed for several months at a house that the
Tagore family owned near Brighton and Hove, in Medina Villas; in 1877 his nephew and niece—
Suren and Indira Devi, the children of Tagore's brother Satyendranath—were sent together with
their mother, Tagore's sister-in-law, to live with him.[41] He briefly read law at University College
London, but again left school, opting instead for independent study of Shakespeare's plays
Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra and the Religio Medici of Thomas Browne. Lively English,
Irish, and Scottish folk tunes impressed Tagore, whose own tradition of Nidhubabu-authored
kirtans and tappas and Brahmo hymnody was subdued.[17][42] In 1880 he returned to Bengal
degree-less, resolving to reconcile European novelty with Brahmo traditions, taking the best from
each.[43] After returning to Bengal, Tagore regularly published poems, stories, and novels. These
had a profound impact within Bengal itself but received little national attention.[44] In 1883 he
married 10-year-old[45] Mrinalini Devi, born Bhabatarini, 1873–1902 (this was a common practice
at the time). They had five children, two of whom died in childhood.[46]
Tagore family boat (bajra or budgerow), the "Padma".

In 1890 Tagore began managing his vast ancestral estates in Shelaidaha (today a region of
Bangladesh); he was joined there by his wife and children in 1898. Tagore released his Manasi
poems (1890), among his best-known work.[47] As Zamindar Babu, Tagore criss-crossed the
Padma River in command of the Padma, the luxurious family barge (also known as "budgerow").
He collected mostly token rents and blessed villagers who in turn honoured him with banquets—
occasionally of dried rice and sour milk.[48] He met Gagan Harkara, through whom he became
familiar with Baul Lalon Shah, whose folk songs greatly influenced Tagore.[49] Tagore worked to
popularise Lalon's songs. The period 1891–1895, Tagore's Sadhana period, named after one of
his magazines, was his most productive;[24] in these years he wrote more than half the stories of
the three-volume, 84-story Galpaguchchha.[39] Its ironic and grave tales examined the voluptuous
poverty of an idealised rural Bengal.[50]
Santiniketan: 1901–1932
Tsinghua University, 1924
In 1901 Tagore moved to Santiniketan to found an ashram with a marble-floored prayer hall—The
Mandir—an experimental school, groves of trees, gardens, a library.[51] There his wife and two of
his children died. His father died in 1905. He received monthly payments as part of his
inheritance and income from the Maharaja of Tripura, sales of his family's jewellery, his seaside
bungalow in Puri, and a derisory 2,000 rupees in book royalties.[52] He gained Bengali and foreign
readers alike; he published Naivedya (1901) and Kheya (1906) and translated poems into free
verse.
In 1912, Tagore translated his 1910 work Gitanjali into English. While on a trip to London, he
shared these poems with admirers including William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound. London's
India Society published the work in a limited edition, and the American magazine Poetry
published a selection from Gitanjali.[53] In November 1913, Tagore learned he had won that year's
Nobel Prize in Literature: the Swedish Academy appreciated the idealistic—and for Westerners—
accessible nature of a small body of his translated material focused on the 1912 Gitanjali: Song
Offerings.[54] He was awarded a knighthood by King George V in the 1915 Birthday Honours, but
Tagore renounced it after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.[55] Renouncing the knighthood,
Tagore wrote in a letter addressed to Lord Chelmsford, the then British Viceroy of India, "The
disproportionate severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the
methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilised
governments...The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in their
incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all special
distinctions, by the side of my country men."[56][57]
In 1919, he was invited by the president and chairman of Anjuman-e-Islamia, Syed Abdul Majid to
visit Sylhet for the first time. The event attracted over 5000 people.[58]
In 1921, Tagore and agricultural economist Leonard Elmhirst set up the "Institute for Rural
Reconstruction", later renamed Shriniketan or "Abode of Welfare", in Surul, a village near the
ashram. With it, Tagore sought to moderate Gandhi's Swaraj protests, which he occasionally
blamed for British India's perceived mental – and thus ultimately colonial – decline.[59] He
sought aid from donors, officials, and scholars worldwide to "free village[s] from the shackles of
helplessness and ignorance" by "vitalis[ing] knowledge".[60][61] In the early 1930s he targeted
ambient "abnormal caste consciousness" and untouchability. He lectured against these, he
penned Dalit heroes for his poems and his dramas, and he campaigned—successfully—to open
Guruvayoor Temple to Dalits.[62][63]
Twilight years: 1932–1941

Germany, 1931
Last picture of Rabindranath, 1941
Dutta and Robinson describe this phase of Tagore's life as being one of a "peripatetic litterateur".
It affirmed his opinion that human divisions were shallow. During a May 1932 visit to a Bedouin
encampment in the Iraqi desert, the tribal chief told him that "Our Prophet has said that a true
Muslim is he by whose words and deeds not the least of his brother-men may ever come to any
harm ..." Tagore confided in his diary: "I was startled into recognizing in his words the voice of
essential humanity."[64] To the end Tagore scrutinised orthodoxy—and in 1934, he struck. That
year, an earthquake hit Bihar and killed thousands. Gandhi hailed it as seismic karma, as divine
retribution avenging the oppression of Dalits. Tagore rebuked him for his seemingly ignominious
implications.[65] He mourned the perennial poverty of Calcutta and the socioeconomic decline of
Bengal, and detailed these newly plebeian aesthetics in an unrhymed hundred-line poem whose
technique of searing double-vision foreshadowed Satyajit Ray's film Apur Sansar.[66][67] Fifteen
new volumes appeared, among them prose-poem works Punashcha (1932), Shes Saptak (1935),
and Patraput (1936). Experimentation continued in his prose-songs and dance-dramas— Chitra
(1914), Shyama (1939), and Chandalika (1938)— and in his novels— Dui Bon (1933), Malancha
(1934), and Char Adhyay (1934).[68]
Tagore's remit expanded to science in his last years, as hinted in Visva-

Clouds come
Parichay, a 1937 collection of essays. His respect for scientific laws and
floating into my
life, no longer to
his exploration of biology, physics, and astronomy informed his poetry,
carry rain or usher which exhibited extensive naturalism and verisimilitude.[69] He wove the
storm, but to add process of science, the narratives of scientists, into stories in Se (1937),
color to my sunset Tin Sangi (1940), and Galpasalpa (1941). His last five years were marked
sky.
by chronic pain and two long periods of illness. These began when Tagore
—Verse 292, Stray lost consciousness in late 1937; he remained comatose and near death
Birds, 1916.
for a time. This was followed in late 1940 by a similar spell, from which he
never recovered. Poetry from these valetudinary years is among his
finest.[70][71] A period of prolonged agony ended with Tagore's death on 7 August 1941, aged
80.[18] He was in an upstairs room of the Jorasanko mansion in which he grew up.[72][73] The
date is still mourned.[74] A. K. Sen, brother of the first chief election commissioner, received
dictation from Tagore on 30 July 1941, a day prior to a scheduled operation: his last poem.[75]
I'm lost in the middle of my birthday. I want my friends, their touch,

with the earth's last love. I will take life's final offering, I will take the
human's last blessing. Today my sack is empty. I have given completely
whatever I had to give. In return if I receive anything—some love, some
forgiveness—then I will take it with me when I step on the boat that
crosses to the festival of the wordless end.
Travels
Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore
Our passions and

desires are unruly,
but our character
subdues these
elements into a
harmonious
whole. Does
something similar
to this happen in
the physical
world? Are the Rabindranath with Einstein in 1930
elements
rebellious,
dynamic with
individual
impulse? And is
there a principle in
the physical world
which dominates
them and puts
them into an
orderly
organization?
— Interviewed by
Einstein, 14 April At the Majlis (Iranian parliament) in Tehran, Iran, 1932
1930.[76]
Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore set foot in more than thirty countries on five continents.[77] In
1912, he took a sheaf of his translated works to England, where they gained attention from
missionary and Gandhi protégé Charles F. Andrews, Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound,
Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, Thomas Sturge Moore, and others.[78] Yeats wrote the preface to
the English translation of Gitanjali; Andrews joined Tagore at Santiniketan. In November 1912
Tagore began touring the United States[79] and the United Kingdom, staying in Butterton,
Staffordshire with Andrews's clergymen friends.[80] From May 1916 until April 1917, he lectured
in Japan[81] and the United States.[82] He denounced nationalism.[83] His essay "Nationalism in
India" was scorned and praised; it was admired by Romain Rolland and other pacifists.[84]
Shortly after returning home the 63-year-old Tagore accepted an invitation from the Peruvian
government. He travelled to Mexico. Each government pledged US$100,000 to his school to
commemorate the visits.[85] A week after his 6 November 1924 arrival in Buenos Aires,[86] an ill
Tagore shifted to the Villa Miralrío at the behest of Victoria Ocampo. He left for home in January
1925. In May 1926 Tagore reached Naples; the next day he met Mussolini in Rome.[87] Their
warm rapport ended when Tagore pronounced upon Il Duce's fascist finesse.[88] He had earlier
enthused: "[w]ithout any doubt he is a great personality. There is such a massive vigour in that
head that it reminds one of Michael Angelo's chisel." A "fire-bath" of fascism was to have educed
"the immortal soul of Italy ... clothed in quenchless light".[89]
On 1 November 1926 Tagore arrived to Hungary and spent some time on the shore of Lake
Balaton in the city of Balatonfüred, recovering from heart problems at a sanitarium. He planted a
tree and a bust statue was placed there in 1956 (a gift from the Indian government, the work of
Rasithan Kashar, replaced by a newly gifted statue in 2005) and the lakeside promenade still
bears his name since 1957.[90]
On 14 July 1927 Tagore and two companions began a four-month tour of Southeast Asia. They
visited Bali, Java, Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, Penang, Siam, and Singapore. The resultant
travelogues compose Jatri (1929).[91] In early 1930 he left Bengal for a nearly year-long tour of
Europe and the United States. Upon returning to Britain—and as his paintings were exhibited in
Paris and London—he lodged at a Birmingham Quaker settlement. He wrote his Oxford Hibbert
Lectures[c] and spoke at the annual London Quaker meet.[92] There, addressing relations
between the British and the Indians – a topic he would tackle repeatedly over the next two years
– Tagore spoke of a "dark chasm of aloofness".[93] He visited Aga Khan III, stayed at Dartington
Hall, toured Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany from June to mid-September 1930, then went
on into the Soviet Union.[94] In April 1932 Tagore, intrigued by the Persian mystic Hafez, was
hosted by Reza Shah Pahlavi.[95][96] In his other travels, Tagore interacted with Henri Bergson,
Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, and Romain
Rolland.[97][98] Visits to Persia and Iraq (in 1932) and Sri Lanka (in 1933) composed Tagore's final
foreign tour, and his dislike of communalism and nationalism only deepened.[64]
Vice-President
of India M. Hamid Ansari has said that Rabindranath Tagore heralded the cultural
rapprochement between communities, societies and nations much before it became the liberal
norm of conduct.
Tagore was a man ahead of his time. He wrote in 1932, while on a visit to Iran,
that "each country of Asia will solve its own historical problems according to its strength, nature
and needs, but the lamp they will each carry on their path to progress will converge to illuminate
the common ray of knowledge."[99]
Works
Known mostly for his poetry, Tagore wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues, dramas,
and thousands of songs. Of Tagore's prose, his short stories are perhaps most highly regarded;
he is indeed credited with originating the Bengali-language version of the genre. His works are
frequently noted for their rhythmic, optimistic, and lyrical nature. Such stories mostly borrow
from the lives of common people. Tagore's non-fiction grappled with history, linguistics, and
spirituality. He wrote autobiographies. His travelogues, essays, and lectures were compiled into
several volumes, including Europe Jatrir Patro (Letters from Europe) and Manusher Dhormo (The
Religion of Man). His brief chat with Einstein, "Note on the Nature of Reality", is included as an
appendix to the latter. On the occasion of Tagore's 150th birthday, an anthology (titled
Kalanukromik Rabindra Rachanabali) of the total body of his works is currently being published in
Bengali in chronological order. This includes all versions of each work and fills about eighty
volumes.[100] In 2011, Harvard University Press collaborated with Visva-Bharati University to
publish The Essential Tagore, the largest anthology of Tagore's works available in English; it was
edited by Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarthy and marks the 150th anniversary of Tagore's
birth.[101]
Drama
Tagore performing the title role in Valmiki Pratibha (1881) with his niece Indira Devi as the goddess Lakshmi.
Tagore's experiences with drama began when he was sixteen, with his brother Jyotirindranath.
He wrote his first original dramatic piece when he was twenty — Valmiki Pratibha which was
shown at the Tagore's mansion. Tagore stated that his works sought to articulate "the play of
feeling and not of action". In 1890 he wrote Visarjan (an adaptation of his novella Rajarshi), which
has been regarded as his finest drama. In the original Bengali language, such works included
intricate subplots and extended monologues. Later, Tagore's dramas used more philosophical
and allegorical themes. The play Dak Ghar (The Post Office'; 1912), describes the child Amal
defying his stuffy and puerile confines by ultimately "fall[ing] asleep", hinting his physical death.
A story with borderless appeal—gleaning rave reviews in Europe—Dak Ghar dealt with death as,
in Tagore's words, "spiritual freedom" from "the world of hoarded wealth and certified
creeds".[102][103] Another is Tagore's Chandalika (Untouchable Girl), which was modelled on an
ancient Buddhist legend describing how Ananda, the Gautama Buddha's disciple, asks a tribal
girl for water.[104] In Raktakarabi ("Red" or "Blood Oleanders") is an allegorical struggle against a
kleptocrat king who rules over the residents of Yaksha puri.[105]
Chitrangada, Chandalika, and Shyama are other key plays that have dance-drama adaptations,
which together are known as Rabindra Nritya Natya.
Short stories
Cover of the Sabuj Patra magazine, edited by Pramatha Chaudhuri
Tagore began his career in short stories in 1877—when he was only sixteen—with "Bhikharini"
("The Beggar Woman").[106] With this, Tagore effectively invented the Bengali-language short
story genre.[107] The four years from 1891 to 1895 are known as Tagore's "Sadhana" period
(named for one of Tagore's magazines). This period was among Tagore's most fecund, yielding
more than half the stories contained in the three-volume Galpaguchchha, which itself is a
collection of eighty-four stories.[106] Such stories usually showcase Tagore's reflections upon his
surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas, and on interesting mind puzzles (which Tagore
was fond of testing his intellect with). Tagore typically associated his earliest stories (such as
those of the "Sadhana" period) with an exuberance of vitality and spontaneity; these
characteristics were intimately connected with Tagore's life in the common villages of, among
others, Patisar, Shajadpur, and Shilaida while managing the Tagore family's vast
landholdings.[106] There, he beheld the lives of India's poor and common people; Tagore thereby
took to examining their lives with a penetrative depth and feeling that was singular in Indian
literature up to that point.[108] In particular, such stories as "Kabuliwala" ("The Fruitseller from
Kabul", published in 1892), "Kshudita Pashan" ("The Hungry Stones") (August 1895), and "Atithi"
("The Runaway", 1895) typified this analytic focus on the downtrodden.[109] Many of the other
Galpaguchchha stories were written in Tagore's Sabuj Patra period from 1914 to 1917, also
named after one of the magazines that Tagore edited and heavily contributed to.[106]
Novels
Tagore wrote eight novels and four novellas, among them Chaturanga, Shesher Kobita, Char
Odhay, and Noukadubi. Ghare Baire (The Home and the World)—through the lens of the idealistic
zamindar protagonist Nikhil—excoriates rising Indian nationalism, terrorism, and religious zeal in
the Swadeshi movement; a frank expression of Tagore's conflicted sentiments, it emerged from
a 1914 bout of depression. The novel ends in Hindu-Muslim violence and Nikhil's—likely mortal—
wounding.[110]
Gora raises controversial questions regarding the Indian identity. As with Ghare Baire, matters of
self-identity (jāti), personal freedom, and religion are developed in the context of a family story
and love triangle.[111] In it an Irish boy orphaned in the Sepoy Mutiny is raised by Hindus as the
titular gora—"whitey". Ignorant of his foreign origins, he chastises Hindu religious backsliders out
of love for the indigenous Indians and solidarity with them against his hegemon-compatriots. He
falls for a Brahmo girl, compelling his worried foster father to reveal his lost past and cease his
nativist zeal. As a "true dialectic" advancing "arguments for and against strict traditionalism", it
tackles the colonial conundrum by "portray[ing] the value of all positions within a particular
frame [...] not only syncretism, not only liberal orthodoxy, but the extremest reactionary
traditionalism he defends by an appeal to what humans share." Among these Tagore highlights
"identity [...] conceived of as dharma."[112]
In Jogajog (Relationships), the heroine Kumudini—bound by the ideals of Śiva-Sati, exemplified by

Dākshāyani—is torn between her pity for the sinking fortunes of her progressive and
compassionate elder brother and his foil: her roue of a husband. Tagore flaunts his feminist
leanings; pathos depicts the plight and ultimate demise of women trapped by pregnancy, duty,
and family honour; he simultaneously trucks with Bengal's putrescent landed gentry.[113] The
story revolves around the underlying rivalry between two families—the Chatterjees, aristocrats
now on the decline (Biprodas) and the Ghosals (Madhusudan), representing new money and new
arrogance. Kumudini, Biprodas' sister, is caught between the two as she is married off to
Madhusudan. She had risen in an observant and sheltered traditional home, as had all her
female relations.
Others were uplifting: Shesher Kobita—translated twice as Last Poem and Farewell Song—is his
most lyrical novel, with poems and rhythmic passages written by a poet protagonist. It contains
elements of satire and postmodernism and has stock characters who gleefully attack the
reputation of an old, outmoded, oppressively renowned poet who, incidentally, goes by a familiar
name: "Rabindranath Tagore". Though his novels remain among the least-appreciated of his
works, they have been given renewed attention via film adaptations by Ray and others: Chokher
Bali and Ghare Baire are exemplary. In the first, Tagore inscribes Bengali society via its heroine: a
rebellious widow who would live for herself alone. He pillories the custom of perpetual mourning
on the part of widows, who were not allowed to remarry, who were consigned to seclusion and
loneliness. Tagore wrote of it: "I have always regretted the ending".
Poetry
Title page of the 1913 Macmillan edition of Tagore's Gitanjali.
Part of a poem written by Tagore in Hungary, 1926.

Internationally, Gitanjali (Bengali: গীতাঞ্জলি) is Tagore's best-known collection of poetry, for which
he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Tagore was the first non-European to
receive a Nobel Prize in Literature and second non-European to receive a Nobel Prize after
Theodore Roosevelt.[114]
Besides Gitanjali, other notable works include Manasi, Sonar Tori ("Golden Boat"), Balaka ("Wild
Geese" — the title being a metaphor for migrating souls)[115]
Tagore's poetic style, which proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century
Vaishnava poets, ranges from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and ecstatic. He was
influenced by the atavistic mysticism of Vyasa and other rishi-authors of the Upanishads, the
Bhakti-Sufi mystic Kabir, and Ramprasad Sen.[116] Tagore's most innovative and mature poetry
embodies his exposure to Bengali rural folk music, which included mystic Baul ballads such as
those of the bard Lalon.[117][118] These, rediscovered and repopularised by Tagore, resemble
19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasise inward divinity and rebellion against bourgeois
bhadralok religious and social orthodoxy.[119][120] During his Shelaidaha years, his poems took on
a lyrical voice of the moner manush, the Bāuls' "man within the heart" and Tagore's "life force of
his deep recesses", or meditating upon the jeevan devata—the demiurge or the "living God
within".[17] This figure connected with divinity through appeal to nature and the emotional
interplay of human drama. Such tools saw use in his Bhānusiṃha poems chronicling the Radha-
Krishna romance, which were repeatedly revised over the course of seventy years.[121][122]
Later, with the development of new poetic ideas in Bengal – many originating from younger
poets seeking to break with Tagore's style – Tagore absorbed new poetic concepts, which
allowed him to further develop a unique identity. Examples of this include Africa and Camalia,
which are among the better known of his latter poems.
Songs (Rabindra Sangeet)
Tagore was a prolific composer with around 2,230 songs to his credit.[123] His songs are known
as rabindrasangit ("Tagore Song"), which merges fluidly into his literature, most of which—poems
or parts of novels, stories, or plays alike—were lyricised. Influenced by the thumri style of
Hindustani music, they ran the entire gamut of human emotion, ranging from his early dirge-like
Brahmo devotional hymns to quasi-erotic compositions.[124] They emulated the tonal colour of
classical ragas to varying extents. Some songs mimicked a given raga's melody and rhythm
faithfully; others newly blended elements of different ragas.[125] Yet about nine-tenths of his work
was not bhanga gaan, the body of tunes revamped with "fresh value" from select Western,
Hindustani, Bengali folk and other regional flavours "external" to Tagore's own ancestral
culture.[17]
In 1971, Amar Shonar Bangla became the national anthem of Bangladesh. It was written –
ironically – to protest the 1905 Partition of Bengal along communal lines: cutting off the Muslim-
majority East Bengal from Hindu-dominated West Bengal was to avert a regional bloodbath.
Tagore saw the partition as a cunning plan to stop the independence movement, and he aimed
to rekindle Bengali unity and tar communalism. Jana Gana Mana was written in shadhu-bhasha, a
Sanskritised form of Bengali[126], and is the first of five stanzas of the Brahmo hymn Bharot
Bhagyo Bidhata that Tagore composed. It was first sung in 1911 at a Calcutta session of the
Indian National Congress[127] and was adopted in 1950 by the Constituent Assembly of the
Republic of India as its national anthem.
The Sri Lanka's National Anthem was inspired by his work.[15]
For Bengalis, the songs' appeal, stemming from the combination of emotive strength and beauty
described as surpassing even Tagore's poetry, was such that the Modern Review observed that "
[t]here is in Bengal no cultured home where Rabindranath's songs are not sung or at least
attempted to be sung... Even illiterate villagers sing his songs".[128] Tagore influenced sitar
maestro Vilayat Khan and sarodiyas Buddhadev Dasgupta and Amjad Ali Khan.[125]
Art works
Primitivism: a pastel- Tagore's Bengali-language
coloured rendition of a initials are worked into this
Malagan mask from "Ro-Tho" (of RAbindranath
northern New Ireland, THAkur) wooden seal,
Papua New Guinea. stylistically similar to
designs used in traditional
Haida carvings from the
Pacific Northwest region of
North America. Tagore
often embellished his
manuscripts with such
art.[129]
At sixty, Tagore took up drawing and painting; successful exhibitions of his many works—which
made a debut appearance in Paris upon encouragement by artists he met in the south of
France[130]—were held throughout Europe. He was likely red-green colour blind, resulting in works
that exhibited strange colour schemes and off-beat aesthetics. Tagore was influenced by
numerous styles, including scrimshaw by the Malanggan people of northern New Ireland, Papua
New Guinea, Haida carvings from the Pacific Northwest region of North America, and woodcuts
by the German Max Pechstein.[129] His artist's eye for handwriting was revealed in the simple
artistic and rhythmic leitmotifs embellishing the scribbles, cross-outs, and word layouts of his
manuscripts. Some of Tagore's lyrics corresponded in a synesthetic sense with particular
paintings.[17]
Surrounded by several painters Rabindranath had always wanted to

paint. Writing and music, playwriting and acting came to him naturally
and almost without training, as it did to several others in his family,
and in even greater measure. But painting eluded him. Yet he tried
repeatedly to master the art and there are several references to this in
his early letters and reminiscence. In 1900 for instance, when he was
nearing forty and already a celebrated writer, he wrote to
Jagadishchandra Bose, "You will be surprised to hear that I am sitting
with a sketchbook drawing. Needless to say, the pictures are not
intended for any salon in Paris, they cause me not the least suspicion
that the national gallery of any country will suddenly decide to raise
taxes to acquire them. But, just as a mother lavishes most affection on
her ugliest son, so I feel secretly drawn to the very skill that comes to
me least easily." He also realized that he was using the eraser more
than the pencil, and dissatisfied with the results he finally withdrew,
deciding it was not for him to become a painter.[131]
India's National Gallery of Modern Art lists 102 works by Tagore in its collections.[132][133]
Politics
Tagore hosts Gandhi and wife Kasturba at Santiniketan in 1940
Tagore opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists,[134][135][136] and these views were
first revealed in Manast, which was mostly composed in his twenties.[47] Evidence produced
during the Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial and latter accounts affirm his awareness of the
Ghadarites, and stated that he sought the support of Japanese Prime Minister Terauchi
Masatake and former Premier Ōkuma Shigenobu.[137] Yet he lampooned the Swadeshi
movement; he rebuked it in The Cult of the Charkha, an acrid 1925 essay.[138] According to
Amartya Sen, Tagore rebelled against strongly nationalist forms of the independence movement,
and he wanted to assert India's right to be independent without denying the importance of what
India could learn from abroad.[139] He urged the masses to avoid victimology and instead seek
self-help and education, and he saw the presence of British administration as a "political
symptom of our social disease". He maintained that, even for those at the extremes of poverty,
"there can be no question of blind revolution"; preferable to it was a "steady and purposeful
education".[140][141]
Such views enraged many. He escaped assassination—and only narrowly—by Indian expatriates
during his stay in a San Francisco hotel in late 1916; the plot failed when his would-be assassins
fell into argument.[143] Tagore wrote songs lionising the Indian
So I repeat we
independence movement.[144] Two of Tagore's more politically charged
never can have a
true view of man
compositions, "Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo" ("Where the Mind is Without
unless we have a Fear") and "Ekla Chalo Re" ("If They Answer Not to Thy Call, Walk Alone"),
love for him. gained mass appeal, with the latter favoured by Gandhi.[145] Though
Civilisation must somewhat critical of Gandhian activism,[146] Tagore was key in resolving a
be judged and
Gandhi–Ambedkar dispute involving separate electorates for
prized, not by the
untouchables, thereby mooting at least one of Gandhi's fasts "unto
amount of power it
has developed, but death".[147][148]
by how much it
has evolved and
given expression
Repudiation of knighthood
to, by its laws and
Tagore renounced his knighthood in response to the Jallianwala Bagh
institutions, the
love of humanity. massacre in 1919. In the repudiation letter to the Viceroy, Lord
Chelmsford, he wrote[149]
— Sādhanā: The
Realisation of Life,
The time has come when badges of honour make our
1916.[142]
shame glaring in the incongruous context of
humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn,
of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my
countrymen who, for their so called insignificance,
are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human
beings.
Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati

Kala Bhavan (Institute of Fine Arts), Santiniketan, India
Tagore despised rote classroom schooling: in "The Parrot's Training", a bird is caged and force-
fed textbook pages—to death.[150][151] Tagore, visiting Santa Barbara in 1917, conceived a new
type of university: he sought to "make Santiniketan the connecting thread between India and the
world [and] a world center for the study of humanity somewhere beyond the limits of nation and
geography."[143] The school, which he named Visva-Bharati,[d] had its foundation stone laid on 24
December 1918 and was inaugurated precisely three years later.[152] Tagore employed a
brahmacharya system: gurus gave pupils personal guidance—emotional, intellectual, and
spiritual. Teaching was often done under trees. He staffed the school, he contributed his Nobel
Prize monies,[153] and his duties as steward-mentor at Santiniketan kept him busy: mornings he
taught classes; afternoons and evenings he wrote the students' textbooks.[154] He fundraised
widely for the school in Europe and the United States between 1919 and 1921.[155]
Theft of Nobel Prize
On 25 March 2004, Tagore's Nobel Prize was stolen from the safety vault of the Visva-Bharati
University, along with several other of his belongings.[156] On 7 December 2004, the Swedish
Academy decided to present two replicas of Tagore's Nobel Prize, one made of gold and the
other made of bronze, to the Visva-Bharati University.[157] It inspired the fictional film Nobel Chor.
In 2016, a baul singer named Pradip Bauri accused of sheltering the thieves was arrested and
the prize was returned.[158][159]
Impact and legacy

Bust of Tagore in Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London
Rabindranath Tagore's bust at St Stephen Green Park, Dublin, Ireland

Rabindranath Tagore Memorial, Nimtala crematorium, Kolkata
Bust of Rabindranath in Tagore promenade, Balatonfüred, Hungary
Every year, many events pay tribute to Tagore: Kabipranam, his birth anniversary, is celebrated by
groups scattered across the globe; the annual Tagore Festival held in Urbana, Illinois (USA);
Rabindra Path Parikrama walking pilgrimages from Kolkata to Santiniketan; and recitals of his
poetry, which are held on important anniversaries.[79][160][161] Bengali culture is fraught with this
legacy: from language and arts to history and politics. Amartya Sen deemed Tagore a "towering
figure", a "deeply relevant and many-sided contemporary thinker".[161][139] Tagore's Bengali
originals—the 1939 Rabīndra Rachanāvalī—is canonised as one of his nation's greatest cultural
treasures, and he was roped into a reasonably humble role: "the greatest poet India has
produced".[162]
Blue plaque in honor of Tagore, erected in 1961 by London County Council at 3 Villas on the Heath, Vale of Health,
Hampstead, London NW3 1BA, London Borough of Camden.
Tagore was renowned throughout much of Europe, North America, and East Asia. He co-founded
Dartington Hall School, a progressive coeducational institution;[163] in Japan, he influenced such
figures as Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata.[164] In colonial Vietnam Tagore was a guide for the
restless spirit of the radical writer and publicist Nguyen An Ninh[165] Tagore's works were widely
translated into English, Dutch, German, Spanish, and other European languages by Czech
Indologist Vincenc Lesný,[166] French Nobel laureate André Gide, Russian poet Anna
Akhmatova,[167] former Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit,[168] and others. In the United States,
Tagore's lecturing circuits, particularly those of 1916–1917, were widely attended and wildly
acclaimed. Some controversies[e] involving Tagore, possibly fictive, trashed his popularity and
sales in Japan and North America after the late 1920s, concluding with his "near total eclipse"
outside Bengal.[6] Yet a latent reverence of Tagore was discovered by an astonished Salman
Rushdie during a trip to Nicaragua.[174]
By way of translations, Tagore influenced Chileans Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral; Mexican
writer Octavio Paz; and Spaniards José Ortega y Gasset, Zenobia Camprubí, and Juan Ramón
Jiménez. In the period 1914–1922, the Jiménez-Camprubí pair produced twenty-two Spanish
translations of Tagore's English corpus; they heavily revised The Crescent Moon and other key
titles. In these years, Jiménez developed "naked poetry".[175] Ortega y Gasset wrote that
"Tagore's wide appeal [owes to how] he speaks of longings for perfection that we all have [...]
Tagore awakens a dormant sense of childish wonder, and he saturates the air with all kinds of
enchanting promises for the reader, who [...] pays little attention to the deeper import of Oriental
mysticism". Tagore's works circulated in free editions around 1920—alongside those of Plato,
Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, and Tolstoy.
Tagore was deemed over-rated by some. Graham Greene doubted that "anyone but Mr. Yeats
can still take his poems very seriously." Several prominent Western admirers—including Pound
and, to a lesser extent, even Yeats—criticised Tagore's work. Yeats, unimpressed with his English
translations, railed against that "Damn Tagore [...] We got out three good books, Sturge Moore
and I, and then, because he thought it more important to see and know English than to be a great
poet, he brought out sentimental rubbish and wrecked his reputation. Tagore does not know
English, no Indian knows English."[6][176] William Radice, who "English[ed]" his poems, asked:
"What is their place in world literature?"[177] He saw him as "kind of counter-cultur[al]", bearing "a
new kind of classicism" that would heal the "collapsed romantic confusion and chaos of the 20th
[c]entury."[176][178] The translated Tagore was "almost nonsensical",[179] and subpar English
offerings reduced his trans-national appeal:
Anyone who knows Tagore's poems in their original Bengali cannot feel
satisfied with any of the translations (made with or without Yeats's
help). Even the translations of his prose works suffer, to some extent,
from distortion. E.M. Forster noted [of] The Home and the World [that]
'[t]he theme is so beautiful,' but the charms have 'vanished in
translation,' or perhaps 'in an experiment that has not quite come off.'
— Amartya Sen, "Tagore and His India".[6]
Museums
Jorasanko Thakur Bari, Kolkata; the room in which Tagore died in 1941.
Shahjadpur Kachharibari
Patisar Kachharibari
There are eight Tagore museums. Three in India and five in Bangladesh:
Rabindra Bharati Museum, at Jorasanko Thakur Bari, Kolkata, India
Tagore Memorial Museum, at Shilaidaha Kuthibadi, Shilaidaha, Bangladesh
Rabindra Memorial Museum at Shahzadpur Kachharibari, Shahzadpur, Bangladesh
Rabindra Bhavan Museum, in Santiniketan, India
Rabindra Museum, in Mungpoo, near Kalimpong, India
Patisar Rabindra Kacharibari, Patisar, Atrai, Naogaon, Bangladesh

Pithavoge Rabindra Memorial Complex, Pithavoge, Rupsha, Khulna, Bangladesh
Rabindra Complex, Dakkhindihi village, Phultala Upazila, Khulna, Bangladesh
Rabindra Complex, Dakkhindihi, Phultala, Khulna, Bangladesh
Jorasanko Thakur Bari (Bengali: House of the Thakurs; anglicised to Tagore) in Jorasanko, north
of Kolkata, is the ancestral home of the Tagore family. It is currently located on the Rabindra
Bharati University campus at 6/4 Dwarakanath Tagore Lane[180] Jorasanko, Kolkata 700007.[181]
It is the house in which Tagore was born. It is also the place where he spent most of his
childhood and where he died on 7 August 1941.
Rabindra Complex is located in Dakkhindihi village, near Phultala Upazila, 19 kilometres (12 mi)
from Khulna city, Bangladesh. It was the residence of tagores father-in-law, Beni Madhab Roy
Chowdhury. Tagore family had close connection with Dakkhindihi village. The maternal ancestral
home of the great poet was also situated at Dakkhindihi village, poets mother Sarada Sundari
Devi and his paternal aunt by marriage Tripura Sundari Devi; was born in this village.Young
tagore used to visit Dakkhindihi village with his mother to visit his maternal uncles in her
mothers ancestral home. Tagore visited this place several times in his life. It has been declared
as a protected archaeological site by Department of Archaeology of Bangladesh and converted
into a museum. In 1995, the local administration took charge of the house and on 14 November
of that year, the Rabindra Complex project was decided. Bangladesh Governments Department
of Archeology has carried out the renovation work to make the house a museum titled ‘Rabindra
Complex’ in 2011–12 fiscal year. The two-storey museum building has four rooms on the first
floor and two rooms on the ground floor at present. The building has eight windows on the
ground floor and 21 windows on the first floor. The height of the roof from the floor on the
ground floor is 13 feet. There are seven doors, six windows and wall almirahs on the first floor.
Over 500 books were kept in the library and all the rooms have been decorated with rare pictures
of Rabindranath. Over 10,000 visitors come here every year to see the museum from different
parts of the country and also from abroad, said Saifur Rahman, assistant director of the
Department of Archeology in Khulna. A bust of Rabindranath Tagore is also there. Every year on
25–27 Baishakh (after the Bengali New Year Celebration), cultural programs are held here which
lasts for three days.
List of works Who are you,

reader, reading my
The SNLTR hosts the 1415 BE edition of Tagore's complete Bengali works. poems a hundred
Tagore Web also hosts an edition of Tagore's works, including annotated years hence?
I cannot send you

songs. Translations are found at Project Gutenberg and Wikisource. More
one single flower
sources are below. from this wealth of
the spring, one
single streak of
Original
gold from yonder
clouds.
Open your doors

and look abroad.
From your
blossoming
garden gather
fragrant memories
of the vanished
flowers of an
hundred years
before.
In the joy of your

heart may you feel
the living joy that
sang one spring
morning, sending
its glad voice
across an hundred
years.
— The Gardener,
1915.[182]
Original poetry in Bengali
Bengali title Transliterated title Translated title Year
ভানুসিংহ ঠাকু রের পদাবলী Bhānusiṃha Ṭhākurer Paḍāvalī Songs of Bhānusiṃha Ṭhākur 1884
মানসী Manasi The Ideal One 1890
সোনার তরী Sonar Tari The Golden Boat 1894
গীতাঞ্জলি Gitanjali Song Offerings 1910
গীতিমাল্য Gitimalya Wreath of Songs 1914
বলাকা Balaka The Flight of Cranes 1916
Original dramas in Bengali

বাল্মিকী প্রতিভা Valmiki-Pratibha The Genius of Valmiki 1881
কালমৃগয়া Kal-Mrigaya The Fatal Hunt 1882
মায়ার খেলা Mayar Khela The Play of Illusions 1888
বিসর্জন Visarjan The Sacrifice 1890
চিত্রাঙ্গদা Chitrangada Chitrangada 1892
রাজা Raja The King of the Dark Chamber 1910
ডাকঘর Dak Ghar The Post Office 1912
অচলায়তন Achalayatan The Immovable 1912
মুক্তধারা Muktadhara The Waterfall 1922
রক্তকরবী Raktakarabi Red Oleanders 1926
চণ্ডালিকা Chandalika The Untouchable Girl 1933
Original fiction in Bengali

নষ্টনীড় Nastanirh The Broken Nest 1901
গোরা Gora Fair-Faced 1910
ঘরে বাইরে Ghare Baire The Home and the World 1916
যোগাযোগ Yogayog Crosscurrents 1929

Original nonfiction in Bengali
জীবনস্মৃতি Jivansmriti My Reminiscences 1912
ছেলেবেলা Chhelebela My Boyhood Days 1940
Works in English
Title Year
Thought Relics 1921[original 1]
Translated
Thákurova ulice, Prague, Czech Republic

Tagore Room, Sardar Patel Memorial, Ahmedabad, India
English translations
Year Work
1914 Chitra[text 1]
1922 Creative Unity[text 2]
1913 The Crescent Moon[text 3]
1917 The Cycle of Spring[text 4]
1928 Fireflies
1916 Fruit-Gathering[text 5]
1916 The Fugitive[text 6]
1913 The Gardener[text 7]
1912 Gitanjali: Song Offerings[text 8]
1920 Glimpses of Bengal[text 9]
1921 The Home and the World[text 10]
1916 The Hungry Stones[text 11]
1991 I Won't Let you Go: Selected Poems
1914 The King of the Dark Chamber[text 12]
2012 Letters from an Expatriate in Europe
2003 The Lover of God
1918 Mashi[text 13]
1943 My Boyhood Days
1917 My Reminiscences[text 14]
1917 Nationalism
1914 The Post Office[text 15]
1913 Sadhana: The Realisation of Life[text 16]
1997 Selected Letters
1994 Selected Poems
1991 Selected Short Stories
1915 Songs of Kabir[text 17]
1916 The Spirit of Japan[text 18]

1918 Stories from Tagore[text 19]
1916 Stray Birds[text 20]
1913 Vocation[183]
1921 The Wreck
Adaptations of novels and short stories in cinema
Bengali
Natir Puja – 1932 – The only film directed by Rabindranath Tagore
Gora — 1938 Gora (novel) — Naresh Mitra
Noukadubi– Nitin Bose
Bou Thakuranir Haat – 1953 (Bou Thakuranir Haat) – Naresh Mitra
Kabuliwala – 1957 (Kabuliwala) – Tapan Sinha
Kshudhita Pashan – 1960 (Kshudhita Pashan) – Tapan Sinha
Teen Kanya – 1961 (Teen Kanya) – Satyajit Ray
Charulata - 1964 (Nastanirh) – Satyajit Ray
Megh o Roudra – 1969 (Megh o Roudra) – Arundhati Devi
Ghare Baire – 1985 (Ghare Baire) – Satyajit Ray
Chokher Bali – 2003 (Chokher Bali) – Rituparno Ghosh
Shasti – 2004 (Shasti) – Chashi Nazrul Islam
Shuva – 2006 (Shuvashini) – Chashi Nazrul Islam
Chaturanga – 2008 (Chaturanga) – Suman Mukhopadhyay
Noukadubi – 2011 (Noukadubi) – Rituparno Ghosh
Elar Char Adhyay – 2012 (Char Adhyay) – Bappaditya Bandyopadhyay
Hindi
Sacrifice – 1927 (Balidan) – Nanand Bhojai and Naval Gandhi
Milan – 1946 (Nauka Dubi) – Nitin Bose

Dak Ghar – 1965 (Dak Ghar) – Zul Vellani
Kabuliwala – 1961 (Kabuliwala) – Bimal Roy
Uphaar – 1971 (Samapti) – Sudhendu Roy
Lekin... – 1991 (Kshudhit Pashaan) – Gulzar
Char Adhyay – 1997 (Char Adhyay) – Kumar Shahani
Kashmakash – 2011 (Nauka Dubi) – Rituparno Ghosh
Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (Anthology TV Series) – 2015 – Anurag Basu
Bioscopewala – 2017 (Kabuliwala) – Deb Medhekar
Bhikharin
In popular culture
Rabindranath Tagore is a 1961 Indian documentary film written and directed by Satyajit Ray,
released during the birth centenary of Tagore. It was produced by the Government of India's
Films Division.
Serbian composer Darinka Simic-Mitrovic used Tagore’s text for her song cycle Gradinar in
1962.[184]
In Sukanta Roy's Bengali film Chhelebela (2002) Jisshu Sengupta portrayed Tagore.[185]
In Bandana Mukhopadhyay's Bengali film Chirosakha He (2007) Sayandip Bhattacharya played

Tagore.[186]
In Rituparno Ghosh's Bengali documentary film Jeevan Smriti (2011) Samadarshi Dutta played
Tagore.[187]
In Suman Ghosh's Bengali film Kadambari (2015) Parambrata Chatterjee portrayed Tagore.[188]
See also
List of Indian writers
Kazi Nazrul Islam
Rabindra Jayanti
Rabindra Puraskar
Tagore family
An Artist in Life — biography by Niharranjan Ray
Taptapadi
Timeline of Rabindranath Tagore
Music of Bengal
References
Gordon Square,
London
Gandhi Memorial
Museum, Madurai
Notes
a. Gurudev translates as "divine mentor", Bishokobi translates as "poet of the world" and Kobiguru
translates as "great poet".[8]
b. Tagore was born at No. 6 Dwarkanath Tagore Lane, Jorasanko – the address of the main mansion (the
Jorasanko Thakurbari) inhabited by the Jorasanko branch of the Tagore clan, which had earlier suffered
an acrimonious split. Jorasanko was located in the Bengali section of Calcutta, near Chitpur Road.[19][20]
Dwarkanath Tagore was his paternal grandfather.[21] Debendranath had formulated the Brahmoist
philosophies espoused by his friend Ram Mohan Roy, and became focal in Brahmo society after Roy's
death.[22][23]
c. On the "idea of the humanity of our God, or the divinity of Man the Eternal".
d. Etymology of "Visva-Bharati": from the Sanskrit for "world" or "universe" and the name of a Rigvedic
goddess ("Bharati") associated with Saraswati, the Hindu patron of learning.[152] "Visva-Bharati" also
translates as "India in the World".
e. Tagore was no stranger to controversy: his dealings with Indian nationalists Subhas Chandra Bose[6] and
Rash Behari Bose,[169] his yen for Soviet Communism,[170][171] and papers confiscated from Indian
nationalists in New York allegedly implicating Tagore in a plot to overthrow the Raj via German funds.[172]
These destroyed Tagore's image—and book sales—in the United States.[169] His relations with and
ambivalent opinion of Mussolini revolted many;[89] close friend Romain Rolland despaired that "[h]e is
abdicating his role as moral guide of the independent spirits of Europe and India".[173]
Citations
1. Lubet, Alex. "Tagore, not Dylan: The first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize for literature was actually Indian" (h
ttps://qz.com/india/810668/rabindranath-tagore-not-bob-dylan-the-first-lyricist-to-win-the-nobel-prize-for-l
iterature-was-actually-indian/) . Quartz India.
"Anita Desai and Andrew Robinson – The Modern Resonance of Rabindranath Tagore" (https://onbei
ng.org/programs/anita-desai-andrew-robinson-the-modern-resonance-of-rabindranath-tagore) . On
Being. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
2. Stern, Robert W. (2001). Democracy and Dictatorship in South Asia: Dominant Classes and Political
Outcomes in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-275-97041-
3.
3. Henry Newman (1921). The Calcutta Review. University of Calcutta. p. 252. "I have also found that
Bombay is India, Satara is India, Bangalore is India, Madras is India, Delhi, Lahore, the Khyber, Lucknow,
Calcutta, Cuttack, Shillong, etc., are all India."
4. The Nobel Foundation.
5. O'Connell 2008.
6. Sen 1997.
7. "Work of Rabindranath Tagore celebrated in London" (https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33

543786) . BBC News. Retrieved 15 July 2015.
8. Sil 2005.
9. * Tagore, Rathindranath (December 1978). On the edges of time (New ed.). Greenwood Press. p. 2.
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Scott, J. (2009), Bengali Flower: 50 Selected Poems from India and Bangladesh (published 4 July 2009),
ISBN 978-1-4486-3931-1
Sen, A. (2006), The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture, and Identity (1st ed.), Picador
(published 5 September 2006), ISBN 978-0-312-42602-6
Sigi, R. (2006), Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore—A Biography, Diamond Books (published 1 October 2006),
ISBN 978-81-89182-90-8
Sinha, S. (2015), The Dialectic of God: The Theosophical Views Of Tagore and Gandhi, Partridge Publishing
India, ISBN 978-1-4828-4748-2
Som, R. (2010), Rabindranath Tagore: The Singer and His Song, Viking (published 26 May 2010), ISBN 978-
0-670-08248-3, OL 23720201M (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23720201M)
Thompson, E. (1926), Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Dramatist, Pierides Press, ISBN 978-1-4067-8927-0
Urban, H. B. (2001), Songs of Ecstasy: Tantric and Devotional Songs from Colonial Bengal, Oxford
University Press (published 22 November 2001), ISBN 978-0-19-513901-3
Other
"68th Death Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore" (http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.p

hp?nid=100259) , The Daily Star, Dhaka (published 7 August 2009), 2009, retrieved 29 September 2011
"Recitation of Tagore's Poetry of Death", Hindustan Times, Indo-Asian News Service, 2005
"Archeologists Track Down Tagore's Ancestral Home in Khulna" (https://web.archive.org/web/201203280

92526/http://www.newstoday.com.bd/index.php?option=details&news_id=26140&date=2011-04-29) ,
The News Today (published 28 April 2011), 2011, archived from the original (http://www.newstoday.com.
bd/index.php?option=details&news_id=26140&date=2011-04-29) on 28 March 2012, retrieved
9 September 2011
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1913/) , The

Nobel Foundation, retrieved 14 August 2009
History of the Tagore Festival (https://web.archive.org/web/20150613225155/http://tagore.business.uiu
c.edu/history.html) , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Tagore Festival Committee, archived
from the original (http://tagore.business.uiuc.edu/history.html) on 13 June 2015, retrieved
29 November 2009
Texts
Original
1. Thought Relics (http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/tagore/tr/tr01.htm) , Internet Sacred Text Archive
Translated
1. Chitra (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2502) at Project Gutenberg
2. Creative Unity (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/23136) at Project Gutenberg
3. The Crescent Moon (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/6520) at Project Gutenberg
4. The Cycle of Spring (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/24607) at Project Gutenberg
5. Fruit-Gathering (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/6522) at Project Gutenberg
6. The Fugitive (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/7971) at Project Gutenberg
7. The Gardener (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/6686) at Project Gutenberg
8. Gitanjali (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/7164) at Project Gutenberg
9. Glimpses of Bengal (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/7951) at Project Gutenberg
10. The Home and the World (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/7166) at Project Gutenberg
11. The Hungry Stones (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2518) at Project Gutenberg
12. The King of the Dark Chamber (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/6521) at Project Gutenberg
13. Mashi (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/34757) at Project Gutenberg
14. My Reminiscences (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/22217) at Project Gutenberg
15. The Post Office (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/6523) at Project Gutenberg
16. Sadhana: The Realisation of Life (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/6842) at Project Gutenberg
17. Songs of Kabir (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/6519) at Project Gutenberg
18. The Spirit of Japan (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/33131) at Project Gutenberg
19. Stories from Tagore (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/33525) at Project Gutenberg
20. Stray Birds (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/6524) at Project Gutenberg

Rabindranath Tagore - Wikipedia

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Rabindranath Tagore - Wikipedia

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Rabindranath

Rabindranath Tagore, c. 1925

Born Rabindranath Thakur

7 May 1861, 25th of Baishakh, 1268 (Bengali

Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India (now

Died 7 August 1941 (aged 80)

Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India (now

Resting place Ashes scattered in the Ganges

Pen name Bhanusingha

Occupation Poet • novelist • dramatist • essayist •

philosopher • social reformer • educationist •

Period Bengali Renaissance

Literary movement Contextual Modernism

Notable works Gitanjali • Ghare-Baire • Gora •

Jana Gana Mana • Rabindra Sangeet •

Amar Shonar Bangla • (other works)

Notable awards Nobel Prize in Literature

Spouse Mrinalini Devi

Children 5, including Rathindranath Tagore

Relatives Tagore family

Life and events

Early life: 1861–1878

— Letter to Indira Devi.[17]

The golden temple of Amritsar comes back to me like a dream. Many a

Tagore family boat (bajra or budgerow), the "Padma".

Tsinghua University, 1924

Twilight years: 1932–1941

Last picture of Rabindranath, 1941

Tagore's remit expanded to science in his last years, as hinted in Visva-

I'm lost in the middle of my birthday. I want my friends, their touch,

Our passions and

In Jogajog (Relationships), the heroine Kumudini—bound by the ideals of Śiva-Sati, exemplified by

Title page of the 1913 Macmillan edition of Tagore's Gitanjali.

Part of a poem written by Tagore in Hungary, 1926.

Songs (Rabindra Sangeet)

The Sri Lanka's National Anthem was inspired by his work.[15]

Surrounded by several painters Rabindranath had always wanted to

Tagore hosts Gandhi and wife Kasturba at Santiniketan in 1940

Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati

Theft of Nobel Prize

Impact and legacy

Rabindranath Tagore's bust at St Stephen Green Park, Dublin, Ireland

Bust of Rabindranath in Tagore promenade, Balatonfüred, Hungary

— Amartya Sen, "Tagore and His India".[6]

Rabindra Bharati Museum, at Jorasanko Thakur Bari, Kolkata, India

Tagore Memorial Museum, at Shilaidaha Kuthibadi, Shilaidaha, Bangladesh

Rabindra Memorial Museum at Shahzadpur Kachharibari, Shahzadpur, Bangladesh

Rabindra Bhavan Museum, in Santiniketan, India

Rabindra Museum, in Mungpoo, near Kalimpong, India

Patisar Rabindra Kacharibari, Patisar, Atrai, Naogaon, Bangladesh

Rabindra Complex, Dakkhindihi village, Phultala Upazila, Khulna, Bangladesh

Rabindra Complex, Dakkhindihi, Phultala, Khulna, Bangladesh

List of works Who are you,

I cannot send you

Open your doors

In the joy of your

সোনার তরী Sonar Tari The Golden Boat 1894

গীতাঞ্জলি Gitanjali Song Offerings 1910

গীতিমাল্য Gitimalya Wreath of Songs 1914

বলাকা Balaka The Flight of Cranes 1916

Original dramas in Bengali

বাল্মিকী প্রতিভা Valmiki-Pratibha The Genius of Valmiki 1881

কালমৃগয়া Kal-Mrigaya The Fatal Hunt 1882