RavindraNath Tagore

1. Rabindranath Tagore sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his regions literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, he became the first non European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial, his seemingly mesmeric personality, flowing hair, and other worldly dress earned him a prophet like reputation in the We .....

Early Life 1861 1878

2. The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Tagore was born in the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta, India to parents Debendranath Tagore (1817 1905) and Sarada Devi (1830 1875). Tagore family patriarchs were the Brahmo founders of the Adi Dharm faith. The loyalist Prince Dwarkanath Tagore, who employed European estate managers and visited with Victoria and other royalty, was his paternal grandfather. Debendranath had formulated the Brahmoist philo .....

Shelaidaha 1878 1901

3. Because Debendranath wanted his son to become a barrister, Tagore enrolled at a public school in Brighton, East Sussex, England in 1878. 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 nieceSuren and Indira Devi, the children of Tagores brother Satyendranathwere sent together with their mother, Tagores sister in law, to live with him. He briefly read law at Univ .....

Santiniketan 1901 1932

4. In 1901 Tagore moved to Santiniketan to found an ashram with a marble floored prayer hallThe Mandiran experimental school, groves of trees, gardens, a library. 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 familys jewelry, his seaside bungalow in Puri, and a derisory 2,000 rupees in book royalties. He gained Bengal .....

Twilight years 1932 1941

5. Tagores life as a peripatetic litterateur 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.To the end Tago .....

Travels

6. Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore set foot in more than thirty countries on five continents. In 1912, he took a sheaf of his translated works to England, where they gained attention from missionary and Gandhi prot?g? Charles F. Andrews, Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, Thomas Sturge Moore, and others. Yeats wrote the preface to the English translation of Gitanjali, Andrews joined Tagore at Santiniketan. In Nov .....

Works

7. Known mostly for his poetry, Tagore wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues, dramas, and thousands of songs. Of Tagores 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 deceptively simple subject matter commoners. Tagores non fiction .....

Music and Art

8. Tagore composed 2,230 songs and was a prolific painter. His songs compose rabindrasangit (Tagore Song), which merges fluidly into his literature, most of whichpoems or parts of novels, stories, or plays alikewere 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. They emulated the tonal color of classical .....

Theatre

9. At sixteen, Tagore led his brother Jyotirindranaths adaptation of Moli .....

Novels

10. 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 Nikhilrepudiates the frog march of nativism, terrorism, and religious querulousness popular among segments of the Swadeshi movement. A frank expression of Tagores conflicted sentiments, it was conceived of during a 1914 bout of depression. The nov .....

Stories

11. Tagores three volume Galpaguchchha comprises eighty four stories that reflect upon the authors surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas, and on mind puzzles. Tagore associated his earliest stories, such as those of the Sadhana period, with an exuberance of vitality and spontaneity, these traits were cultivated by zamindar Tagores life in Patisar, Shajadpur, Shelaidaha, and other villages. Seeing the common and the poor, he examined their liv .....

Poetry

12. Tagores 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. Tagores most innovative and mature poetry embodies his exposure to Bengali rural folk music, which included mystic Baul ballad .....

Politics

13. Tagores political thought was tortuous. He opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists, and these views were first revealed in Manast, which was mostly composed in his twenties. 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 okuma Shigenobu. Yet he lampooned the Swa .....

Repudiation of Knighthood

14. Tagore renounced his knighthood, in response to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. In the repudiation letter to the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, he wroteThe time has come when badges of honour make our 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 .....

Santiniketan and Visva Bharati

15. Tagore despised rote classroom schooling in The Parrots Training, a bird is caged and force fed textbook pagesto death. 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. The school, which he named Visva Bharati, had its foundation stone laid on 2 .....

Impact

16. 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, Rabindra Path Parikrama walking pilgrimages from Calcutta to Santiniketan, and recitals of his poetry, which are held on important anniversaries. Bengali culture is fraught with this legacy from language and arts to history and politics. Amartya Sen scantly deemed .....

Short stories

17. Tagore wrote many stories during the period from 1891 to 1895. Galpaguchchha (Bunch of Stories) is a three volume collection of eighty four of his stories. Tagore wrote about half of these stories during the period 1891 to 1895. This collection continues to be very popular work of Bangla literature. These stories have given ideas to produce many movies and theatrical plays.Tagore drew inspiration and ideas for writing his stories from his surroun .....

Last years

18. Even during the last decade of life, Tagore remained publicly active. He criticized Mohandas Gandhi, the Indian leader, for Gandhis comments about an earthquake on January 15 1934 in Bihar. Gandhi had commented that the earthquake had happened on account of Gods will to punish people for practicing casteism. He was also sad at the decline of Bengal and poverty in Kolkata. He wrote a poem of one hundred lines about the poverty of Kolkata. Later on .....

The Indian Renaissance

19. Now the door has opened none shall be turned away from the shore of this vast sea of humanity that is India, wrote Tagore, the poet and cultural nationalist, whose poem was to be echoed in Indias national anthem.We have discovered by now that the stereotype of the Unchanging East obscures more than it explains. Yet, equally unhelpful in the Asian context is the Victorian concept of Progress or in our own day Development (they are much the same) .....

Death

20. The poet Rabindranath Tagore died on August 7th, 1941. Hugh Tinker charts the life of the man who was, perhaps, Indias greatest son in modern times.We have discovered by now that the stereotype of the Unchanging East obscures more than it explains. Yet, equally unhelpful in the Asian context is the Victorian concept of Progress or in our own day Development (they are much the same) envisaging an onward evolution towards an advanced material cultu .....