Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861– 8 August 1941)
Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social
reformer and painter. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian
art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rabindranath
Tagore embodies the quintessence of Indian culture. With over a thousand poems, two thousand
songs, eight novels, twenty-four plays, volumes of short stories, and a mass of prose, this
creative genius has been responsible for reshaping India's literature and music scene.
Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali, he became in 1913
the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic
songs were viewed as spiritual and were widely popular in the Indian subcontinent. He was a
fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Referred to as "the Bard of Bengal", Tagore was known
by sobriquets: Gurudeb, Kobiguru, and Biswokobi.
A Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Burdwan district and Jessore,
Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old. 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. 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, 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.
Tagore modernized Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms. 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.
Early life
The youngest of 13 surviving children, Tagore (nicknamed "Rabi") was born on 7 May 1861 in
the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta, the son of Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi. Tagore
was raised mostly by servants; his mother had died in his early childhood and his father travelled
widely. 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.
Debendranath Tagore was a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in
nineteenth-century Bengal and which attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of
Hinduism as laid down in the Upanishads. Rabindranath was educated at home; and although at
seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there. In his
mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the family estates, a
project which brought him into close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in
social reforms. He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his
Upanishadic ideals of education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist
movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the political
father of modern India, was his devoted friend. The British Crown awarded him the Knighthood
in 1915, but within a few years he resigned the honor as a protest against British policies in
India.
Tagore had early success as a writer in his native Bengal. With his translations of some of his
poems he became rapidly known in the West. In fact his fame attained a luminous height, taking
him across continents on lecture tours and tours of friendship. For the world he became the voice
of India’s spiritual heritage; and for India, especially for Bengal, he became a great living
institution.
Although Tagore wrote successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. Among his
fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari (1894) [The
Golden Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914) [Wreath of Songs],
and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes]. The English renderings of his poetry, which
include The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), and The Fugitive (1921), do not generally
correspond to particular volumes in the original Bengali; and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: Song
Offerings (1912), the most acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works besides its
namesake. Tagore’s major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark
Chamber], Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The
Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi (1926) [Red Oleanders]. He is
the author of several volumes of short stories and a number of novels, among
them Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World], and Yogayog (1929)
[Crosscurrents]. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas, dance dramas, essays of all types,
travel diaries, and two autobiographies, one in his middle years and the other shortly before his
death in 1941. Tagore also left numerous drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote
the music himself.
Tagore's father invited several professional Dhrupad musicians to stay in the house and
teach Indian classical music to the children. 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. 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. His sister Swarnakumari became a novelist.
Tagore married Mrinalini Devi in 1883.
Tagore largely avoided classroom schooling and preferred to roam the manor. His
brother Hemendranath tutored and physically conditioned him—by having him swim the Ganges
or trek through hills, by gymnastics, and by practicing judo and wrestling. He learned drawing,
anatomy, geography and history, literature, mathematics, Sanskrit, and English—his least
favorite subject.
After his Upanayan 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. 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).
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).
Influences on the Poetical Efforts:
Rabindranath has never ceased to learn. He took inspiration from the source whatever comes in
his way. First, of course, are the Bengali Vaisnava lyricists. He is grateful to them because they
put him in the way of finding his gift of pure song. His real master has been Kalidasa. He never
missed a chance of paying Kalidas homage.
Tagore, in his teens was called, the Bengali Shelley, and he has translated Shelley and has
acknowledged him as an influence. Shelley has been the favorite English poet of Tagore.
Gitanjali (1910):-
In 1913, Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for Gitanjali, his most
acclaimed work. A collection of 157 poems, Gitanjali was first published in 1910. The trio
Gitanjali (1912) in English, Gitamalya (1914) and Gitali (1914) followed Kheya. The English
translation of Gitanjali brought Nobel Prize and world fame to the poet. The poetry is a desperate
attempt to express man's relation to his fellow-men, to Nature, to God. Gitanjali is verily the
recordation of the vicissitudes in the drama of human soul in its progress from finite to the
infinite. And this progress is necessarily conceived as a battle, as a journey and as a continuing
sacrifice, culminating in a total offering of all one is (atmasamarpan) so that by losing all one
may gain all.
Here Tagore seems to reveal important but simple truth through the medium of poetry: Life as a
battle, a journey and a search, and as a progressive sacrifice. Such is the dynamic of spiritual
struggle and realisation. These poems are religious and mystic but their appeal is nevertheless
universal. This work is great from the point of view of technique also. There is simplicity of
words, felicity of diction, delicacy of expression and sublimity of theme.
Tagore has composed the national anthem of two nations—India's "Jana Gana Mana" and
Bangladesh's "Amaar Shonaar Bangla." But he deeply influenced the words and music of a third,
the Lankan national anthem, ‘Sri Lanka Matha’.
Vishwa Bharati:
Rabindranath founded a school for children at Shantiniketan and it was around this nucleus that
the structure of an unconventional university developed through careful planning.
In 1863, on a seven-acre plot at the site of the present institution, Debendranath Tagore, the
poet's father, had built a small retreat for meditation, and in 1888 he dedicated, the land and
buildings, towards establishment of a Brahmavidyalaya and a library. Rabindranath's school
Brahmacharyasrama which started functioning formally from December 22, 1901 with no more
than five students on the roll, was, in part, a fulfilment of the wishes of his father who was a
considerable figure of his time in the field of educational reforms. From 1925 this school came to
be known as Patha-Bhavana.
The school was a conscious repudiation of the system introduced in India by the British rulers
and Rabindranath initially sought to realize the intrinsic values of the ancient education in India.
The school and its curriculum, therefore, signified a departure from the way the rest of the
country viewed education and teaching. Simplicity was a cardinal principle. Classes were held in
open air in the shade of trees where man and nature entered into an immediate harmonious
relationship. Teachers and students shared the single integral socio-cultural life. The curriculum
had music, painting, dramatic performances and other performative practices.
In 1939, he established an institute called Vishwa Bharati with the money he had received from
the Nobel Prize. This university is one of India's most renowned places for higher learning. Until
independence it was a college. Soon after independence, the institution was given the status of a
central university in 1951 by an act of the Parliament. Shantiniketan in many ways is still quite
different compared to other universities in the country. The university still has the rural trappings
that Tagore dreamt of. The classes are still held in the open under the shade of huge mango trees
and students and tutors alike still travel by cycles to keep pollution at bay. The old buildings,
which were made up of mud walls and thatched roofs, are still intact and find a place within the
main campus. While some are preserved for historical value, others are functional in all aspects.
While for tourists the place could only be place for sight-seeing, the studious and the
academically-inclined can easily feel the scholastic vibrations.
Rabindranath Tagore died on August 7, 1941.
