Rabindranath Thakur FRAS

(Bengali: [roˈbindɾonatʰ ˈʈʰakuɾ];[1] anglicised as Rabindranath Tagore /rəˈbɪndrənɑːt tə

ˈɡɔːr/ ; 7 May 1861[2] – 7 August 1941[3]) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer,
ⓘ

playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renaissance.[4][5]
[6]
He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was the author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh
and beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali.[7] In 1913, Tagore became the first non-European to win a
Nobel Prize in any category, and also the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
[8]
Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; where his elegant prose and
magical poetry were widely popular in the Indian subcontinent.[9] He was a fellow of the Royal
Asiatic Society. Referred to as "the Bard of Bengal",[10][5][6] Tagore was known by
the sobriquets Gurudeb, Kobiguru, and Biswokobi.[a]
A Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Burdwan district[12] and Jessore,
Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old.[13] 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.[14] 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,[15] 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.[16][17]
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 also inspired by
his work.[18] His song "Banglar Mati Banglar Jol" has been adopted as the state anthem of West
Bengal.
Family background
The name Tagore is the anglicised transliteration of Thakur.[19] The original surname of
the Tagores was Kushari. They were Pirali Brahmin ('Pirali' historically carried a stigmatized and
pejorative connotation)[20][21] who 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.[12]
Life and events
Early life: 1861–1878
The last two days a storm has been raging, similar to the description in my song—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 unfolding before me.
— Letter to Indira Devi.[22]
The youngest of 13 surviving children, Tagore (nicknamed "Rabi") was born on 7 May
1861 in the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta,[23] the son of Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and
Sarada Devi (1830–1875).[b]
Tagore and his wife Mrinalini Devi, 1883
Tagore was raised mostly by servants; his mother had died in his early childhood, and
his father travelled widely.[29] 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.[30] 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.[31] His sister Swarnakumari became a novelist.[32] 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.[33]
Tagore largely avoided classroom schooling and preferred to roam the manor or
nearby Bolpur and Panihati, which the family visited.[34][35] 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.[36] 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.[37]
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.[38][39] 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 writes 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.[40]
 He wrote 6 poems relating to Sikhism and several articles in Bengali children's magazine
about Sikhism.[41]
Poems on Guru Gobind Singh: নিষ্ফল উপহার Nishfal-upahaar (1888, translated as "Futile
Gift"), গুরু গোবিন্দ Guru Gobinda (1899) and শেষ শিক্ষা Shesh Shiksha (1899,
translated as "Last Teachings")[41]
Poem on Banda Bahadur: বন্দী বীর Bandi-bir (The Prisoner Warrior, written in 1888 or
1898)[41]
Poem on Bhai Torusingh: প্রার্থনাতীত দান (prarthonatit dan – Unsolicited gift) written in
1888 or 1898[41]
Poem on Nehal Singh: নীহাল সিংহ (Nihal Singh) written in 1935.[41]
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.[42] Regional experts
accepted them as the lost works of the fictitious poet.[43] He debuted in the short-story genre in
Bengali with "Bhikharini" ("The Beggar Woman").[44][45] Published in the same year, Sandhya
Sangit (1882) includes the poem "Nirjharer Swapnabhanga" ("The Rousing of the Waterfall").
Shilaidaha: 1878–1901
Because Debendranath wanted his son to become a barrister, Tagore enrolled at a
public school in Brighton, East Sussex, England in 1878.[22] 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.[46] He briefly read
law at University College London, but again left, 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.[22][47] In 1880, he
returned to Bengal degree-less, resolving to reconcile European novelty with Brahmo traditions,
taking the best from each.[48] After returning to Bengal, Tagore regularly published poems,
stories, and novels. These had a profound impact within Bengal itself but received little national
attention.[49] In 1883, he married 10-year-old[50] Mrinalini Devi, born Bhabatarini, 1873–1902 (this
was a common practice at the time). They had five children, two of whom died in childhood.[51]
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.[52] 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.[53] He met Gagan Harkara, through
whom he became familiar with Baul Lalon Shah, whose folk songs greatly influenced Tagore.
[54]
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;[29] in these years he wrote more
than half the stories of the three-volume, 84-story Galpaguchchha.[44] Its ironic and grave tales
examined the voluptuous poverty of an idealised rural Bengal.[55]
Santiniketan: 1901–1932
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.[56] 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.[57] 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.[58] 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.[59] He was awarded a knighthood by King George V in the 1915
Birthday Honours, but Tagore renounced it after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
[60]
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 countrymen."[61][62]
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.[63]
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.
[64]
He sought aid from donors, officials, and scholars worldwide to "free village[s] from the
shackles of helplessness and ignorance" by "vitalis[ing] knowledge".[65][66] 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.[67][68]
Twilight years: 1932–1941
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."[69] To the end, Tagore scrutinized
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.[70] He mourned the perennial
poverty of Calcutta and the socioeconomic decline of Bengal and detailed this newly plebeian
aesthetics in an unrhymed hundred-line poem whose technique of searing double-vision
foreshadowed Satyajit Ray's film Apur Sansar.[71][72] 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).[73]
Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
—Verse 292, Stray Birds, 1916.
Tagore's remit expanded to science in his last years, as hinted in Visva-Parichay, a 1937
collection of essays. His respect for scientific laws and his exploration of biology, physics, and
astronomy informed his poetry, which exhibited extensive naturalism and verisimilitude.[74] He
wove the process of science, the narratives of scientists, into stories in Se (1937), Tin
Sangi (1940), and Galpasalpa (1941). His last five years were marked by chronic pain and two
long periods of illness. These began when Tagore lost consciousness in late 1937; he remained
comatose and near death 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.[75][76] A
period of prolonged agony ended with Tagore's death on 7 August 1941, aged 80.[23] He was in
an upstairs room of the Jorasanko mansion in which he grew up.[77][78] The date is still mourned.
[79]
A. K. Sen, brother of the first chief election commissioner, received dictation from Tagore on
30 July 1941, a day before a scheduled operation: his last poem.[80]
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
February 1940
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 elements rebellious, dynamic with individual
impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world that dominates them and puts them into an orderly
organization?
— Interviewed by Einstein, 14 April 1930.[81]
Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore set foot in more than thirty countries on five
continents.[82] 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.[83] Yeats
wrote the preface to the English translation of Gitanjali; Andrews joined Tagore at Santiniketan.
In November 1912 Tagore began touring the United States[84] and the United Kingdom, staying
in Butterton, Staffordshire with Andrews's clergymen friends.[85] From May 1916 until April 1917,
he lectured in Japan[86] and the United States.[87] He denounced nationalism.[88] His essay
"Nationalism in India" was scorned and praised; it was admired by Romain Rolland and other
pacifists.[89]
 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.[90] A week after his 6 November 1924 arrival in Buenos Aires,
[91]
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.
[92]
Their warm rapport ended when Tagore pronounced upon Il Duce's fascist finesse.[93] He had
earlier enthused: "[w]without any doubt he is a great personality. There is such a massive vigor
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".[94]
On 1 November 1926 Tagore arrived in 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.[95]
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).[96] 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.[97] 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".[98] 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.[99] In April 1932 Tagore, intrigued by the Persian mystic Hafez, was
hosted by Reza Shah Pahlavi.[100][101] In his other travels, Tagore interacted with Henri
Bergson, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells,
and Romain Rolland.[102][103] 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.
[69]
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."[104]
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 the 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.[105] 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.[106]
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".[107][108] 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.
[109]
In Raktakarabi ("Red" or "Blood Oleanders") is an allegorical struggle against a kleptocrat
king who rules over the residents of Yaksha puri.[110]
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").[111] With this, Tagore effectively invented the Bengali-language short
story genre.[112] 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.[111] 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.
[111]
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.[113] 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.[114] 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.[111]
Novels
Tagore wrote eight novels and four novellas, among
them Nastanirh (1901), Noukadubi (1906), Chaturanga (1916) and Char Adhyay (1934).
In Chokher Bali (1902–1903), 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.
Ghare Baire (The Home and the World, 1916), 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.[115]
His longest novel, Gora (1907–1910), 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.[116] 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 extremist reactionary traditionalism he defends by an appeal to
what humans share." Among these, Tagore highlights "identity [...] conceived of as dharma."[117]
In Jogajog (Yogayog, Relationships, 1929), 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 roué of a husband. Tagore flaunts
his feminist leanings; pathos depicts the plight and ultimate demise of women trapped by
pregnancy, duty, and family honor; he simultaneously trucks with Bengal's putrescent landed
gentry.[118] 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 Kabita (1929) — 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 Satyajit Ray for Charulata (based on Nastanirh) in
1964 and Ghare Baire in 1984, and by several others filmmakers such as Satu Sen for Chokher
Bali already in 1938, when Tagore was still alive.
Poetry
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 the second non-European to receive a Nobel Prize
after Theodore Roosevelt.[119]
Besides Gitanjali, other notable works include Manasi, Sonar Tori ("Golden
Boat"), Balaka ("Wild Geese" – the title being a metaphor for migrating souls)[120]
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.[121] 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.[122][123] These, rediscovered and re-popularized by Tagore,
resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasize inward divinity and rebellion against
bourgeois bhadralok religious and social orthodoxy.[124][125] 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".[22] 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 seventy years.[126][127]
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.[128] 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 lyricized. 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.[129] They
emulated the tonal color of classical ragas to varying extents. Some songs mimicked a given
raga's melody and rhythm faithfully, others newly blended elements of different ragas.[130] 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 flavors "external" to
Tagore's own ancestral culture.[22]
Rabindranath Tagore reciting Jana Gana Mana
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,[131] 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,[132] and was adopted in 1950 by the Constituent
Assembly of the Republic of India as its national anthem.
Sri Lanka's National Anthem was inspired by his work.[18]
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".[133] Tagore
influenced sitar maestro Vilayat Khan and sarodiyas Buddhadev Dasgupta and Amjad Ali Khan.
[130]

Art works

Tagore's Bengali-language initials, the letters র and ঠ, are worked into this "Ro-Tho" (of
RAbindranath THAkur) wooden seal, 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.[134]
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[135]—were held throughout Europe. He was likely red, green color blind, resulting in
works that exhibited strange color 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.[134] 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.[22]
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 Jagadish Chandra 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.[136]
Face of a woman, inspired by Kadambari Devi.[137] Ink on paper. National Gallery of Modern Art,
New Delhi
India's National Gallery of Modern Art lists 102 works by Tagore in its collections.[138][139]
In 1937, Tagore's paintings were removed from Berlin's baroque Crown Prince Palace by the
Nazi regime and five were included in the inventory of "degenerate art" compiled by the Nazis
in 1941–1942.[140]
Politics
Tagore opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists,[141][142][143] and these views
were first revealed in Manast, which was mostly composed in his twenties.[52] 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.[144] Yet he lampooned the Swadeshi
movement; he rebuked it in The Cult of the Charkha, an acrid 1925 essay.[145] 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.[146] 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".[147][148]
So I repeat we never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and
prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by
its laws and institutions, the love of humanity.
— Sādhanā: The Realisation of Life, 1916.[149]
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 an argument.[150] Tagore wrote songs lionizing the Indian independence
movement.[151] Two of Tagore's more politically charged compositions, "Chitto Jetha
Bhayshunyo" ("Where the Mind is Without Fear") and "Ekla Chalo Re" ("If They Answer Not to
Thy Call, Walk Alone"), gained mass appeal, with the latter favored by Gandhi.[152] Though
somewhat critical of Gandhian activism,[153] Tagore was key in resolving a Gandhi–
Ambedkar dispute involving separate electorates for untouchables, thereby mooting at least
one of Gandhi's fasts "unto death".[154][155]
Repudiation of knighthood
See also: List of people who have declined a British honour § Renouncing an honour
Tagore renounced his knighthood in response to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. In the
repudiation letter to the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, he wrote[156]
The 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 for human beings.

Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati

 Tagore despised rote classroom schooling, as shown in his short story, "The Parrot's
Training", wherein a bird is caged and force-fed textbook pages—to death.[157][158] Visiting Santa
Barbara in 1917, Tagore 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."[150] The school, which he
named Visva-Bharati,[d] had its foundation stone laid on 24 December 1918 and was inaugurated
precisely three years later.[159] 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,[160] and his duties as steward-
mentor at Santiniketan kept him busy: mornings he taught classes; afternoons and evenings he
wrote the students' textbooks.[161] He fundraised widely for the school in Europe and the United
States between 1919 and 1921.[162]
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.[163] 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.[164] It inspired the fictional
film Nobel Chor. In 2016, a baul singer named Pradip Bauri, accused of sheltering the thieves,
was arrested.[165][166]
Impact and legacy
Bust of Rabindranath in Tagore promenade, Balatonfüred, HungaryRabindranath Tagore
statue in Dublin, Ireland
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
(US); Rabindra Path Parikrama walking pilgrimages from Kolkata to Santiniketan; and recitals of
his poetry, which are held on important anniversaries.[84][167][168] 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".[168][146] Tagore's Bengali
originals—the 1939 Rabīndra Rachanāvalī—is canonized as one of his nation's greatest cultural
treasures, and he was roped into a reasonably humble role: "the greatest poet India has
produced".[169]
Tagore was renowned throughout much of Europe, North America, and East Asia. He co-
founded Dartington Hall School, a progressive coeducational institution;[170] in Japan, he
influenced such figures as Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata.[171] In colonial Vietnam Tagore was
a guide for the restless spirit of the radical writer and publicist Nguyen An Ninh[172] Tagore's
works were widely translated into English, Dutch, German, Spanish, and other European
languages by Czech Indologist Vincenc Lesný,[173] French Nobel laureate André Gide, Russian
poet Anna Akhmatova,[174] former Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit,[175] 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.[9] Yet a latent reverence of Tagore was discovered by an
astonished Salman Rushdie during a trip to Nicaragua.[181]
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".[182] 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—criticized 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."[9][183] William Radice, who "English[ed]" his poems,
asked: "What is their place in world literature?"[184] 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 century."[183][185] The translated Tagore was "almost nonsensical",[186] 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".[9]
Museums
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
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[187] Jorasanko, Kolkata 700007.[188] It
is the house in which Tagore was born, and also the place where he spent most of his childhood
and where he died on 7 August 1941.
List of works
 Who are you, reader, reading my poems a hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of 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[189]
The SNLTR hosts the 1415 BE edition of Tagore's complete Bengali works. Tagore Web also
hosts an edition of Tagore's works, including annotated songs. Translations are found at Project
Gutenberg and Wikisource. More sources are below.
Original
Original poetry in Bengali
Bengali title Transliterated title Translated title Year
ভানুসিংহ ঠাকুরের Songs of Bhānusiṃha
Bhānusiṃha Ṭhākurer Paḍāvalī 1884
পদাবলী Ṭhākur
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
Bengali title Transliterated title Translated title Year
বাল্মিকী
Valmiki-Pratibha The Genius of Valmiki 1881
প্রতিভা
কালমৃগয়া Kal-Mrigaya The Fatal Hunt 1882
মায়ার
Mayar Khela The Play of Illusions 1888
খেলা
বিসর্জন Visarjan The Sacrifice 1890
চিত্রাঙ্গ
Chitrangada Chitrangada 1892
দা
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
Bengali title Transliterated title Translated title Year
নষ্টনীড় Nastanirh The Broken Nest 1901
গোরা Gora Fair-Faced 1910
ঘরে
Ghare Baire The Home and the World 1916
বাইরে
যোগাযোগ Yogayog Crosscurrents 1929
Original nonfiction in Bengali
Bengali title Transliterated title Translated title Year
জীবনস্মৃ
Jivansmriti My Reminiscences 1912
তি
ছেলেবেলা Chhelebela My Boyhood Days 1940
Works in English
Title Year
Thought Relics 1921[original 1]
Translated
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]
1928 My Boyhood Days
1917 My Reminiscences[text 14]
1917 Nationalism
1914 The Post Office[text 15]
English translations
Year Work
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[190]
1921 The Wreck

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.[191]
In 1969, American composer E. Anne Schwerdtfeger was commissioned to compose Two Pieces,
a work for women's chorus based on text by Tagore.[192]
In Sukanta Roy's Bengali film Chhelebela (2002) Jisshu Sengupta portrayed Tagore.[193]
In Bandana Mukhopadhyay's Bengali film Chirosakha He (2007) Sayandip Bhattacharya played
Tagore.[194]
In Rituparno Ghosh's Bengali documentary film Jeevan Smriti (2011) Samadarshi Dutta played
Tagore.[195]
In Suman Ghosh's Bengali film Kadambari (2015) Parambrata Chatterjee portrayed Tagore