Rabindranath Tagore
Spiritual, portraitist and Nobel Prize for literature, Rabindranath Tagore was a prolific writer (3,000 poems, 2,000 songs, 8 novels, 40 volumes of essays and short stories, 50 plays), who drew inspiration both from his native Bengal and from English literary tradition. His major theme was humanity's search for God and truth. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his collection of well-known poems Song Offerings.
Given birth in Calcutta on May 7, 1861, Rabindranath was the youngest of fourteen children. His father, Debendranath Tagore, was a Sanskrit scholar and a chief member of the Brahmo Samaj. Rabindranath's early teaching was imparted at home. In school, while others use to learn their lessons, he would slip into more thrilling world of dreams. Inspired by his older nephew, he transcribed his first poem when he was hardly seven. At the age of seventeen, his first book of poems was published.
From 1878 to 1880 Tagore studied law in United Kingdom, and in 1890, he returned to India, and took custody of his father's estates, where he saw firsthand the suffering and backwardness of India's rural poor and grew to love the serenity of the Indian countryside. Devoting himself to the agricultural development of the land and the health and education of the people, he founded, in 1901, Santiniketan ("Abode of Peace"), which became an international university with a wide-ranging curriculum. He was knighted in 1915, an honor he renounced four years later as a protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre by the British in India. Tagore was keenly aware of India's socio-political condition under British rule. He supported the Swadeshi movement and had been deeply influenced by the religious renaissance of 19th century India. Coming out strongly against orthodox rituals he wrote, "Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost than worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before
Given birth in Calcutta on May 7, 1861, Rabindranath was the youngest of fourteen children. His father, Debendranath Tagore, was a Sanskrit scholar and a chief member of the Brahmo Samaj. Rabindranath's early teaching was imparted at home. In school, while others use to learn their lessons, he would slip into more thrilling world of dreams. Inspired by his older nephew, he transcribed his first poem when he was hardly seven. At the age of seventeen, his first book of poems was published.
From 1878 to 1880 Tagore studied law in United Kingdom, and in 1890, he returned to India, and took custody of his father's estates, where he saw firsthand the suffering and backwardness of India's rural poor and grew to love the serenity of the Indian countryside. Devoting himself to the agricultural development of the land and the health and education of the people, he founded, in 1901, Santiniketan ("Abode of Peace"), which became an international university with a wide-ranging curriculum. He was knighted in 1915, an honor he renounced four years later as a protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre by the British in India. Tagore was keenly aware of India's socio-political condition under British rule. He supported the Swadeshi movement and had been deeply influenced by the religious renaissance of 19th century India. Coming out strongly against orthodox rituals he wrote, "Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost than worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before