Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore married Mrinalini Devi in 1883 and fathered five children. Sadly, his wife passed away in 1902 and to add to his grief two of his daughters, Renuka (in 1903) and Samindranath (in 1907) also died.

He became physically weak during the last few years of his life. He left for the heavenly abode on 7 August 1941, at age of 80.

Tagore has influenced a whole generation of writers across the globe. His impact is far beyond the boundaries of Bengal or India and his works have been translated to many languages including English, Dutch, German, Spanish etc.

Rabindranath Thakur (Tagore) was the youngest of the thirteen children born to Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi. His father was a great Hindu philosopher and one of the founders of the religious movement, ‘Brahmo Samaj’.

Nicknamed ‘Rabi’, Tagore was very young when his mother died and since his father was away most of the time, he was raised by the domestic help.

The Tagores were ardent art-lovers who were known throughout the Bengal for their dominant influence over Bengali culture and literature. Having been born in such a family, he was introduced to the world of theatre, music (both regional folk and Western) and literature from an early age.

When he was eleven, he accompanied his father on a tour across India. While on this journey, he read the works of famous writers, including Kalidasa, a celebrated Classical Sanskrit poet. Upon his return, he composed a long poem in the Maithili style, in 1877.

In 1878, he moved to Brighton, East Sussex, England, to study law. He attended the University College London for some time, following which he started studying the works of Shakespeare. He returned to Bengal in 1880 without a degree, with the aspiration of fusing the elements of Bengali and European traditions in his literary works.

In 1890, while on a visit to his ancestral estate in Shelaidaha, his collection of poems, ‘Manasi’, was released. The period between 1891 and 1895 proved to be fruitful during which, he authored a massive three volume collection of short stories, ‘Galpaguchchha’.

In 1901, he moved to Shantiniketan, where he composed ‘Naivedya’, published in 1901 and ‘Kheya’, published in 1906. By then, several of his works were published and he had gained immensely popularity among Bengali readers.

In 1912, he went to England and took a sheaf of his translated works with him. There he introduced his works to some of the prominent writers of that era, including William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, and Thomas Sturge Moore.

His popularity in English speaking nations grew manifold after the publication of ‘Gitanjali: Song Offerings’ and later in 1913, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 1915, he was also granted knighthood by the British Crown, which he renounced after the 1919 Jalianwala Bagh massacre.

Tagore’s political outlook was a little ambiguous. Though he censured imperialism, he supported the continuation of British administration in India.

He criticized ‘Swadeshi Movement’ by Mahatma Gandhi in his essay "The Cult of the Charka", published in September 1925. He believed in the co-existence of the British and the Indians and stated that British rule in India was "political symptom of our social disease".

He never supported nationalism and considered it to be one of the greatest challenges faced by humanity. In this context he once said “A nation is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose”. Nevertheless, he occasionally supported the Indian Independence Movement and following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, he even renounced his knighthood on 30 May 1919.

On the whole, his vision of a free India was based not on its independence from the foreign rule, but on the liberty of thought, action and conscience of its citizens.