Rabindranath Tagore " A Great Novelist And Poet"

Rabindranath Tagore was born on 7th May, 1861 in Tagore family at Jorasanko, Kolkata. Rabindranath was a poet, a novelist, critic, short story writer, philosopher, educationist, scientists and social reformer. Every branch of Bengali literature was highly enriched by his immortal contributions.

He was the first Indian to win a Nobel for literature.This great Bengali poet was an admirer of Gandhi and was the one who gave him the name “Mahatma”.He is the only poet to have composed national anthems for two nations – India and Bangladesh.

Rabindranath 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’. Tagore was very young when his mother died and since his father was away most of the time, he was raised by the servants help.

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.He was educated at home; and although at seventeen ,In 1878 he travelled to England and sought to study law at University College, London, but he left before finishing the degree.

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.

His first book, a collection of poems, appeared when he was 17; it was published by Tagore’s friend who wanted to surprise him. In 1901 Tagore founded a school outside Calcutta, Visva-Bharati, which was dedicated to emerging Western and Indian philosophy and education. It become a university in 1921. He produced poems, novels, stories, a history of India, textbooks, and treatises on pedagogy.

Achievements:-

•  Rabindranath Tagore wrote the national anthems of India and Bangladesh, few know that Sri Lanka's national anthem is based on a Bengali song originally written by Tagore in 1938.

• Tagore took up  painting at the age of sixty, and went on to hold several successful exhibitions throughout Europe. He was a widely traveled man and had visited more than thirty countries on five continents.

• For his momentous and revolutionary literary works, Tagore was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature on 14 November 1913. He was also conferred knighthood in 1915, which he renounced in 1919 after the Jallianwala Bagh carnage.

• In 1940, Oxford University awarded him with a Doctorate of Literature in a special ceremony arranged at Shantiniketan.

• ‘Gitanjali’, a collection of poems, is considered his best poetic accomplishment. It is written in traditional Bengali dialect and consists of 157 poems based on themes pertaining to nature, spirituality and intricacy of human emotions.

• A proficient songwriter, Tagore composed 2,230 songs, which are often referred to as ‘Rabindra Sangeeth’. 

• ‘Galpagucchaccha’ a collection of eighty stories is his most famous short story collection which revolves around the lives of rural folks of Bengal. The stories mostly deal with the subjects of poverty, illiteracy, marriage, femininity, etc.

Tagore’s ideology comes from the teaching of the Upahishads and from his own beliefs that God can be found through personal purity and service to others. He stressed the need for new world order based on transnational values and ideas, the “unity consciousness.”