World Poet Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
At a glance, World Poet Rabindranath Tagore:
- Rabindranath Tagore was born on 7 May, 1861.
- Rabindranath Tagore started a religious reform movement in 1828 that came to be known as the Brahma
Samaj Movement.
- In 1863, he established a meditation center.
- He gradually withdrew from formal schooling when he was around 14 years old.
- When Rabindranath was 12, his father took him to Santiniketan, the meditation center established in 1863.
- Tagore was a great poet. In 1874 his first poem 'Abhilash' was published in 'Tattobodhini Patrika'.
- He was sent to England in 1878 for further education under Henry Morley at London University College.
- His compendium 'Letters from a Sojourner in London' which was based on his life and times in London was published in book form in 1881.
- His Sandhya Sangeet [Evening songs], a volume of Bengali verse, came out in 1882.
- He became aware of his unusual talent as a poet. Between 1884 and 1890 various volumes of his poems appeared, together with a profuse output of prose articles, criticism, plays and novels.
- Tagore married when he was 23.
- In 1890, he made a second trip to the United Kingdom, but came back after a month to look after the family estates.
- In 1901, he left Seliadah where he had undertaken these experiments and moved to Santiniketan where, with his father’s consent, he started a boarding school.
- The Brahamacharyashram (or Ashram) School was inaugurated on 22 December 1901 with only a few pupils, his son being one of them, and with an equal number of teachers.
- He published more realistic novels such as Choker Bali [Eyesore] (1901), Naukadubi [The wreck] (1903) and Gora (1910).
- In 1912, Tagore left for the United Kingdom once again and the national anthem was composed for the Brahmo Samaja anniversary in 1912.
- He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in November 1913 and came back to India after visiting the United States of America, delivering there his ‘Sadhana’ lectures (The Realization of Life, 1913).
- He was Knighted by the British government in 1915.
- In 1916, Tagore went abroad again to Japan and then to the United States of America delivering lectures, published later in two volumes as Nationalism (1917b) and Personality (1917c).
- He also protested against the massacre at Jallianwalla Bag on 13 April 1919, by resigning his knighthood that the British had previously conferred upon him.
