Rabindranath Tagore Biography

Tagore was born in Calcutta in a wealthy and prominent Brahmin family. His father was Maharishi Debendranath Tagore, a religious reformer and scholar; his mother Sarada Devi, died when he was very young. Tagore’s grandfather had established a huge financial empire for himself, and financed public projects, such as Calcutta Medical College.

 The Tagores were pioneers of the Bengal Renaissance and tried to combine traditional Indian culture with and Western ideas.Although there were times spent swimming in the Ganges River and hiking, Tagore’s childhood days were mostly confined to the family estate under the watchful eye of, sometimes abusive, servants. He rarely saw his father and his mother died when he was thirteen. After failing to flourish in the conventional school system, Rabindranath obtained his early education with tutors at home where he studied a wide array of subjects including; art, history, science, mathematics, Bengali, Sanskrit, and English, Hindu Scriptures Upanishads, Romantic poetry like that of Percy Bysshe Shelleyand classical poetry, notably that of Kālidāsa (c.1st century BCE-5th Century CE).At a very early age Tagore was writing his own poetry. Some poems were published anonymously or under his pen name “Bhanusingha” [Sun Lion], but he was soon a regular contributor to various magazines includingBalaka and Bharati. His first collection Kabi Kahini [Tale of a Poet] was published in 1878. He also started writing short stories including his first: “Bhikharini”(1877) [The Beggar Woman]. Tagore would travel and lecture extensively to parts of Asia, Europe, North and South America during his lifetime—his first trip at the age of thirteen was with his father to various parts of India. Then, with the intent to become a barrister, he was off to England to attend the University College in London from 1878-1880, although he did not finish his degree. He wrote one of his most famous poems during these years: “Nirjharer Swapnabhanga” (1882) [The Fountain Awakened from its Dream.

The youngest child in the family, Tagore started to compose poems at the age of eight. He received his early education first from tutors and then at a variety of schools. Among them were Bengal Academy where he studied Bengali history and culture, and University College, London, where he studied law but left after a year without completing his studies.At the age of twenty-two, on 9 December 1883, Tagore married Bhabatarini (later known as Mrinalini) Devi (1873-1902), with whom he would have five children; daughters Madhurilata (1886-1918), Rathindra (b.1888), Renuka (1890-1904), Mira (b.1892), and son Samindranath (1894-1907). In 1890 Tagore moved to the vast family estate in Shilaidaha, a region now part of Bangladesh. His wife and children joined him in 1898. He traveled by barge throughout the rural region among the Padma River’s sandy estuaries, collecting rents from the tenants and learning the villagers ways, charmed by their pastoral life working the rice fields, watching the fishermen with their nets, visiting school children, and attending feasts in his honour. He gained much inspiration from the people and the landscape and it became a prolific period of writing for him, works including Chitra: A Play in One Act (1896), Manasi (poetry, 1890) [The Ideal One], and Sonar Tari (poetry, 1894) [The Golden Boat].His first book, a collection of poems, appeared when he was 17; it was published by Tagore’s friend who wanted to surprise him. 

The next period of Tagore’s life involved his founding of the school Shantiniketan (now known as Visva-Bharati University) in 1901, on part of the family estate lands near Bolpur, West Bengal. An experimental school, Tagore based it on the ashrama model with pioneering emphasis on learning in a harmonious and natural setting. He felt that a well-rounded education using all the five senses and not relying on memorising by rote was the better way to teach children. It is now a prestigious open air University, a universal meeting place for East and West. It claims many notable figures among its alumni including Indira Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi adopted many of it ways of teaching. When Tagore’s wife died just one year after its founding he wrote the poems in Smaran [In Memoriam]. Other works written or published during this period were.

In 1901 Tagore founded a school outside Calcutta, Visva-Bharati, which was dedicated to emerging Western and Indian philosophy and education.The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West". It become a university in 1921. He produced poems, novels, stories, a history of India, textbooks, and treatises on pedagogy.Tagore’s reputation as a writer was established in the United States and in England after the publication of Gitanjali: Song Offerings, in which Tagore tried to find inner calm and explored the themes of divine and human love. The poems were translated into English by Tagore himself. His cosmic visions owed much to the lyric tradition of Vaishnava Hinduism and its concepts about the relationship between man and God. He was highly influential in introducing Indian culture to the West and is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of modern India. He was hailed by W.B Yeats and André Gide.Much of 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.”Between the years 1916 and 1934 he travelled widely, attempting to spread the ideal of uniting East and West. Only hours before he died on August 7, in 1941, Tagore dictated his last poem.

Present Awards:

The national Committee set up under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister to oversee the celebrations of the 150th Birth Anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore in its first meeting considered a proposal to establish a prestigious International Award in the memory of the late poet.The Government of India subsequently established the Tagore Award for promoting values of Universal Brotherhood. The award shall carry an amount of Rs. One Crore, a Citation in a Scroll, a Plaque as well as an exquisite traditional handicraft/handloom item. The award is open to all persons regardless of nationality, race, language, cast, creed or sex. A jury under the chairmanship of Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh after detailed deliberations decided unanimously to select Pandit Ravi Shankar to be the first recipient of the Tagore Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to cultural harmony and universal values. On the recommendation of the jury the award has been renamed as the ‘Tagore Award for Cultural Harmony’. The award would be presented by the President of India in a special ceremony. Announcing this in New Delhi today, the Finance Minister and Chairman of the National Implementation Committee Shri Pranab Mukherjee has said, the Government of India has further decided to grant Rs. 150 Crores to Viswa Bharati University to revive and restore the glory of this great institution founded by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore.