Rabindranath Tagore (May 7, 1861 - August 7, 1941) was an Indian Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renaissance. He shaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with contextual modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1913, Tagore became the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize in any category, and also the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in literature (on Gitanjali). Tagore’s poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial poetry was widely popular in the Indian subcontinent. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and he is often referred to as the 'Bard of Bengal'.
Tagore was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in Bengal. He was born on May 7, 1861 in Calcutta. The original surname of the Tagores was Kushari; they were Pirali Brahmin who originally belonged to a village named Kush in the district named Burdwan in West Bengal. The youngest of 13 surviving children, Tagore was raised mostly by the servants; his mother had died in his early childhood and his father traveled widely. He was educated at home, and at seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling, but he did not finish his studies there. He came back from England and managed his family estate along with pursuing literary activities. He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideas of education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist movement. He resigned the knighthood received by King George V, after the Massacre of Jallian Wala Bagh on April 13, 1919. Tagore visited Golden Temple, Amritsar for few days with his father and he was very impressed with Sikhism. He wrote 6 poems relating to Sikhism on Guru Gobind Singh, Bandha Bahadur, Bhai Taru Singh, and Nihal Singh and these articles were served in the Bengali Children’s magazine.
Comentarios