Rabindranath Tagore

Author Code: ORTX

The son of wealthy Bengali parents, Tagore was educated at Bengal College and University College, London. It was in London that Tagore began to write in earnest, although he had produced a considerable amount of poetry as a child. He returned to India in 1883, married and settled in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in 1890. Over the next decade, Tagore was extremely productive, publishing seven volumes of poetry including The Golden Bear (1894). He also produced over 40 short stories which were published in Bengali periodicals. His novels also began to appear around this time with The Broken Nest (1901) and Eyesore (1903). In 1912, he published Gitanjali: Song Offerings, which won rave reviews from emminent poets of the day including Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats. In 1913, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature and, in 1915, he was knighted. In 1919, he surrendered his knighthood in protest at the Jallianwalla Massacre in the Punjab, where British soldiers killed over 400 demonstrators. Beginning around 1916, Tagore travelled throughout most of Asia, producing some excellent descriptive works of these travels. His poem, Our Golden Bengal, became the national anthem of Bangladesh. Like Gandhi, Tagore was a fervent nationalist and idealist who did much for the eventual independence of his country. Among his other important works are Japan-Jatri (1919), Red Oleanders (1925), Mahua: The Herald of Spring (1929), Two Sisters (1933) and Malancha - The Garden (1934).