Rabindranath Tagore Birth Anniversary:
Prime Minister recently paid tributes to Rabindranath Tagore on his birth anniversary.
- Rabindranath Tagore was a world-renowned poet, litterateur, philosopher and Asia’s first Nobel laureate.
- He was born in Kolkata on May 7, 1861.
- He was the son of Debendranath Tagore, a prominent philosopher and religious reformer.
- He was popularly known as Bard of Bengal, and people used to call him Gurudev.
- He introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit.
- He was highly influential in introducing Indian culture to the West and vice versa.
- In 1913 he became the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
- He was also an influential artist and musician. He wrote around 2230 songs and painted 3000 paintings. His songs are known as Rabindra Sangeet.
- Rabindranath Tagore wrote India’s national anthem, Jana Gana Mana. He also wrote Amar Sonar Bangla, the national anthem for Bangla The Sri Lankan national anthem was inspired by his work.
- He was awarded a knighthood in 1915, but he repudiated it in 1919 as a protest against the Amritsar (Jallianwalla Bagh) Massacre.
- Viswa Bharti University, which was known as Shantiniketan founded by Rabindranath Tagore.
- Tagore’s most notable work of poetry is Gitanjali: Song Offerings, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.
- Other notable poetry publications include Sonar Tari and Manasi.
