Legacy of Rabindranath Tagore Photogallery

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Born on May 7, 1861, to Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi in the Jorasanko mansion in Kolkatta, Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, writer, music composer and painter. He was the youngest of thirteen surviving children. He was never a fan of classroom schooling, so his brother Hemendranath tutored and physically conditioned him. Tagore loathed formal education, and English was his least favourite subject. He was sent to England, enrolled at a public school in Brighton, East Sussex in 1878; his father Debendranath wanted him to be a barrister. He read law briefly at University College London. But, soon opted for independent study of Shakespeare's plays Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra and the Religio Medici of Thomas Browne. Tagore was impressed with English, Irish and Scottish folk tunes. He came back to India without a degree but was propelled to publish poems, stories and novels. Tagore was married to a 10-year-old Mrinalini Devi, they had five children, two of whom died in childhood. Tagore found an ashram in Santiniketan called 'The Mandir'—an experimental school, groves of trees, gardens with a library. He won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for 'Gitanjali: Song Offerings'. Tagore was awarded a knighthood by King George V in the 1915 Birthday Honours, but he renounced it after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Tagore's work has been used in various art forms since. He passed away on August 7, 1941, at the age of eighty.

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Asia's maiden Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore (left) with Mahatma Gandhi at a public meeting in Delhi during the 1940s.

(BCCL)

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Helen Keller meets with Rabindranath Tagore, 1921.

(BCCL)

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Rabindranath Tagore was receiving a doctorate from Oxford University.

(BCCL)

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(BCCL)

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Rabindranath Tagore was one of the distinguished and respected men of letters in the country; he was a novelist, a playwright, a painter, a philosopher, an educationist, a freedom fighter and an actor who was awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. In this photo, Tagore is with his granddaughter and grand-nephew in Shantiniketan, West Bengal on April 10, 1934.

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