Our Rabindranath Tagore

Sri Rabindranath Tagore was one of the great sons of the mother, India. He gave a new distinctiveness to the Indians. He modernized the existing Indian society. His creativeness was incomparable. He was a prominent dramatist, novelist, short story writers, philosopher, educationist, spiritualist, painter, humanists and national builder. He was one of the greatest lyric poets of the world. In the words of Count Key Sirling, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore was the most universal, the most encompassing and the most complete human being. Gandhiji called him “The Great Sentinel”.

The word ‘Thakur’ means the holy lord. The local Brahmins used to address the Tagore family as Thakur. But, the Europeans, unable to pronunciate the word ‘Thakur’, started to call them ‘Tagor’. That is why Rabindranath Thakur was mispronunciated as Rabindranath Tagore. He was born on May 7, 1861 in Jorasanko mansion (Tagore House), Calcutta. His father, Sri Devendranath Tagore (1817-1905) influenced him significantly. As Rabindranath was the fourteenth child of his parents, his mother Sarda Devi could not pay the proper attention to him. He grew in the lack of love and affection. He was looked after by servants. But, he had to tolerate a lot. He expressed his pungent experiences of his childhood in his autobiography in the book titled ‘My Reminiscences’. He also composed a string of poems expressing similar experiences in ‘The Poems of Childhood’. Tagore wrote poems at the age of eight. It is an attention-grabbing fact to point out here that he always felt uncomfortable in school. Due to that he received all his education at home. Later, he read law at University College London. He was married at the age of 25. He established an ashram, the Brahamacharya asharma on December 27, 1901 in Shantiniketen. Presently, it is an international university known as Vishva Bharti. Its objective is to provide quality education to all. He wrote mainly in Bengali. The Gitanjali, the offering of songs, composed in Bengali and was published in 1910. It was translated into English which brought to him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. He was the first Indian and Asian recipient to win the Noble prize. He supported the Swedishi Movement. He returned the Knighthood title during Jalianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. He opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists. He was sincerely concerned with the matters of politics, economic, society and religious. Tagore was famed throughout much of Europe, North America, and East Asia. Indian national anthem was composed by him. Besides it, Tagore penned the anthems of Bangladesh, Amar Shonar Bangla. ‘The Crescent Moon’, ‘The Gardener’, ‘ Gora’, ‘The Wreck’, ‘The Post Officer’, ‘Sadhana’, ‘The Home and The World’ etc are his most popular works. UNESCO is going to celebrate the 150th Birth Anniversary in year 2010 on the International level. Indian government has accepted the above proposal. The international institution has also decided to launch the new prizes and medals on his name. This action is taken in order to create mass awareness regarding the Literature. We lost him on 7 August 1941. No one is able to say everything about his personality. Really, he was a living incarnation of ‘plain living and high thinking’.