RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Greatest writer in modern Indian literature, Bengali poet, novelist, educator, and an early advocate of Independence for India is the introduction to Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta into a wealthy and prominent Brahman family.

Tagore received his early education first from tutors and then at a variety of schools. Among them were Bengal Academy where he studied history and culture. At University College, London, he studied law but left after a year.

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Two years later he was awarded the knighthood, but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the Massacre of Amritsar, where British troops killed some 400 Indian demonstrators. Tagore's influence over Gandhi and the founders of modern India was enormous, but his reputation in the West as a mystic has perhaps mislead his Western readers to ignore his role as a reformer and critic of colonialism.