(contributed by P.Ravi Sarma)  

Born: Calcutta, May 7, 1861

Died: Calcutta, August 7, 1941

Nobel Prize: 1913 Literature for his work "Gitanjali", for the English version, published in 1912.

Poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, essayist, musician, artist, actor, director, educator, philosopher and activist (rather than a politician), Rabindranath Tagore was fourteenth of fifteen children born to Maharshi Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi. He started writing when he was eight and published his first work of poetry in 1875. He founded Santi Niketan in 1901 and it later became the Viswa Bharathi University in 1918. He was knighted in 1915 but renounced it in 1919 in protest following the Jhullianwallah Bagh massacre by the British near Amritsar in Punjab. 

The award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Rabindranath Tagore was announced on November 13, 1913 by Harold Hjarne, Chairman of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy. Tagore, then 52 years old, was the first Asian to receive the award. It was given for Tagore's English version of "Gitanjali". Gitanjali was initially published in Bengali, Tagore's mother tongue, in 1910 as a book of poems. He translated selections from the book into English in free verse and published the work in 1912. 

In announcing the award, the Academy stressed the "idealistic tendency" of Tagore's verse, which the poet made it accessible to the "entire Western World", by his own translation into English. The Academy praised the poet's "profundity of thought" and his "warmth of feeling", making it "universally human in character". Tagore received word of the prize while he was at Santi Niketan. There was no Nobel lecture. He sent a telegram of acceptance: "I beg to convey to the Swedish Academy my grateful appreciation of the breadth of understanding which has brought the distant near, and has made a stranger a brother."

Bibliography:

Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1961, A Centenary Volume, Sahitya Academy, New Delhi, November, 1961.

Thomas Erskine in The Nobel Prize Winners, Literature, edited by Frank N. Magill, Salem Press, Pasadena, CA, 1987, pages 181-192

Gitanjali, with an introduction by W.B.Yeats, Macmillan Co., New York, new edition, published in 1935.

Selections from Gitanjali:

(Gitanjali means "Song Offerings". Tagore published the book of poems in 1910 and translated the book into English prose and published in 1912. I took the liberty to title the folloing selections and arranged the text to bring out the poetic beauty in the sentences. The text is not altered.--Ravi Sarma) Click here to view these selections.  

Two National Anthems:

(India in 1947, and Bangladesh in 1971 honored the greatest poet of India and Bengal, when they adopted Tagore's poems as their respective National Anthems. Below are the English translations of the National Anthems of India and Bangladesh. To really capture their beauty and majesty, you need to listen to them in their original languages, Sanskrit for the Indian Anthem and Bengali for the Bangladesh Anthem. Click here to view the text.