RABINDRANATH
TAGORE - MODERN INDIA
News:
ASI text for plaques
identifying Santiniketan as heritage site also does not mention Tagore
What's
in the news?
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Recently, Plaques marking Santiniketan as
a UNESCO heritage site will not contain any mention of poet Rabindranath
Tagore, whose family founded the settlement and who made it a university town
over a century ago by setting up the Visva-Bharati University.
About
Rabindranath Tagore:
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He was a world-renowned poet, litterateur, philosopher and Asia’s first Nobel
laureate.
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He was born in Kolkata on May 7, 1861.
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He was the son of Debendranath Tagore, a prominent philosopher and religious
reformer.
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He was popularly known as Bard of Bengal, and people used to call
him Gurudev.
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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.
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He was highly influential in introducing Indian culture to the West and vice
versa.
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In
1913, he became the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for
Literature.
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He was also an influential artist and
musician. He wrote around 2230 songs and painted 3000 paintings. His songs are
known as Rabindra Sangeet.
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Rabindranath
Tagore wrote India's national anthem, Jana Gana Mana. He also wrote Amar Sonar
Bangla, the national anthem for Bangladesh. The Sri Lankan national anthem was
inspired by his work.
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He was awarded a knighthood in 1915, but he repudiated it in 1919 as a protest
against the Amritsar (Jallianwalla Bagh) Massacre.
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Viswa
Bharti University, which was known as Shantiniketan founded by Rabindranath Tagore.
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Major
Works:
○
Tagore’s most notable work of poetry is Gitanjali: Song Offerings, for which he
received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.
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Other notable poetry publications include Sonar Tari and Manasi.
○
He wrote novels, plays, and short stories
in both languages, including the plays
Chitra and The Post Office.
○
He is credited with pioneering the short
story form in Bengali literature, with some of his best work collected in The Hungry Stones and Other Stories and The
Glimpses of Bengal Life.