149. Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore, recipient of the 1913 Noble prize for Literature, was born into a Brahmin family in Calcutta, India on May 7th 1861. His father was Maharshi Debendranath Tagore and his mother was Sarada Devi. His father was a leader of Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal. This samaj attempted for the revival of Hinduism as laid down in the Upanishads. He was mainly educated at home and at the age of seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling.

In 1883 Tagore married Mrinalini Devi Raichauduri, with whom he had two sons and three daughters.
He began to write poetry as a child and his first book appeared when he was seventeen years old. After a brief stay in England to study Law, he returned to India, where he rapidly became the most important and popular author of the colonial era. He composed several hundred popular songs and in 1929 he also began painting.

He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideals of education. He participated in the Indian national movement from time to time in his own visionary way and Gandhi was his devoted friend. Tagore and Gandhi were great admirers of each other, despite their differences in matter of politics, nationalism, and social reform. It was Tagore who called Gandhi “The Mahatma in a peasant’s garb”, and Gandhi, in turn called Tagore, “The Great Sentinel”.

Tagore objected the burning of foreign cloth because it was foreign. Gandhi stressed the need for Indian self-sufficiency in every sphere of life. Tagore believed that India had a message for the world, but he thought that India must also incorporate others’ messages into her own cultural repertoire. Like Gandhi, Tagore believed that inner Swaraj and cultivation of the self was vital.