Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore – a legend

Today (May 9, 2010)  is the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the legendary Bengali poet, philosopher, educationist, essayist, musician, novelist and playwright.

Wikipedia rightly refers to the person who alone reshaped Bengali literature and gifted with worldwide respect as a “Bengali polymath.” The word polymath means a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning. His life and writings is a subject by itself but I here make an attempt to put down some of the interesting or lesser known facts about him.

• Kaviguru Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 for Gitanjali.
• Rabindranath loved and admired Gandhi Ji and it was he who named the father of the nation “Mahatma” which is Sanskrit for great soul.
• Tagore is the only poet to have penned the national anthems of two countries – “Jana Gana Mana” for India and “Amar Shonar Bangla for Bangladesh”
• He started writing peoms as early as when he was just 8. His first work was published when he was 16 under the pseudonym Bhanusingho. In 1877, he wrote the Bengali language’s first short story – Bhikarini. Read the rest of this entry »