Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, novelist, playwright, songwriter, painter and thinker, born in Kolkata in 1861 into a prominent and artistic family, in what was then British India. He died there in 1941. He wrote in Bengali, and reshaped its poetry, prose and song, composing music that is still widely sung. His own English versions of his poems brought him an international readership, and in 1913 he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He also founded a school at Santiniketan, built around learning in open air and close to nature. Tagore wrote about love, nature, faith, family life and the pull between personal freedom and duty. He was also a thoughtful critic of narrow nationalism. His work remains central to Bengali culture and is read across the world for its warmth and clarity.