He was a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter. Tagore was known as the Bard of Bengal and Gurudev.
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti 2022: Rabindranath Tagore, India’s first Nobel laureate, was born in Kolkata on May 7, 1861. He was a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter. Tagore was known as the Bard of Bengal and Gurudev.
In 1901 Tagore founded a school outside Calcutta, Visva-Bharati, which was dedicated to emerging Western and Indian philosophy and education. It became a University in 1921. He produced poems, novels, stories, a history of India, textbooks, and treatises on pedagogy. His wife died in 1902, followed in 1903 by the death of one of his daughters and in 1907 his younger son.
Tagore was the one who had penned our national anthem ‘Jana Gana Mana’, as well as ‘Amar Shonar Bangla’, which is the national anthem sung in Bangladesh.
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The Bengali poet was awarded a knighthood by King George V in 1915, however, he repudiated it after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
Here are some of Rabindranath Tagore’s quotes and poems:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Where are those tears in your eyes, my child?
How horrid of them to be always scolding you for nothing!
You have stained your fingers and face with ink while writing-
is that why they call you dirty?
O, fie! Would they dare to call the full moon dirty because
it has smudged its face with ink?
For every little trifle, they blame you, my child. They are
ready to find fault for nothing.
You tore your clothes while playing-is that’s why they call you
untidy?
O, fie! What would they call an autumn morning that smiles
through its ragged clouds?
Take no heed of what they say to you, my child.
They make a long list of your misdeeds.
Everybody knows how you love sweet things-is that is why they
call you greedy?
O, fie! What then would they call us who love you?
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