“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.” Rabindranath Tagore
Born May 7, Rabindranath Tagore (1861 -1941) is an Indian poet, playwright and painter and has inspired generations of people throughout the world by his writings, poetry, thoughts and paintings.
Tagore was also a composer and wrote the national anthems for both India and Bangladesh, as well as being an educator, social reformer and philosopher.
Tagore’s work 'Gitanjali', was first published in 1910 (later translated and published into English in 1912) and won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for "his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West."
Tagore was the first non-European to ever win a Nobel Prize
Rabindranath Tagore was awarded a knighthood by King George V in the 1915 in his birthday honours, but Tagore renounced it after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre at the hands of the British.
“The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.”
Tagore began painting relatively late in his career (when he was in his sixties), nevertheless he was the first Indian artist to exhibit his works across Europe, Russia and the United States in 1930. Tagore produced thousands of works with a painting style that was very individual, characterised by simple bold forms and a rhythmic quality that later served to inspire many modern Indian artists.
Learn more about his art work here Tagore the artist
Learn more about this poet here Rabindranath Tagore
Where The Mind Is Without Fear :
“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.”
