Rabindranath Tagore: A Brief Biography

By Peevri Suganda

India has sparked many great men who have always inspired the people. This e-book contains the brief biographies of Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath spent most of his time with his domestic helper ‘Ishwar’.  Ishwar would tell him many stories, daily in the morning. His stories were based on Ramayana and Mahabharata. Rabindra let his imagination fly around those stories. At school, Rabindra would always be lost in his thoughts. At home, Aghor Babu, his Bengali tutor taught him English. Rabindra learned the language quickly and began to converse and write in it.

He was very bright and dreamt big. He loved nature and liked looking at trees, chirping birds, rising and setting of the sun. He was very sensitive and had the heart of a poet. The atmosphere, as well as the people around him, affected him greatly. At the age of eight, he wrote his first poem, which was greatly appreciated by his family.

At the age of twelve, he was made to wear ‘Janeyu’ and had to learn many Sanskrit Shlokas and Mantras along with other rites and rituals. When he was seventeen, he was sent to England for further studies. However, he did not like it there and came back to India. Apart from continuing his studies here, he helped his father in looking after the property. He wrote some poems and plays during this period; He even acted in some of them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Feb 9, 2019

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Biblography

Preface

India has sparked many great men who have always inspired the people. This e-book contains the brief biographies of Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath spent most of his time with his domestic helper ‘Ishwar’. Ishwar would tell him many stories, daily in the morning. His stories were based on Ramayana and Mahabharata. Rabindra let his imagination fly around those stories. At school, Rabindra would always be lost in his thoughts. At home, Aghor Babu, his Bengali tutor taught him English. Rabindra learned the language quickly and began to converse and write in it.

He was very bright and dreamt big. He loved nature and liked looking at trees, chirping birds, rising and setting of the sun. He was very sensitive and had the heart of a poet. The atmosphere, as well as the people around him, affected him greatly. At the age of eight, he wrote his first poem, which was greatly appreciated by his family.

At the age of twelve, he was made to wear ‘Janeyu’ and had to learn many Sanskrit Shlokas and Mantras along with other rites and rituals. When he was seventeen, he was sent to England for further studies. However, he did not like it there and came back to India. Apart from continuing his studies here, he helped his father in looking after the property. He wrote some poems and plays during this period; He even acted in some of them.

—Author

1. Tagore: Early Years

Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian to win the Nobel Prize. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his great work Geetanjali in 1913. He was a truly multifaceted personality — a poet, philosopher, reformer, novelist, playwright, composer, painter, and most of all a humanist— all rolled into one.

Rabindranath Tagore was born on May 7, 1861, at Jorasanko Mansion in Calcutta. His father, Debendranath Tagore was a well-known social reformer, and his mother was Sarada Devi. Popularly called Rabi during childhood, he was the youngest of the thirteen surviving siblings. Debendranath Tagore was a leading light of the Brahmo Samaj, a popular reformist movement in Calcutta at that time. He was also a close friend of another great reformer of that era Raja Ram Mohan Roy.

Rabi had a literary bent of mind, which was evident when he wrote his first poem at the age of eight. His father travelled a great deal, and he lost his mother at the age of fourteen. Tagore had some very talented siblings too. His Eldest brother Dwijendranath was also a poet and philosopher, and he played an important role in Rabi’s literary journey, especially in the initial years. His other brother Satyendranath was the first Indian to be appointed in the Indian Civil Service, which until then had only Britishers. Jyotirindranath, another sibling, was also a well-known musician and playwright while his sister Swarankumari became a novelist.

Tagore did not have any formal schooling in his initial years instead studied at home. He left Calcutta with his father in 1873 for a tour, which lasted a few months. They visited several places including his father's Shantiniketan Estate, Amritsar and Dalhousie, which was their final destination. During the journey, Tagore read a great deal; especially biographies and his father taught him history, astronomy and Sanskrit. He was introduced to poems of the famous Sanskrit poet Kalidasa in addition to several other wonderful books. In the mid-April of 1873, when they reached Dalhousie and settled in a house, Tagore was mesmerised by the natural beauty of the place. The father-son duo stayed there for several months, and Tagore continued to read and learn various subjects with his father’s help.

In 1874, he was admitted to St. Xavier’s School at Calcutta, but he loathed formal schooling and left the school in 1875. During the same year, he lost his mother. In 1877, he published his poems under the pseudonym Bhanushingho. During the same year, he also wrote the short story, Bhikharini The Beggar Woman. In 1882, his poetry collection Sandhya Sangit was published which included one of his popular poems Nirjharer Swapnabhanga (The Rousing of the Waterfall).

During all these years, he spent most of his childhood in the mansion where he lived. Several servants surrounded him. Therefore, he longed to be close to nature and felt a strong attraction to natural beauty.

Of his 1873 visit to Shantiniketan, he wrote:

What I could not see did not take me long to get over - what I did see was quite enough. There was no servant rule, and the only ring, which encircled me, was the blue of the horizon, drawn around these solitudes by their presiding goddess. Within this, I was free to move about as I chose.

In 1878, Tagore was sent to England for studies and become a Barrister. His father enrolled him at a public school in Brighton, East Sussex, and England. For some time he persuaded himself to read law at the University College London. However, could not continue