Rabindra Nath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali poet, philosopher, social reformer, and dramatist who came into international prominence when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.
Rabindranath Tagore or simply Rabindranath as he is known in India, was born into an affluent and brilliantly talented Calcutta family on May 7, 1861. His grandfather Dwarkanath Tagore (1794-1846) had amassed great wealth through investment and speculation in coal mines, indigo, and sugar.
Despite the fact that the family was an outcast Brahmin one, belonging to the group called pirali brahman—Brahmins who had been made ritually impure by sometimes forced contact with Moslems—the dynasty he founded gave Bengal and all of India some of its most prominent painters, poets, musicians, and religious leaders.
Dwarkanath's own views were iconoclastic; his wife left him, for example, because he had violated Hindu practice by eating meat. Rabindranath's father, Debendranath (1818-1905), was outstanding in fields of learning ranging from mathematics to ancient scripture and was a man of profound religious concern.
Although Rabindranath cherished freedom and had great pride in India and in Bengal, his gentle heart caused him to withdraw from the radical political activity with which many of his countrymen were trying to drive the British from their shores.
Rabindranath's ideas of Asia's unity, and later of the unity of the world, and his longing for personal freedom were both expressed in his continual and almost compulsive travel-to Japan, China, Europe, and the United States.