Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta, India into a wealthy Brahmin family. After a brief stay in England (1878) to attempt to study law, he returned to India, and instead pursued a career as a writer, playwright, songwriter, poet, philosopher and educator. During the first 51 years of his life he achieved some success in the Calcutta area of India where he was born and raised with his many stories, songs and plays. His short stories were published monthly in a friend's magazine and he even played the lead role in a few of the public performances of his plays. Otherwise, he was little known outside of the Calcutta area, and not known at all outside of India
This all suddenly changed in 1912. He then returned to England for the first time since his failed attempt at law school as a teenager. Now a man of 51, his was accompanied by his son. On the way over to England he began translating, for the first time, his latest selections of poems, Gitanjali, into English. Almost all of his work prior to that time had been written in his native tongue of Bengali. He decided to do this just to have something to do, with no expectation at all that his first time translation efforts would be any good. He made the handwritten translations in a little notebook he carried around with him and worked on during the long sea voyage from India. Upon arrival, his son left his father's brief case with this notebook in the London subway. Fortunately, an honest person turned in the briefcase and it was recovered the next day. Tagore's one friend in England, a famous artist he had met in India, Rothenstein, learned of the translation, and asked to see it. Reluctantly, with much persuasion, Tagore let him have the notebook. The painter could not believe his eyes. The poems were incredible. He called his friend, W.B. Yeats, and finally talked Yeats into looking at the hand scrawled notebook.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal and which attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of Hinduism as laid down in the Upanishads. He was educated at home; and although at seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there. In his mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms. He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideals of education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the political father of modern India, was his devoted friend. Tagore was knighted by the ruling British Government in 1915, but within a few years he resigned the honour as a protest against British policies in India.
In 1883 Tagore married Mrinalini Devi Raichaudhuri, with whom he had two sons and three daughters. In 1890 Tagore moved to East Bengal (now Bangladesh), where he collected local legends and folklore. Between 1893 and 1900 he wrote seven volumes of poetry, including SONAR TARI (The Golden Boat), 1894 and KHANIKA, 1900. This was highly productive period in Tagore's life, and earned him the rather misleading epitaph 'The Bengali Shelley.' More important was that Tagore wrote in the common language of the people. This also was something that was hard to accept among his critics and scholars.
Tagore was the first Indian to bring an element of psychological realism to his novels. Among his early major prose works are CHOCHER BALI (1903, Eyesore) and NASHTANIR (1901, The Broken Nest), published first serially. Between 1891 and 1895 he published forty-four short stories in Bengali periodical, most of them in the monthly journal Sadhana.
Especially Tagore's short stories influenced deeply Indian Literature. 'Punishment', a much anthologized work, was set in a rural village. It describes the oppression of women through the tragedy of the low-caste Rui family. Chandara is a proud, beautiful woman, "buxom, well-rounded, compact and sturdy," her husband, Chidam, is a farm-laborer, who works in the fields with his brother Dukhiram. One day when they return home after whole day of toil and humiliation, Dukhiram kills in anger his sloppy and slovenly wife because his food was not ready. To help his brother, Chidam's tells to police that his wife struck her sister-in-law with the farm-knife. Chandara takes the blame on to herself. 'In her thoughts, Chandara was saying to her husband, "I shall give my youth to the gallows instead of you. My final ties in this life will be with them."' Afterwards both Chidam and Dukhiram try to confess that they were quilty but Chandara is convicted. Just before the hanging, the doctor says that her husband wants to see her. "To hell with him," says Chandara.
At a very early age Tagore was writing his own poetry. Some poems were published anonymously or under his pen name “Bhanusingha” [Sun Lion], but he was soon a regular contributor to various magazines including Balaka and Bharati. His first collection Kabi Kahini [Tale of a Poet] was published in 1878. He also started writing short stories including his first: “Bhikharini”(1877) [The Beggar Woman]. Tagore would travel and lecture extensively to parts of Asia, Europe, North and South America during his lifetime—his first trip at the age of thirteen was with his father to various parts of India. Then, with the intent to become a barrister, he was off to England to attend the University College in London from 1878-1880, although he did not finish his degree. He wrote one of his most famous poems during these years: “Nirjharer Swapnabhanga” (1882) [The Fountain Awakened from its Dream];
I shall rush from peak to peak,
I shall sweep from mount to mount,
With peals of laughter and songs of murmur
I shall clap to tune and rhythm.
At the age of twenty-two, on 9 December 1883, Tagore married Bhabatarini (later known as Mrinalini) Devi (1873-1902), with whom he would have five children; daughters Madhurilata (1886-1918), Rathindra (b.1888), Renuka (1890-1904), Mira (b.1892), and son Samindranath (1894-1907). In 1890 Tagore moved to the vast family estate in Shilaidaha, a region now part of Bangladesh. His wife and children joined him in 1898. He traveled by barge throughout the rural region among the Padma River’s sandy estuaries, collecting rents from the tenants and learning the villagers ways, charmed by their pastoral life working the rice fields, watching the fishermen with their nets, visiting school children, and attending feasts in his honour. He gained much inspiration from the people and the landscape and it became a prolific period of writing for him, works including Chitra: A Play in One Act (1896), Manasi (poetry, 1890) [The Ideal One], and Sonar Tari (poetry, 1894) [The Golden Boat].
The next period of Tagore’s life involved his founding of the school Shantiniketan (now known as Visva-Bharati University) in 1901, on part of the family estate lands near Bolpur, West Bengal. An experimental school, Tagore based it on the ashrama model with pioneering emphasis on learning in a harmonious and natural setting. He felt that a well-rounded education using all the five senses and not relying on memorising by rote was the better way to teach children. It is now a prestigious open air University, a universal meeting place for East and West. It claims many notable figures among its alumni including Indira Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi adopted many of it ways of teaching. When Tagore’s wife died just one year after its founding he wrote the poems in Smaran [In Memoriam]. Other works written or published during this period were; Katha O Kahini (1900) [Tales and Stories], Naivedya (poetry, 1901), Kheya (poetry, 1906), Raja (play, 1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber], Dak-ghar (1912) [The Post Office], The Crescent Moon (1913), Gitimalya (1914) [Wreath of Songs], Songs of Kabîr (1915), Stray Birds (1916), Sadhana: The Realisation of Life (1916), and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes], and the poems “Fruit-Gathering” (1916), “The Fugitive” (1921) and “The Gardener” (1915);
Tagore wrote his most important works in Bengali, but he often translated his poems into English. At the age of 70 Tagore took up painting. He was also a composer, settings hundreds of poems to music. Many of his poems are actually songs, and inseparable from their music. Tagore's 'Our Golden Bengal' became the national anthem of Bangladesh. Only hours before he died on August 7, in 1941, Tagore dictated his last poem. His written production, still not completely collected, fills nearly 30 substantial volumes. Tagore remained a well-known and popular author in the West until the end of the 1920s, but nowadays he is not so much read.
For further reading: Rabindranath Tagore by Krishna Kripalani (1962); Rabindranath Tagore by H. Banerjee (1971); Rabindranath Tagore by B.C. Chakravorty (1971); An Introduction to Rabindranath Tagore by V.S. Naravene (1977); The Humanism of Rabindranath Tagore by M.R. Anand (1979); Rabindranath Tagore by S. Ghose (1986); The Unversal Man by S. Chattopadhyay (1987); Sir Rabindranath Tagore by K.S. Ramaswami Sastri (1988); Gandhi and Tagore by D.W. Atkinson (1989); Rabindranath Tagore by K. Basak (1991); Rabindranath Tagore by E.J. Thompson (1991) - Suom.: Tagorelta on myös suomennettu draamat Pimeän kammion kuningas ja muita dramoja, novellivalikoima Ahnaat paadet sekä teos Puutarhuri Eino Leinon käännöksenä 1913.
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