Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore[1] (7 May 1861 7

August 1941) was a Bengali poet
of India. His name is written as
Rabindranath Takur inIndian languages.
He was also a philosopher and an artist.
He wrote many stories, novels, poems
and dramas, as well as composing music
and many songs. His writings greatly
influenced Bengali culture during the late
19th century and early 20th century. In
1913, he won the Nobel Prize in
Literature, the first Asian to win this
prize. He was popularly known as
Gurudev. His real name was Rabindranath Thakur.

Rabindranath believed in complete freedom of every kind for the students, the
freedom
of intellect, decision, heart knowledge, action and worship. But in order to
attain this freedom, the edcuand had to practice equanimity, harmony and balance.
Rabindranath interprets independence as normalcy or the fact of being natural. In other
works, when intelligence, feeling and determination are naturally distributed, it can be said to
be a state of freedom. This independence is not to be confused with the absence of control,
because it is self control, it implies acting according to one s own rational impulse. Once this
level of freedom has been achieved, there is no danger of the individual straying from his
path, because his senses, intelligence, emotional feelings and all other powers are directed by
his ego.
According to Rabindranath, the aim of education is self-realization. According to him,
this realization by every one is the goal of education. Self-realization, according to
Rabindranath, means the realization of the universal soul in one self. Man s aim of life is to
achieve this status. It is a process, which cannot be realized without education.

Santiniketan: 19011932
In 1901 Tagore moved to Santiniketan to found an ashram with a marble-floored
prayer hallThe Mandiran experimental school, groves of trees, gardens, a library.
[41]
There his wife and two of his children died. His father died in 1905. He received monthly
payments as part of his inheritance and income from the Maharaja of Tripura, sales of his
family's jewellery, his seaside bungalow in Puri, and a derisory 2,000 rupees in book
royalties.[42] He gained Bengali and foreign readers alike; he published Naivedya (1901)
and Kheya (1906) and translated poems into free verse.
In 1921, Tagore and agricultural economist Leonard Elmhirst set up the "Institute for
Rural Reconstruction", later renamed Shriniketan or "Abode of Welfare", in Surul, a village
near the ashram. With it, Tagore sought to moderate Gandhi's Swaraj protests, which he

occasionally blamed for British India's perceived mental and thus ultimately colonial
decline.[44] He sought aid from donors, officials, and scholars worldwide to "free village[s]
from the shackles of helplessness and ignorance" by "vitalis[ing] knowledge". [45][46] In the
early 1930s he targeted ambient "abnormal caste consciousness" and untouchability. He
lectured against these, he penned Dalit heroes for his poems and his dramas, and he
campaignedsuccessfullyto open Guruvayoor Temple to Dalits

Works
Known mostly for his poetry, Tagore wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues,
dramas, and thousands of songs. Of Tagore's prose, his short stories are perhaps most highly
regarded; he is indeed credited with originating the Bengali-language version of the genre.
His works are frequently noted for their rhythmic, optimistic, and lyrical nature. Such stories
mostly borrow from deceptively simple subject matter: commoners. Tagore's non-fiction
grappled with history, linguistics, and spirituality. He wrote autobiographies. His travelogues,
essays, and lectures were compiled into several volumes, including Europe Jatrir
Patro(Letters from Europe) and Manusher Dhormo (The Religion of Man). His brief chat
with Einstein, "Note on the Nature of Reality", is included as an appendix to the latter. On the
occasion of Tagore's 150th birthday an anthology (titledKalanukromik Rabindra
Rachanabali) of the total body of his works is currently being published in Bengali in
chronological order. This includes all versions of each work and fills about eighty volumes.
[84]
In 2011, Harvard University Presscollaborated with Visva-Bharati University to
publish The Essential Tagore, the largest anthology of Tagore's works available in English; it
was edited by Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarthy and marks the 150th anniversary of
Tagore's birth.
The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the
wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.
It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most
intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander
through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.
My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said 'Here art thou!'
The question and the cry 'Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the
world with the flood of the assurance 'I am!'
Song XII, Gitanjali, 1913.