Great War Theatre

Rabindranath Tagore, a Brahmin Hindu, was born on 7 May 1861 in Calcutta (now Kolkata), then the capital of British India, in West Bengal. He eschewed formal education and after briefly studying in Brighton and at University College London in the late 1870s, returned to India. He wrote verse in the Bengali language from an early age, publishing several volumes of poetry including ‘Mansai’ in 1890. In that year also he moved to Shilaidaha, in East Bengal, in modern Bangladesh, where he spent the next ten years managing his family’s estates. During this period he wrote several plays and volumes of poetry and composed many short stories about the common people and the rural life around him. In 1901 he moved to Shantiniketan in Bolpur, West Bengal, where, developing a project begun by his father, he founded an ashram or spiritual centre and school which became Visva-Bharati University in 1921. He had married Mrinalini Devi (1873–1902) in 1883 and they had five children, but she and two of their children died between 1902 and 1907. In 1912 some of his poems were published in English translation as ‘Gitanjali’, or ‘Song Offerings’. They were praised by W. B. Yeats and André Gide and in 1913 Tagore became the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Tagore opposed British rule in India and campaigned for Indian independence. Although he was awarded a knighthood by the British government in 1915, he renounced it four years later in protest at the Amritsar massacre, when soldiers of the British Indian Army under Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer shot dead several hundred unarmed Indian civilians. He was also critical of the caste system and the treatment of so-called ‘untouchables’. Tagore’s prolific literary output included essays, poetry, plays, short stories, novels and thousands of songs. He died in Calcutta on 7 August 1941.

Gender: Male

Date of Birth: 7 May 1861

Served in the armed forces? No

Scripts associated with Sir Rabindra Nath Tagore

Script Role
Malini Author
Sacrifice Author