Bengali poet, composer and painter who wrote Gitanjali and became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature
Did you know?He is the only person to have composed the national anthems for two different countries, India and Bangladesh.
Quick facts
Date of birth6 May 1861
Date of death7 August 1941
Age at death80
NationalityIndian
BirthplaceKolkata, India
Occupationpainter, poet, composer
Editor's Take:
Tagore was a one-man cultural renaissance, writing poems, novels, plays, essays and more than two thousand songs. In 1913 he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, largely for Gitanjali, a collection of spiritual poems he translated into English himself. He was also a painter, taking up art seriously in his sixties, and an educator who founded a university at Santiniketan built around learning in nature. He used his fame to criticise British rule, famously giving up his knighthood after the Amritsar massacre of 1919. His influence on Bengali culture and identity is hard to overstate.
Key Milestones
1878: Studies in England
1901: Founds a school at Santiniketan
1910: Publishes Gitanjali in Bengali
1913: Wins the Nobel Prize in Literature
1915: Knighted, an honour he later renounces
1921: Founds Visva-Bharati University
Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali:; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali poet, author, playwright, musician, composer, philosopher, social reformer, painter, and one of the foremost figures of the Bengal Renaissance.
Rabindranath Tagore's birthday is May 6. He was born on May 6, 1861 in Kolkata, India.
How old was Rabindranath Tagore when he died?
Rabindranath Tagore died on August 7, 1941, aged 80.
Who shares a birthday with Rabindranath Tagore?
Famous people who share Rabindranath Tagore's May 6 birthday include Sigmund Freud, Tony Blair, Maximilien Robespierre, George Clooney and Orson Welles.
