The Individual and Society

8

The Exercise Book

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was born in Calcutta, the fourteenth and youngest child in a rich and talented family. The latter half of the nineteenth century was an exciting time for the Bengali elite, a period of intellectual and artistic awakening, referred to as the ‘Bengal Renaissance’. Raja Rammohan Roy, the social reformer, was an important figure associated with the Bengal Renaissance, and was a close friend of Tagore’s grandfather, Dwarkanath Tagore, also an eminent personality of the time.

Many members of the Tagore family were illustrious and outstanding, and the Tagores ran their own literary magazines, and wrote and produced their own plays. Tagore himself was a poet, short-story writer, ...