Tagore Dies: Nobel Laureate Who Wrote Two National Anthems

Rabindranath Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1913, for Gitanjali, a collection of poems translated into English by Tagore himself in prose so luminous that W.B. Yeats wrote the introduction. Born in Calcutta in 1861 to one of Bengal's most prominent families, he began writing poetry at eight and published his first substantial collection at seventeen. He was the fourteenth of fifteen children, and his family's wealth gave him the freedom to write, compose music, paint, and philosophize without commercial pressure. He wrote over two thousand songs, including the melodies that became the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh, an achievement unique in world history. He established Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, a school that rejected the colonial educational model in favor of open-air classrooms, multilingual instruction, and an emphasis on creativity over rote learning. Students sat under trees. Examinations tested understanding rather than memorization. The model attracted attention from educators worldwide and influenced progressive schooling movements across Asia. Tagore traveled extensively, lecturing in Europe, the Americas, and Japan, becoming one of the first truly global public intellectuals. His conversations with Albert Einstein on the nature of reality were published and widely read. He returned his knighthood to the British government in 1919 after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in which British troops killed hundreds of unarmed Indians. He died on August 7, 1941, in Calcutta, having seen the Bengal he loved beginning to fracture along communal lines that would lead to partition six years later.