Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore, Asia’s first Nobel Laureate – once described by Ezra Pound as a “flawless” poet, “greater than any of us” – was born on 7 May 1861, in a rich, culturally prominent, Brahmin family, in Calcutta, India. His grandfather, Prince Dwarkanath Tagore (1794-1846), was a personal friend of Queen Victoria. Tagore’s father, Maharishi (a great saint) Debendranath Tagore (1817-1905), was a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, a reformist religious movement that sought the revival of the monistic basis of Hinduism as laid down in the Upanishads. This movement was founded in the nineteenth century, by an enlightened and influential Bengali, who is often deemed the pioneer of the Bengal/Indian Renaissance, and was dubbed by Tagore himself as Bharat Pathik (Pathfinder of India), Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1773-1833).