50 Fun Facts About Rabindranath Tagore

Which Irish writer introduced Tagore's 1912 English Gitanjali, a manuscript he admitted reading on top of omnibuses?

W. B. Yeats dated his introduction September 1912 and wrote that he had carried the translations about 'reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses'. He later soured, grumbling that 'Tagore does not know English'.

Tagore's hymn 'Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata' has how many verses, of which only the first became India's anthem?

Five verses make up the hymn, and only the first, 'Jana Gana Mana', was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 24 January 1950. It was written in Sadhu Bhasha, a heavily Sanskritised literary Bengali.

Which economist, born at Santiniketan in 1933 and a Nobel laureate in 1998, was given his first name by Tagore himself?

Amartya Sen was named by the poet and later schooled at Patha Bhavana, Tagore's Santiniketan school, which shunned examinations and competitive testing. His 1998 prize was for work on welfare economics.

Which 1964 Satyajit Ray film, often called his finest, adapts Tagore's 1901 novella Nastanirh, The Broken Nest?

Charulata is the lonely wife of newspaper editor Bhupati, drawn to his literary cousin in 1879 Calcutta. Ray said the novella had 'a western quality' that let him speak of Mozart in connection with the film.

Which 1892 Tagore story about a dry-fruit seller's bond with little Mini became a 1961 Hindi film with Balraj Sahni?

Kabuliwala had already been filmed in Bengali in 1957 by Tapan Sinha, with Chhabi Biswas as the fruit-seller Rahmat, who is jailed and returns to find Mini grown up and about to marry.

Which 2008 viral video of a man dancing around the world used Tagore's 'Stream of Life' as its lyric 'Praan'?

Where the Hell is Matt? 2008 set Garry Schyman's 'Praan', sung by Palbasha Siddique, over Matt Harding's dancing. The poem is number 69 of the Bengali Gitanjali, translated into English by Tagore himself.

Which viceroy got Tagore's 1919 letter renouncing the knighthood that made 'our shame glaring'?

Lord Chelmsford was told that the punishments after Amritsar were 'without parallel in the history of civilised governments' and that Tagore wished to stand 'shorn of all special distinctions' beside his countrymen.

Who is ex officio acharya, or chancellor, of Visva-Bharati, the university Tagore inaugurated in 1921?

The Prime Minister of India is acharya, while the President is paridarshaka, the visitor, and West Bengal's governor is pradhana, the rector. Parliament made it a central university in 1951.

What did the Swedish Academy send Visva-Bharati after Tagore's Nobel medal vanished from its vault in 2004?

Gold and bronze replicas were presented after a December 2004 decision; the theft inspired the 2012 film Nobel Chor, and in 2016 a baul singer was arrested for sheltering the thieves.

In which year did UNESCO inscribe Santiniketan, the ashram Tagore grew into a university town, as World Heritage?

2023 brought the inscription after Santiniketan had sat on UNESCO's tentative list since 2010. Classes there are still held in the open under mango trees, as Tagore intended.

At which town's Besant Theosophical College did Tagore translate 'Jana Gana Mana' as 'The Morning Song of India'?

Madanapalle's vice-principal Margaret Cousins set the tune down in Western notation from Tagore's own notes, and the song has been sung daily at the college ever since.

How many prose poems make up the 1912 English Gitanjali, only 53 of them taken from the Bengali collection of that name?

103 poems appear, the other 50 drawn from collections such as Naivedya and Kheya, and one of them fuses two separate Naivedya songs. The Bengali Gitanjali of 1910 had 157 poems.

To which English painter, a friend since his 1910 tour of India's art sites, did Tagore dedicate the English Gitanjali?

William Rothenstein found Tagore his 1912 rooms at 3 Villas on the Heath in Hampstead, now marked by a blue plaque, and lived nearby at Oak Hill Park. Their letters were published as Imperfect Encounter.

Which London body published the limited first edition of Tagore's English Gitanjali in November 1912?

The India Society's edition carried an introduction dated September 1912, and the American magazine Poetry printed a selection. Tagore had shared the poems in London with admirers including Ezra Pound.

Which British poet made the lone nomination that won Tagore the 1913 Nobel, in the first year he was ever nominated?

Thomas Sturge Moore's nomination produced what the committee called 'a surprise of a peculiar kind'; member Per Hallström wrote that no poet in Europe since Goethe's death could rival Tagore.

Who read Tagore's one-sentence telegram of thanks at the December 1913 Nobel banquet in Stockholm, which he skipped?

The British chargé d'affaires, Mr Clive, read the line thanking the Academy for an understanding that 'has brought the distant near, and has made a stranger a brother'. Tagore never delivered a Nobel lecture.

Whose 1913 Nobel bid, backed by 97 Royal Society of Literature members, lost to Tagore as too 'pessimistic'?

Thomas Hardy's gloom was judged out of step with Alfred Nobel's will; Anatole France, also weighed that year, waited until 1921 for his prize. The Academy received 32 nominations for 28 writers.

From which Baul singer's song 'Ami Kothay Pabo Tare' did Tagore borrow the melody of 'Amar Shonar Bangla'?

Gagan Harkara was the singer through whom Tagore discovered the Baul mystic Lalon Shah while managing the family estates at Shilaidaha, and the tune is set to dadra tala.

How many lines of Tagore's 'Amar Shonar Bangla' form Bangladesh's anthem, adopted in the 1971 Liberation War?

Ten lines of the poem, first printed in 1905, form the anthem, and in March 2014 some 254,537 people sang it together at Dhaka's National Parade Ground for a Guinness record.

Which Tagore novel, his longest, follows an Irish orphan of 1857 raised as a zealous Hindu, unaware of his birth?

Gora means 'whitey'; the hero falls for a Brahmo girl, forcing his foster father to reveal the past and end his nativist zeal. Tagore wrote the novel between 1907 and 1910.

Which 1903 Tagore novel about the young widow Binodini was filmed in 1938, with the poet seeing and approving it?

Chokher Bali, 'sand in the eye', was first published in English as Eyesore in 1914, and Rituparno Ghosh filmed it again in 2003. It pillories the seclusion forced on widows who could not remarry.

Which 1916 Tagore novel sets the zamindar Nikhil, his wife Bimala and the firebrand Sandip against the Swadeshi boycott?

Ghare Baire, The Home and the World, ends in Hindu–Muslim violence with Nikhil likely mortally wounded; Satyajit Ray's 1984 film of it competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

In which 1929 Tagore novel does the barrister Amit Ray rail against a revered poet who turns out to be 'Rabi Thakur'?

Shesher Kabita, translated as The Last Poem and Farewell Song, let Tagore mock himself after younger writers had spent 1928 tilting at his reputation. Tagore had called the young writers to Jorasanko to hear them debate.

Which 1895 Tagore ghost story grew from his stay at Ahmedabad's Moti Shahi Mahal, where a brother was a judge?

The Hungry Stones has a tax collector consumed night by night by a haunted marble palace; Tapan Sinha's 1960 film of it won a National Film Award and a prize at Cork.

Which 1961 Satyajit Ray anthology film brings together Tagore's stories The Postmaster, Monihara and Samapti?

Teen Kanya, 'Three Daughters', travelled abroad without its ghost story Monihara and was released on video as Two Daughters. Ray also made a documentary on Tagore that year.

Which Tagore play about the dying boy Amal did Janusz Korczak's orphans stage in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942?

The Post Office, Dak Ghar in Bengali, treats the boy Amal's death as 'spiritual freedom'; its first English staging was at Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1913, with Tagore in the audience at its London transfer.

In which symbolic Tagore play, written at Shillong, does Nandini defy a greedy king who makes his subjects mine gold?

Raktakarabi, 'Red Oleanders', was first titled Yaksapuri and appeared in the magazine Prabasi in 1924; a 2016 review called it Tagore's finest protest against totalitarianism.

Which Mahabharata hero does Manipur's warrior princess, granted beauty by the gods, woo in Tagore's play Chitra?

Arjuna, living as a hermit, is first won by a borrowed beauty; the princess had been raised as a boy because Manipur's king lacked a male heir. The play was published in English in 1913.

Which 1932 film, shot in four days at New Theatres in Calcutta, is the only one Tagore is credited with directing?

Natir Puja recorded his 1926 dance-drama of a dancing girl's worship, with Tagore also acting in it; the prints were later destroyed in a fire at New Theatres.

Which relative of Tagore leased the Santiniketan land in 1863 for Rs 5 a year and named it the 'abode of peace'?

His father Debendranath, the Brahmo leader known as Maharshi, built a guest house there beside two chhatim trees; the 12-year-old poet first saw the place in February 1873.

Which all-European cadre did Tagore's brother Satyendranath become the first of his countrymen to join?

The Indian Civil Service took Satyendranath to a judgeship in Ahmedabad; his daughter Indira Devi later set nearly 200 of her uncle's songs down in musical notation.

Kadambari Devi, whose 1884 suicide shadowed Tagore for years, was married to which of his elder brothers?

Jyotirindranath, a playwright and composer, married her in 1868 when she was nine; Tagore dedicated his Bhanusimha poems to her when they appeared in July 1884, months after her death.

Which son of Tagore, trained in agriculture at Illinois, became Visva-Bharati's first vice-chancellor in 1951?

Rathindranath, one of the first five pupils at the Santiniketan school, disliked the bureaucracy that central-university status brought and resigned in 1953, moving to Dehradun.

Which nephew of Tagore founded the Bengal School of art and painted the 1905 nationalist icon Bharat Mata?

Abanindranath Tagore set out to modernise Mughal and Rajput styles against Western academic art, and in the 1890s illustrated the poet's Chitrangada. Bengalis knew him as 'Aban Thakur'.

Which painter, Tagore's pick as first principal of Kala Bhavana, later decorated India's original Constitution?

Nandalal Bose drew in his own students to illuminate the Constitution, and his frescoes still adorn Patha Bhavana at Santiniketan. Kala Bhavana, the fine arts faculty, dates from 1919.

What did Tagore's wife Mrinalini sell off to help pay for the Brahmacharya Ashram school he started at Santiniketan?

Her wedding jewellery went towards the school, and she died in November 1902 aged about 29 after doctors failed to diagnose her illness. She had married the poet at Jorasanko in 1883.

In which English seaside town did Tagore enrol at a public school in 1878, before briefly reading law in London?

Brighton's Medina Villas housed the Tagore family; he left England without a degree in 1880, preferring Shakespeare's Coriolanus to law lectures. His father had wanted him to become a barrister.

Shilaidaha Kuthibari, the Padma-bank manor where Tagore wrote much of Sonar Tori, is near which Bangladeshi town?

Kushtia's Kuthibari, built by an indigo planter before the Tagores acquired it, became a museum in 1986 holding over 80 photographs of the poet, who stayed there on and off from 1891 to 1901.

Which Argentine writer, later founder of the magazine Sur, took an ailing Tagore into Villa Miralrío in 1924?

Victoria Ocampo took him in a week after he landed on 6 November 1924, bound for Peru; he sailed home in January 1925, and she later hosted Stravinsky and Malraux at Villa Ocampo.

Which dictator did Tagore meet in Rome in 1926 and praise, before denouncing his movement in The Manchester Guardian?

Benito Mussolini's head reminded Tagore of 'Michael Angelo's chisel', and he spoke of a 'fire-bath' of fascism, before recanting in the British press. He had reached Naples the day before the meeting.

In which country did Tagore nurse his heart in 1926 at a lakeside sanatorium whose promenade now bears his name?

Hungary's Balatonfüred, on Lake Balaton, has kept the Tagore promenade since 1957 and holds a bust of the poet presented by India's government.

Fascination with which Persian mystic poet drew Tagore to Iran in April 1932 as the guest of Reza Shah Pahlavi?

Hafez drew the 70-year-old on what became his last foreign tour, which also took in Iraq, where a Bedouin chief's words on harming no fellow man startled him into recognising 'the voice of essential humanity'.

Tagore's talk with which physicist appears as 'Note on the Nature of Reality' in his 1931 book The Religion of Man?

Albert Einstein was one of several thinkers Tagore met on his travels, alongside Bergson, Shaw and Wells; the book itself grew from the Hibbert Lectures he gave at Oxford in May 1930.

Which 1934 disaster did Gandhi call divine retribution for the oppression of Dalits, drawing a rebuke from Tagore?

The Bihar earthquake killed thousands, and Tagore, who had campaigned to open the Guruvayur temple to Dalits, rejected the idea of seismic karma. He mourned Bengal's decline in an unrhymed hundred-line poem soon after.

Under what title did Tagore publish his acrid September 1925 essay rejecting a core plank of Gandhi's programme?

The Cult of the Charkha capped a feud in which Tagore had founded Sriniketan in 1921 to counter Gandhi's Swaraj protests with rural reconstruction, preferring 'steady and purposeful education' to 'blind revolution'.

Which 1905 Tagore song, written at Giridih and sung by Amitabh Bachchan in the film Kahaani, was Gandhi's favourite?

Ekla Chalo Re, 'walk alone', first appeared as 'Eka' in the September 1905 issue of Bhandar magazine, and Tagore recorded it himself between 1905 and 1908 on a cylinder that is now lost.

In which US city did a 1916 plot by Indian expatriates to kill Tagore fail when the plotters fell to arguing?

San Francisco's plotters were enraged by views such as his 1916–17 lectures denouncing nationalism; his essay 'Nationalism in India' was both scorned and praised, and admired by Romain Rolland.

What became of Tagore's paintings hanging in Berlin's Crown Prince Palace when the Nazi regime turned on them in 1937?

Removed as degenerate art, with some entered in the Nazis' 1941–42 inventory; Tagore had taken up painting only at 60, and India's National Gallery of Modern Art now lists 102 of his works.

In which city did Tagore's paintings make their exhibition debut in 1930, after he took up painting at 60?

Paris came first on the encouragement of artists Tagore met in the south of France, and shows followed across Europe; he was probably red-green colour blind, which gave the works their odd palettes.

Which derelict Devon estate did Leonard Elmhirst, Tagore's former secretary, buy in 1925 for a rural experiment?

Dartington Hall's progressive school, which Tagore co-founded, and its rural programmes copied what Elmhirst had begun for the poet at Surul near Santiniketan in 1922. Sotheby's sold 12 Tagore paintings from the estate in 2010.