49 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 wrote that he carried the translations about for days, reading them 'in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses'. By 1935 he had soured, dismissing Tagore's later English books as 'sentimental rubbish'.

In which city was Tagore's 'Jana Gana Mana' first sung in public, at a 1911 session of the Indian National Congress?

Calcutta heard it on 27 December 1911; the song is the first of five verses of his hymn 'Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata', and that verse alone became India's anthem in January 1950.

Which economist, born at Santiniketan in 1933, was given his first name by Tagore himself?

Amartya Sen's grandfather taught Sanskrit at Santiniketan, and the boy went on to Tagore's school there, where, he recalled, any interest in exam grades was 'severely discouraged'.

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

Charulata is the lonely wife of a newspaper editor in 1879 Bengal, drawn to his visiting cousin; scholars think the novella drew on Tagore's own closeness to his sister-in-law Kadambari.

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 viral dance video of 2008 took the words of its song 'Praan' from Tagore's poem 'Stream of Life'?

Where the Hell is Matt? 2008 set Garry Schyman's 'Praan', sung in Bengali by Palbasha Siddique, over Matt Harding's dancing; the words are poem 69 of the English Gitanjali in their original language.

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.

What did Sweden send India after Tagore's Nobel medal vanished from a Visva-Bharati vault in 2004?

Gold and bronze replicas were re-minted in what was called an exceptional gesture, and twelve years after the theft a baul singer was arrested for sheltering the thieves.

Where does Patha Bhavana, Tagore's Santiniketan school, traditionally hold its classes?

Outdoors, under trees: Tagore wanted pupils taught in the shade with nature around them rather than behind walls, and UNESCO listed Santiniketan as World Heritage in 2023.

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

Madanapalle's college was run by the Irish poet James Cousins, whose wife Margaret set the tune down in Western notation from Tagore's own notes during his five-day stay in 1919.

What does the title of Tagore's Gitanjali, the book that won him the 1913 Nobel Prize, mean in English?

Song Offerings was the English edition's subtitle; its 103 prose poems were Tagore's own translations, yet only 53 of them came from the Bengali book of that name.

To which English painter, who found him rooms in Hampstead in 1912, did Tagore dedicate the English Gitanjali?

William Rothenstein was so struck by the manuscript that he passed it to a leading poet, who read the songs aloud at the painter's house on 7 July 1912; their letters were later published as Imperfect Encounter.

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

The India Society, founded in London in 1910 to champion Indian art, issued the limited first edition; Macmillan's trade edition followed in 1913, the year the book won the Nobel Prize.

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

Thomas Sturge Moore nominated him as a member of the Royal Society of Literature, and that single letter beat a rival candidacy signed by 97 of the society's other members.

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 members of the Royal Society of Literature, lost to Tagore's single nominator?

Thomas Hardy was put forward again and again, 25 nominations in all by 1927, yet he died the following year without ever receiving the prize.

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

Gagan Harkara was a village postman, which is what 'harkara' means, on the Tagore estates at Shilaidaha; through him the poet came to know the songs of the Baul mystic Lalon Shah.

Tagore's 'Amar Shonar Bangla' became a protest song against which 1905 British measure?

The Partition of Bengal split the province in 1905 and the song was sung against it; Bangladesh took its first ten lines as the national anthem during the 1971 Liberation War.

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, and his Hindu zeal collapses once his foster father reveals the truth about his parents.

Which 1903 Tagore novel about the young widow Binodini was filmed in 1938 and again by Rituparno Ghosh in 2003?

Chokher Bali means a grain of sand in the eye, a constant irritant, which is why its first English translation, in 1914, was called Eyesore.

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 sectarian violence, with Nikhil riding out to help the victims at the risk of his life; 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 as Farewell Song, let Tagore send himself up at a time when younger Bengali writers were attacking his dominance.

Which 1895 Tagore ghost story grew from his stay with an elder brother at Ahmedabad's Moti Shahi Mahal?

The Hungry Stones has a young collector of cotton duties lodge in a deserted marble palace, where each night the revels of a long-dead court draw him further in.

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

Teen Kanya, 'Three Daughters', was made for the centenary of Tagore's birth, yet went abroad as Two Daughters because the ghost story Monihara was left out.

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

The Post Office was the last play Korczak's orphanage staged, on 18 July 1942; about three weeks later he and the children were deported to Treblinka.

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

Raktakarabi, 'Red Oleanders', is named for the flowers Nandini wears for the man she loves; Tagore first called the play Yaksapuri, after the king's joyless town.

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

Arjuna, living as a hermit under a vow, is first won by her borrowed beauty; the princess had been raised as a son because Manipur's king had no male heir.

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

Natir Puja was filmed like a stage play from his 1926 dance-drama, with a cast he brought from Santiniketan; the prints were reportedly lost in a fire at the studio.

Which relative of Tagore founded a retreat at Santiniketan in 1863 and gave it that name, meaning 'abode of peace'?

His father Debendranath, the Brahmo leader known as Maharshi, built a small retreat for meditation there; the poet opened a school on the land in 1901, and the school grew into a university.

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

The Indian Civil Service sent Satyendranath to western India for most of his career; 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 was one of the first five boys at the Santiniketan school, which his father started partly with his education in mind; he later taught genetics there.

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 Santiniketan students to illuminate the Constitution's pages, and at Nehru's request also designed the emblems of honours such as the Bharat Ratna.

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, which was not yet a year old when she died in November 1902, leaving the poet with their five children.

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

Brighton came first, then University College London; his father wanted a barrister in the family, but Tagore sailed home without a degree and made his name as a poet instead.

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

Kushtia's Kuthibari stands where an indigo planter's house is said to have stood before the Tagores took over the estate; the poet stayed on and off from 1891 to 1901, often writing from a boat on the Padma.

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

Victoria Ocampo took him in when illness cut short his voyage to Peru, where he had been invited for the centenary of independence; he sailed home from Argentina in January 1925.

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

Benito Mussolini fêted him on a tour arranged by a Rome professor of Sanskrit; only after exiles described the regime's brutality did Tagore denounce it in print that August.

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

Hungary's lakeside spa of Balatonfüred nursed him back to health; he is said to have planted a linden sapling there, and visiting Indian dignitaries have since planted saplings of their own beside it.

In 1932 Tagore visited the Shiraz tomb of which Persian poet, whose verses his own father loved to chant?

Hafez's tomb was a stop on the journey Tagore made at the invitation of Reza Shah Pahlavi, a tour of Persia that ended with a visit to Iraq.

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

Albert Einstein welcomed him to his home outside Berlin in July 1930, where Tagore argued that truth cannot exist apart from the minds that perceive it; The New York Times printed the exchange.

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

The Bihar earthquake was, Gandhi said, 'a divine chastisement' for the sin of untouchability; Tagore, who abhorred untouchability just as much, called that an 'unscientific view' of a natural disaster.

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

The Cult of the Charkha took aim at the spinning wheel Gandhi wanted in every home: Tagore thought its economics unsound and complained that the wheel 'does not require anyone to think'.

Which 1905 Tagore protest song, sung by Amitabh Bachchan in the 2012 film Kahaani, was a favourite of Gandhi's?

Ekla Chalo Re, 'walk alone', was one of the protest songs he wrote in 1905; its opening line tells the listener to press on alone if no one answers the call.

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 did the Nazi regime do in 1937 with the Tagore paintings in Berlin's Crown Prince Palace?

Removed as degenerate art: five of the works, which Tagore had given to Germany in 1930, turn up in the inventory of purged art the Nazis later compiled.

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

Paris came first, with more than a hundred works shown before the exhibition travelled on to Berlin and London; it had all begun with the doodles he made from crossings-out in his manuscripts.

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

Dartington Hall's progressive school explicitly invoked Tagore's ideas on education, and its farm and craft schemes repeated what Elmhirst had begun for the poet in the village of Surul in 1922.