Q 01/05

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

A) George Bernard Shaw

B) James Joyce

C) W. B. Yeats

D) Oscar Wilde

Answer · why

C) W. B. Yeats

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...

Q 02/05

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

A) Three

B) Four

C) Five

D) Seven

Answer · why

C) Five

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 Sadh...

Q 03/05

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

A) Amartya Sen

B) Abhijit Banerjee

C) Raghuram Rajan

D) Jagdish Bhagwati

Answer · why

A) Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen was named by the poet and later schooled at Patha Bhavana, Tagore's Santiniketan school, which shunned examinations and competitive testin...

Q 04/05

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

A) Mahanagar

B) Nayak

C) Aparajito

D) Charulata

Answer · why

D) Charulata

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' ...

Q 05/05

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

A) Atithi

B) Kabuliwala

C) Dena Paona

D) Subha

Answer · why

B) Kabuliwala

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...