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 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...

Q 02/05

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

A) Bombay

B) Calcutta

C) Madras

D) Lahore

Answer · why

B) Calcutta

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 ...

Q 03/05

Which economist, born at Santiniketan in 1933, 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's grandfather taught Sanskrit at Santiniketan, and the boy went on to Tagore's school there, where, he recalled, any interest in exam grad...

Q 04/05

Which 1964 Satyajit Ray film, often ranked among 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 a newspaper editor in 1879 Bengal, drawn to his visiting cousin; scholars think the novella drew on Tagore's own close...

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...