7th May: Rabindranath Tagore's Birth Anniversary

Man without Boundaries:

Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta on May 7^th 1861.  Rabindranath was the 13^th child of an art-loving Brahmin Tagore family. It is said that he hated classrooms and never been to proper schooling in his childhood. He started writing poems at the age of eight. Even though he is largely known for his rhythmic poems, he also penned several short stories, essays, novels, dramas, and travelogues.  He scored music for his songs too. It was only at the age of sixty that he spent more of his time working on drawings.

A little known fact about Tagore is his contributions to the National Anthems of three countries.  He wrote the National anthem of India (Jana Gana Mana) and Bangladesh (Amar Shonar Bangla). And finally, the National anthem of Sri Lanka (Sri Lanka Matha) was originally written and tuned by Tagore and later it was translated and composed by Anana Samarakoon in 1940.

He is the first non-European to win Nobel Prize for Literature in the year 1913. He also Knighted by the British Government in 1915, but he resigned the honor as a protest against  Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in 1919.

In his lifetime he traveled to more than thirty countries on five continents.  Most of his works were translated into English and other languages even during his lifetime.  This made him popular in Western countries.  Many countries issued stamps of Rabindranath Tagore.  Below is the stamp issued by India in 2011 on the occasion of the 150^th Birth Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore.