Rabindranath Tagore

Awarded for

His sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, especially Gitanjali, made part of Western literature in his own English translation

The story behind the prize

Tagore wrote poems, songs (Rabindra Sangeet), novels, plays and essays, and modernized Bengali literature. Gitanjali's devotional poems reached the West through his own English translation, with an introduction by W. B. Yeats.

About

Bengali poet, writer, composer and painter from Calcutta who founded Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan.

Exam facts

• First Asian and first non-European Nobel laureate
• Wrote the national anthems of India (Jana Gana Mana) and Bangladesh (Amar Shonar Bangla)
• Gave up his British knighthood after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (1919)