Rabindranath Tagore’s Birthday in West Bengal Date in the current year: May 8, 2024

Rabindranath Tagore was born on May 7, 1861. His father was Debendranath Tagore, a Bengali philosopher, religious reformer, and zamindar (land owner). Rabindranath was mostly educated at home; since the Tagore family was at the forefront of the Bengal renaissance, he met a lot of musicians and writers who came to visit his family, which helped shape him as an artist. He wrote his first poem at the age of eight.

When Rabindranath was sixteen years old, he published his first substantial poems under the pen name Bhanusimha, which means “Sun Lion”. They were followed by several collections of poems and a short story in Bengali titled “Bhikharini” (The Beggar Woman). It is considered the first short story written in the Bengali language.

In 1878, Tagore went to England to study, since his father wanted him to become a barrister. However, he dropped out of University College London where he read law to focus on studying English literature. Upon returning to Bengal, Tagore continued to write and publish poems, short stories, novels, and plays. In 1890, he took upon the management of family estates.

In 1901, Tagore founded an ashram (spiritual hermitage) with an experimental school, a prayer hall, a library, gardens and tree groves. He also continued with his literary work. Tagore translated some of his Bengali poems into English and showed them to his friend, English artist William Rothenstein, who helped get them published. Thanks to this, Tagore gained foreign readers.

In 1913, the Swedish Academy awarded Tagore the Nobel Prize in Literature “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West”. He became the first-non European winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the second non-European Nobel Prize laureate after Theodore Roosevelt. In 1915, King George V awarded Tagore a knighthood, which he renounced four years later because of the Amritsar massacre.

Although Tagore is most famous as a poet, he also wrote novels, essays, plays, travelogues and short stories. Short stories are probably the most highly regarded of all his prose; he is widely credited as the father of the Bengali version of the genre. Tagore also wrote music and songs, as well as created about 500 artworks, mostly in ink and watercolor.

Rabindranath Tagore’s birthday (known as Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti or Rabindra Jayanti) is celebrated in West Bengal on the 25th day of the Bengali month of Boishakh, which falls during the first decade of May in the Gregorian calendar. Note that it doesn’t necessarily fall on May 7 (Tagore’s birthday according to the Gregorian calendar).

Bengalis around the world celebrate Tagore’s birthday with various cultural events, such as poetry readings, performances, lectures, etc. It is a public holiday in the state of West Bengal, and for the Bengali diaspora, it is a celebration of their national and cultural identity.

* date for 2024