Rabindranath Tagore Facts: 7 Things About Gurudev You Probably Didn't Know

Everyone knows Rabindranath Tagore as a legendary poet and writer whose works we've all read. He was the first Indian to bag a Nobel Prize for literature and even created his own genre of music. But there's so much more to the man. 

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Rabindranath Tagore Facts

Rabindranath Tagore was a master storyteller, poet, and playwright. His contributions to literature, music, and art are simply outstanding. People lovingly called him Gurudev, but he also had other names like Kabiguru and Biswakabi. 

He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 for his beautiful collection of poems, 'Gitanjali', making him the only Indian to win in this category.

Tagore often wrote songs, novels, and plays about the lives of ordinary people and pressing social issues. The British gave him a knighthood in 1915, but he returned it on May 31, 1919. 

He did this to protest the horrific Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre in Amritsar, Punjab. In 2011, on his 150th birth anniversary, London unveiled a bronze statue of him in Gordon Square. Prince Charles said its inscriptions would 'flash out as a light of tolerance'.

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Tagore, who also gave us our National Anthem, was a genius in every sense. His meeting with Albert Einstein is famous as a discussion between science and spirituality, showing how forward-thinking he was. 

He also started Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, West Bengal, to challenge old-school classroom teaching. Even today, many classes there are held outdoors under the trees. The government recognised it as a central university in 1951.