News:National Gallery of Modern Art organised the Virtual Tour titled “Gurudev – Journey of the Maestro through his visual vocabulary” to commemorate the 159th birth anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore.
Facts:
- Rabindranath Tagore(1861-1941) known as ‘Gurudev’ was a poet, novelist and painter.
- He was the first Indian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, for his novel ‘Geetanjali’.
Contributions:
- Bengal Partition: He was against the partition of Bengal and wrote the song Banglar Mati Banglar Jol (Soil of Bengal, Water of Bengal) to unite the Bengali population after the Bengal partition in 1905.It was reunited in 1911.
- Rakhi Utsav:It was started by Tagore during Bengal Partition where people from Hindu and Muslim communities tied colourful threads on each other’s wrists to counter British efforts to create a divide between Hindus and Muslims.
- Knighthood: He was awarded a knighthood by King George V in 1915 but Tagore renounced it after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
- Vishwabharati University: It was established by Tagore with the aim of helping education go beyond the confines of the classroom.
- National Anthem: He wrote the National Anthems of India (Jana Gana Mana) and Bangladesh (Amar Shonar Bangla).
