Tagore Birth Anniversary (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941)
P. A. Chacko
Today we celebrate 161st birth anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore.
- Tagore was a noble soul in the Indian firmament. He is universally acknowledged and honored as great patriot, social thinker, poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist, storey-writer, composer, painter, philosopher, social reformer, educationist, linguist, grammarian etc. Considered as one of the greatest revolutionaries India has ever witnessed, Tagore greatly contributed to India’s freedom and progress.
- He is said to be ‘a Bengali polymath who shaped Bengali literature, as well as Indian art with contextual modernism.’
- He was an exponent of Bengali Renaissance and advocate of India’s freedom from the British.
- According to Bengali calendar, Tagore’s birthday falls on 9 may this year, 2021.
- Among his poems, one of the most inspiring and oft-quoted is: ‘Let My Country Awake’.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
#Arrupe Tribal Cultural Centre, Bhognadih, Jharkhand, India