Page 37 - DENG202_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_III

Elective English—III

Notes Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:
1. Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
2. The original name of the Tagore family was Banerjee.
3. Chitra is a one-act play written by Rabindranath Tagore, first published in English in 1913.
4. Gandhi called Tagore, The Great Sentinel for his unswerving commitment to
open-mindedness, inclusiveness and diversity in the envisioning of India.

5. Jyotirindranath and Satyajit Ray edited The Essential Tagore.

3.6 Summary

Poet, writer and humanitarian, Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian to be awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature and played a key role in the renaissance of modern India.

Tagore’s activism and literary work challenged the contradictions of an unequal and
unfair world system and developed a new understanding of the society and the world in
order to establish a concrete and universal humanism.
The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Rabindranath Tagore was born in the Jorasanko
mansion in Kolkata, India to parents Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and Sarada Devi
(1830–1875).
After returning to Jorosanko and completed a set of major works by 1877, one of them a
long poem in the Maithili style of Vidyapati; they were published pseudonymously.

He introduced the short-story genre in Bengali with “Bhikharini” (“The Beggar Woman”),
and his Sandhya Sangit (1882) includes the famous poem “Nirjharer Swapnabhanga” (“The
Rousing of the Waterfall”).
In 1883, he married Mrinalini Devi, born Bhabatarini, 1873–1902; they had five children,
two of whom died in childhood.

In 1901 Tagore moved to Santiniketan to found an ashram with a marble-floored prayer
hall—The Mandir—an experimental school, groves of trees, gardens, a library.

In 1921, Tagore and agricultural economist Leonard Elmhirst set up the “Institute for
Rural Reconstruction”, later renamed Shriniketan or “Abode of Welfare”, in Surul,
a village near the ashram.

Known mostly for his poetry, Tagore wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues,
dramas and thousands of songs.
Tagore’s experiences with drama began when he was sixteen, with his brother Jyotirindranath
Tagore Tagore wrote his first original dramatic piece when he was twenty—Valmiki Pratibha.
In old age, Tagore still rose long before dawn to witness the birth of each new day, and he
still wrote fluently in his own hand.

3.7 Keywords

Dalit: A member of the lowest cast such as a schedule caste or schedule tribe, according to the
Indian caste system.
Derisory: Very small, insufficient or inadequate.

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