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Rabindranatha Tagore was a famous Bengali poet, philsopher, artist and playwright who was born in an affluent Pirali Brahmana family in North Calcutta. When he was eleven he travelled with his father to Darjeeling where he stayed for several months and studied history, science, astronomy, Sanskrit and dramaturgy. By 1877 Tagore had written a number of works in both his native Bengali and Maithili.
He travelled to England in 1878 to become a basrrister, staying at the University College in London. However, Tagore returend to Calcutta in 1880 without a degree. After his marriage in 1883 he had five children (four of which died in their youth) and in 1890 Tagore began to manage the family estates. During this period Tagore wrote many articles on village life in Bengal for the periodical ‘Sadhana’.
In 1901 opened his Santiniketan asrama and school in West Bengal. From here he published such works as ‘Naivedya’ and ‘Kheya’ as well as translating his poems into free verse. In 1913 Tagore won the Nobel Prize for literature and in 1915 he was knighted.
In 1921 he opened a number of free village schools and championed the cause of stopping untouchability in India. During the last ten years of his life Tagore mourned the decline of Bengali culture and the famines that hit Calcutta. He also compiled fifteen volumes of writings during this time. In his last years he was very keen on learning more bout science, exploring biology, physics and astronomy. He died on August 7th 1941 after a long period of illness.
Tagore was guided by the Upanishads, the traditional Hindu spiritual scriptures to which he had the opportunity of early exposure, being part of an upper-crust Brahmana family. The Upanishads, derived in turn from the Vedas, speak of the immanent Brahman, the supreme reality which differs from Western religious conceptions of 'God' in that it is an all-suffusing force that transcends personality and any sort of description. The Hindu idea is that all things in the cosmos, even the famous Hindu deities, are only temporal manifestations of Brahman. The Hindu trinity being Existence, Consciousness and Bliss Satchidananda, Rabindranath Tagore wrote in a universalist strain about man's relation to Brahman and the experiences that lead to establishing ultimate identity with Brahman, the goal of Hinduism. The material world is regarded as Brahman's manifestation by Upanishadic philosophy.
Some scholars claim that Tagore’s interpretation of the Upanisads is closer to Vaisnava theism and the Bhakti cults than to traditional monism. He characterized the absolute as supreme person and placed love higher than knowledge.
One of Tagore’s distinctive achievements was his blending of eastern thought and western ideas in his modes of expression as well as his views about life. He was very much affected by the philosophy of vitalism of Henri Bergson.
