Rabindranath Tagore, like Chaucer’s forerunners, writes music for his words, and one understands at every moment that he is so abundant, so spontaneous, so daring in his passion, so full of surprise, because he is doing something which has never seemed strange, unnatural, or in need of defence. – W.B. Yeats
RABINDRANATH TAGORE, an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, was a polymath who not only reformed Bengali literature and music, but also combined Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the 19th and 20th centuries. He also won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for Gitanjali, a profound collection of songs he authored. Also called the "the Bard of Bengal", Tagore's poetry is both spiritual and effervescent. Along with a writer, Tagore was a humanist, and believed in universal internationalism. He was an ardent supporter of India's freedom from the colonial regime. Other seminal works by him include Gora and Ghare-Baire, while he also wrote plays like Visarjan, Chandalika, and The Post Office. Tagore is also responsible for the composition of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh, and is said to have inspired Sri Lanka's national anthem as well. He passed away in 1941.