Tagore

* Tagore was born on 7 May 1861. At some time towards the end of the seventeenthcentury, his forefathers had migrated from their native lands to Govindpur, one of the three villageswhich later came to constitute Calcutta. In the course of time, the family came to acquire propertyand considerable business interests through the pursuit of commercial and banking activities. Theyhad particularly benefited from the growing power of the British East India Company.Rabindranath’s grandfather, Dwarkanath Tagore, lived lavishly and broke the Hindu religious banof those times by travelling to Europe, just like his contemporary, Rammohan Roy, the nineteenthcentury social and religious reformer. Roy started a religious reform movement in 1828 that came to be known as the BrahmaSamaj Movement. Rabindranath’s grandfather supported Roy in his attempts at reforming Hindusociety. Dwarkanath’s son, Devendranath Tagore, also became a staunch supporter of the BrahmaSamaj Movement. In order to encourage its spread, in 1863 he established a meditation centre andguest house on some land about 100 miles from Calcutta at a place called ‘Santiniketan’, the Abodeof Peace. Although deeply steeped in Hindu and Islamic traditions, Tagore’s family contributed largesums of money for the introduction of Western education, including colleges for the study ofscience and medicine. This peculiar situation explains the combination of tradition and experimentthat came to characterize Rabindranath Tagore’s attitude to life. Rabindranath’s father was one of the leading figures of the newly awakened phase ofBengali society. He had been educated at one stage in Rammohan Roy’s Anglo-Hindu school andhad been greatly influenced by Roy’s character, ideals and religious devotion. Devendranath Tagorewas well versed in European philosophy and, though deeply religious, did not accept all aspects ofHinduism. He was to have a profound influence on his son’s mental and practical attitudes. Rabindranath was the