Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a painter, philosopher, playwright, musician and social
reformer, in addition to being a poet and writer. He was instrumental in reshaping Bengali writing,
music and Indian art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He became the first non-
European to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature for his famous collection of poems, Gitanjali.
Tagore was referred to as 'the Poet of Bengal', and also went by the names Gurudev and Biswakabi.