The Pittsburgh Press (August 7, 1941)
TAGORE, INDIAN POET, DIES AT 80
Calcutta, India, Aug. 7 (UP) –
Sir Rabindranath Tagore, famous Indian poet, painter, philosopher and sociologist, one-time winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, died peacefully today. He was 80.
He was born in Calcutta, the youngest son of Maharshi Debendranath and grandson of Prince Dwarkanath Tagore. After a private education in India, he was sent to England at 16 to study law. He soon returned to India, however, and at 24 went to the country to manage his father’s estates. There he wrote many of the works that brought him world fame and the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In 1901, Tagore founded a school at Santiniketan which later developed into an international institution called Visva-Bharati. There he tried to revive the spirit of education of ancient India when eager youths sat at the feet of the mystic. He sought to abolish all class and religious distinctions.
He made his last visit to the United States in 1930 and fell seriously ill at New Haven, Conn.
Among his projects, Tagore established an institute of rural reconstruction:
…to bring life in its completeness into the villages, making them self-reliant and self-respectful.
He turned his estates over to the school and in 1913, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, he devoted all the prize money to the institute.
Like Mohandas K. Gandhi, whom he greatly admired, he hoped to see India independent of Great Britain. But he believed that first of all the people had to be taught to respect themselves:
…to realize their own part in the great scheme of the universe.