Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
Greatest writer in modern Indian literature,Bengali poet,novelist,educator,and an early advocate of Independence for India.Tagaore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.Two years later he was awarded the knighthood,but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the Massacre of Amritsar,where British troops killed some 400 Indian demonstrators.Tagore's influence over Gandhi and the founders of modern India was enormous,but his reputation in the West as a mystic has perhaps mislead his Western readers to ignore his role as a reformer and critic of colonialism.
"When one knows thee,then alien there is none,then no door is shut.Oh,grant me my prayer that I may never lose touch of the one in the play of the many." (from Gitanjali)
