Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, writer, songwriter, composer, playwright, essayist, painter and humanist. Born on 7 May 1861, Rabindranth, the youngest son of Maharshi Debendranath Tagore—a prominent exponent of the Brahmo Samaj—was educated at home and later sent to England for higher studies. On his return to India, he began to write satirical verses on the socio-political climate in a colonised India. Political dissent, class inequities, gender prejudices, revolt, the fight for freedom and more, were recurrent themes in his vast oeuvre. In 1891, Tagore moved to East Bengal to supervise his family’s vast estates. Around this time, his writing was deeply influenced by his proximity to the village folk. In 1901, with the desire to blend the best of Indian and Western traditions, he founded an experimental school at Santiniketan, now a university town with the renowned Visva-Bharati University. In 1910, his collection of poems Gitanjali was published. In 1913, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Amongst his notable works is the poetry collection Sonar Tari (1894), the play Chitrangada (1892), several volumes of short stories, and novels like Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) and Yogayog (1929). He also composed over 2,000 songs, popularly known as Rabindra Sangeet. He died at the age of 80 on 7 August 1941 in Calcutta, leaving behind a rich and powerful literary legacy.