The 72nd anniversary of the death of poet Rabindranath Tagore, who reshaped the Bangla literature and music, will be observed in Bangladesh today, the 22nd day of the Bengali month of Sraban.
Tagore, the first non-European and first Asian litterateur to win the Nobel prize in 1913, was a poet, playwright, novelist, educationist, social reformer, artist and composer.
In his long seven decades of endeavours in different
genres of Bangla literature, the poet enriched the Bangla language and elevated its position in the global arena.
He had written poems since he was eight years old. At the age of 16, he published his first substantial poems under the pseudonym of Bhanusingha Tagore and wrote his first short story and drama in 1877. He modernised the Bangla art from rigid classical forms.
Tagore wrote the national anthems of Bangladesh and India. In music, he created a genre of his own called Tagore song.
Born on May 7, 1861 in the Tagore mansion at Jorasanko in Kolkata, Tagore passed a long period in the then East Bengal, now Bangladesh, to oversee family estates.
Many of his masterpieces were written during his stay in East Bengal. His ancestral home was at Pithabhog of Rupsha in Khulna. Family estates at Shelaidah and Shajadpur still carry his memories in Bangladesh.
He died in Kolkata on August 7, 1941.
The president, Abdul Hamid, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, and the leader of the opposition in parliament, Khaleda Zia, issued messages on the occasion paying rich tributes to the poet for his great contribution to shaping the minds of the Bengalis through his literary works.
-With New Age input
