Celebrating Tagore: A Collection of Essays

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal. In his mature years, in addition to his many sided literary activities, he managed the family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms. Tagore’s collection of essays is the author’s most acclaimed essays in which the poet’s religion and the creative ideal reveal some of his fundamental tenets of art and aesthetics, of life and religion, and the religion of the poet. The essays in Sadhana tell us of the ancient spirit of India, Crisis in Civilisation (Sabhyatar Samkat) was the last public address delivered by Tagore on April 14, 1941, The Religion of Man are an extensive and commanding exposition of Tagores understanding of the meaning and significance of religion in the cultural history of man and Greater India deals with the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, one of the most turbulent periods in Indian history. One of India’s most cherished renaissance figures, Rabindranath Tagore put India on the literary map of the world when his Gitanjali was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.