Leadership and Tradition: Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was born into a wealthy and cultured Hindu family in Calcutta in 1861, the youngest of many children. He was educated mainly at home, and during his youth travelled widely with his father. In 1878, the year in which his first poems were published in India, he went to study in England with the intention of becoming a barrister, but returned home without a degree in 1880. For the next decade, he immersed himself in his poetry and other writings. He married in 1893. In 1890, at his father’s choice, he began managing the family’s vast estates in East Bengal (now Bangladesh). At the same time, he continued to write and to edit an influential magazine; and he founded a school in 1901 where he could put his ideas on education into practice. Through publishing his poems and other writings, Tagore was becoming a well-known writer in his native land. For the rest of his life, he was to expand his interests and apply his ideals, and he was always to keep his connection with the land and with farming.