In England Tagore started to compose the poem Bhagna Hridaj (a broken heart). Once he gave a beggar a gold coin - it was more than the beggar had expected and he returned it. Among them were Bengal Academy where he studied Bengali history and culture, and University College, London, where he studied law (but left after a year without completing his studies). He received his early education first from home-tutors and then at a variety of schools. Tagore, the youngest, started to compose poems at the age of eight. All the children contributed significantly to Bengali literature and culture. Servants beat the Tagore children regularly. However, in his "My Reminiscences" Tagore mentions that it was not until the age of ten that he started to wear shoe and socks. The Tagores were pioneers of Bengal's Renaissance and tried to combine traditional Indian culture with Western ideas. Tagore's grandfather had established a huge financial empire for himself, and used it to finance large public projects, such as the Calcutta Medical College. He talked of seeing her body carried through a gate to a place where it was burned - and it was at that moment that he realized that she would never come back. His mother Sarada Devi, died when he was very young. His father was Maharishi Debendranath Tagore, a religious reformer and scholar. Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta in a wealthy and prominent Brahman family. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose touch of the one in the play of the many." (from Gitanjali) When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Tagore gained a reputation in the West as a mystic originally and that has perhaps mislead many Western readers to ignore his role as a reformer and critic of colonialism. Tagore was awarded a knighthood in 1915, but he surrendered it in 1919 in protest against the Massacre at Amritsar, where British troops killed around 400 Indian demonstrators. A Bengali poet, novelist, educator, Nobel Laureate for Literature. Rabindranath Tagore was considered the greatest writer in modern Indian literature.
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