Rabindranath Tagore was born on May 7, 1861 or the 25th day of the month of Baisakh in the year 1268 (Bengali lunar calendar) in Calcutta, in a cultured and wealthy family. The poet's early life was spent in an atmosphere of religion and arts, literature, music and painting. 

In 1901 he founded the school, Santiniketan, at Bolpur in Birbhum. The school was a great success and gave birth to Viswabharati. It became a great seat of culture and learning. In 1913 he received the Nobel Prize for literature following the publication of his collection of poems Gitanjali. Rabindranath Tagore's contribution to Bengali language and literature is unparallel. He wrote many novels, short 

stories, plays and poems. Some of Tagore's novels include Bauthakuranir Hat, Rajarshi, Naukadubi, Chokher-Bali, Gora and Ghare Baire. Tagore was an ardent patriot. His most intense period of political activity was in the years following 1905, when the agitation against the partition of Bengal was at its highest. He renounced his knighthood in 1919 as a protest against the Amritsar massacre. His patriotic poems and songs, India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana have passed into the common heritage of his country.

Where the mind is without fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father,
let my country awake