Page 290 - New Medley 5 Semester 2

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was a poet, a writer, a musician

and a philosopher. He was born in 1861 in Calcutta
(now Kolkata). His parents were Debendranath Tagore

and Sarada Devi. Rabindranath had a keen interest in
the folk music of Bengal. He used it in many of his

songs.

Rabindra Sangeet, the music of Tagore, is very popular
even today. It is sung and enjoyed by people all over

the world. Jana Gana Mana, our National Anthem, Rabindranath Tagore

was written by him. He also wrote the National Anthem of Bangladesh.

Tagore wrote nearly fifty books and more then 3000 poems. He was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for his book, Gitanjali. In

1915, he was awarded knighthood by the British Government. However,
he returned this honour to protest the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre.

Tagore founded a school at Shantiniketan (in West Bengal) in 1901. It
is now known as the Visva-Bharati University. Tagore passed away in

1941 at the age of eighty, in his ancestral home in Kolkata.

St. Teresa
St. Teresa was born on 26 August 1910 in Albania.

She was a Roman Catholic missionary. She lived
most of her life in Kolkata.

St. Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity
that runs hospitals, homes for poor, dispensaries

and mobile clinics, orphanages and schools. The
members of the Missionaries of Charity must adhere

to the vow to give ‘wholehearted free service to the
poorest of the poor’. St. Teresa said, “By blood, I

am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I St Teresa of Calcutta
am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my

heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.” She was fluent in Bengali,
Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, English and Hindi.

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