Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath who significantly reshaped Bengali literature and music. He was a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter, crucial to the Bengal Renaissance. Tagore was the first non-European to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, with his "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry collection, Gitanjali.

Known as the "Bard of Bengal," Tagore's work included poetry, novels, short stories, dance dramas, and essays. His style combined lyricism, colloquialism, and naturalism, with compositions that became national anthems for India ("Jana Gana Mana") and Bangladesh ("Amar Shonar Bangla"). His song "Banglar Mati Banglar Jol" is the state anthem of West Bengal.

Tagore was also a visionary educator who founded the Visva-Bharati University. He modernized Bengali art, rejecting rigid classical forms and linguistic restrictions. As a humanist and internationalist, he criticized nationalism, opposed the British Raj, and advocated for Indian independence.

Tagore was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and held the honorific "Sir" until he renounced his knighthood in protest of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919.