Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. He was the author of "Gitanjali" and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse" as praised by The Nobel Foundation. In 1913, he became the first non-European Nobel laureate, earning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Tagore was more than just a poet; he was also a writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renaissance. He modernized Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

His poetic songs, viewed as spiritual and mercurial, along with his elegant prose and magical poetry, were widely popular in the Indian subcontinent. Tagore was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and was referred to as "the Bard of Bengal." Known by the sobriquets Gurudeb, Kobiguru, and Biswokobi, he was a Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Burdwan district and Jessore.

Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old and released his first substantial poems at sixteen under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics. By 1877, he graduated to writing his first short stories and dramas, published under his real name.

As a humanist, universalist, internationalist, and ardent critic of nationalism, Tagore denounced the British Raj and advocated for India's independence. He significantly contributed to the Bengal Renaissance through his vast canon that includes paintings, sketches, doodles, hundreds of texts, and around two thousand songs. His legacy also endures in the founding of Visva-Bharati University.

Tagore's works include "Gitanjali" (Song Offerings), "Gora" (Fair-Faced), and "Ghare-Baire" (The Home and the World). His verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's "Jana Gana Mana" and Bangladesh's "Amar Shonar Bangla." The Sri Lankan national anthem was also inspired by his work.