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About Rabindranath Tagore Biography
Tagore and Gandhi were born in the same decade, Tagore in 1861 and Gandhi in 1869.
It was Tagore who gave Gandhi the name of ‘Mahatma’. Gandhi also always used to call Tagore as ‘Gurudev’. Despite having differences on many issues, both respected each other a lot.
Tagore strongly condemned Gandhi’s Khilafat strategy in 1921. Tagore also made fun of Gandhi’s statement that if all the people in the country start spinning yarn on charkhas, he would establish Swaraj in the country within a year.
Once when Gandhi called the Bihar earthquake a divine punishment to the untouchables, Tagore issued a public statement saying that “It is unfortunate that Gandhi should see a natural calamity as an expression of divine displeasure”. especially when a vast majority of Indians take his point of view for granted without question.”
Gandhi and Tagore were two different poles not only in their daily lifestyle but also in their social and political beliefs, but still Gandhi never stopped listening to Tagore’s words with devotion.
The differences between the two continued to grow, as Tagore believed in Visva Bharati and ‘humanism’ and ‘internationalism’ that went beyond the boundaries of the country.